Journalism Student Applauds Power of the Press in Preserving Democracy, Exploring Sustainability, Human Rights

Ambriel Speagle, top row, second from far right, with Clarion staff

An early, avid reader and writer who grew up in Englewood, Colorado, Ambriel Speagle credits joining her high school newspaper with igniting an ongoing passion for the hands-on process of producing a printed publication and the teamwork needed to do it.

Although she’d intended to consider out-of-state schools, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted her to explore possibilities closer to home. She chose the University of Denver, started in fall 2020 and went on to receive the Department of Media, Film & Journalism Studies (MFJS) Melrose Scholarship sophomore, junior and senior year.  

A double major in journalism and English in the College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (CAHSS) graduating in June 2024, Speagle has never regretted her choice, although she admittedly found her first year challenging.

“Coming into college I was shy, timid and unsure of myself,” she said. She added that although she lived on-campus, taking classes online for a year and a half made it harder to find community and certainty about her academic path.

“In journalism you’re supposed to go interview people and work together on the student newspaper but that was more difficult when we were all virtual,” she said. “But I do think going through that made it so much more exciting and rewarding when things reopened.”

Speagle joined the staff of the DU Clarion, the university’s student-run newspaper, freshman year and has written for and served in leadership roles ever since, most recently as executive editor.

She credits a class she took with Clarion Faculty Advisor and Teaching Professor Andrew Matranga with helping her develop the publication design and layout skills that would prove crucial when the print version of the Clarion was relaunched in fall 2023, following a four-year, online-only stint.

“Ambriel is the type of student that leads with quiet integrity and loud creativity,” Matranga said. “Her leadership with ‘DU Clarion’ has been instrumental in reviving the print edition of the paper after a hiatus.”

The mentorship she received from her Clarion coworkers and editors provided encouragement and ongoing support and camaraderie throughout Speagle’s college journey.

“Tori Everson who was editor-in-chief my sophomore year, inspired me to shoot for leadership roles in that organization,” she said. “But really all my collaborators on the paper, even though they were close to my own age, have helped me grow so much personally and as a journalist.”

As a Clarion reporter, Speagle specialized in writing about sustainability and fashion — topics close to her heart — specifically how fast fashion impacts the environment and textile workers. She also covered local vintage clothing stores that offer students looking for inexpensive clothing fashionable, more sustainable alternatives.

The term “fast fashion” refers to large, multinational brands and corporations that keep prices low by manufacturing “huge amounts of clothing outside the United States at the expense of the local environment and garment workers,” Speagle said. “It’s a multi-faceted issue but also something we, as consumers, can have a tangible impact on compared to something like trying to control emissions.”

Her research and reporting on fast fashion involved exposing “the exploitation of garment workers who are not being paid fair and living wages and the communities where these factories are located that are decimated environmentally in the process of making these clothes,” she explained.

She added that “learning to make sustainable choices through the clothing you wear might be one of the few things people my age can really relate to and do.”

Speagle is grateful to faculty like Assistant Professor Kareem El Damanhoury, who encouraged her to reach outside her comfort zone and inspired her by sharing his experience as a reporter for CNN. “He was fantastic and his class on multi-media journalism was a huge challenge and really formative for me because I’d never done anything video-related before,” she said.

El Damanhoury calls Speagle “one of the best students I have ever had the pleasure of working with. She's hardworking, creative, curious, and empathetic — all traits that are invaluable in journalism. Hence, I have no doubt Ambriel will be going places.”

According to Speagle, her study abroad in England during her junior year helped her better understand the role of the press in the United States. She took classes at the City University of London that taught her the differences between journalism in the U.S. and Britain, including the relative power and dominance of British tabloids. Conversely, “they also have much more funding and respect for public media like the BBC compared to how much private media is prioritized in the United States,” she said.

A summer internship with 303 Magazine in 2022 provided valuable experience writing for the publication’s fashion section. Speagle focused on vintage and thrift stores that were popping up around Denver at the time as pandemic restrictions eased and weaved sustainability issues into her reporting.

The following summer she completed an internship with Denver Life magazine, where she covered lifestyle issues and further honed her copyediting and proofreading skills under the direction of Associate Editor Sahale Greenwood.

“Ambriel blew us away with her polished and poised demeanor, and we were even more impressed with the care and thought she put into all her pitches and articles,” Greenwood said. “She is extremely well-spoken, well-written and well-composed. I look forward to following where her career takes her.”

Overseeing the Clarion during its re-launch as a print publication strengthened Speagle’s already strong support for the crucial role she believes print journalism continues to play.

“It’s taught us to be a lot more intentional with the messaging we’re putting out there and the stories we’re packaging together in an issue and a lot sharper and more succinct in our reporting,” she said. “Online content is so saturated and it’s easy to get buried in the digital landscape. It improved our readership because people like picking up a paper on their way to class and have given us positive feedback on that.”

Despite the shrinking number of print publications, Speagle believes “print journalism remains important especially as a source of local news. If you don’t have local papers, you can’t understand how broader policies directly impact you,” she said.

She’s passionate about preserving the role and credibility of the press in an environment of increasing misinformation, disinformation and media distrust often generated from online sources.

“It’s become so hard to distinguish what ‘real news’ is, and I think people can use that as an excuse to believe anything they read or completely write off the press.”

Instead, Speagle believes readers need to do the work of deciding which sources they can trust.

“There are biases no matter what source we’re looking at or viewing but it’s important to stay informed in a very intentional way,” she said. “On both sides of the aisle right now it’s easy to just decide the press can’t be trusted but it’s critical to maintaining democracy that everyone know what’s going on in the world.”

She calls a free press “tantamount to preserving democracy even though it can come with the challenges of being convoluted with sources publishing misinformation and disinformation. We all need to take more time to become more discerning about the news we’re consuming.”

Speagle has accepted a position as strategic communications coordinator at HDR, an architecture and engineering firm in downtown Denver following graduation and dreams of one day writing a book. “I was an English major, too, and my favorite author of all time is Joan Didion, who was able to write both fiction and creative nonfiction and intertwine her personal observations. I’d like to write something like that that captures politics and culture.”

As graduation day approaches and she reflects on her time at DU, she’s especially thankful for her newfound confidence.

“The community I was able to build through my work on the Clarion and people I met in classes made me a lot surer of myself,” she said. “As a journalism major you learn to put yourself out there and make sure you are equipped for new situations. I don’t think I would have applied for those internships or studied abroad if I hadn’t been growing as a person along the way.”

She added that she’s confident she has the skills she needs for her next career step. “I will take away so much both academically and personally from my time at DU.”