Meet Communications Alumna Alice Finno
Alice graduated in 2022 with a Communications major and an International Affairs minor. She is currently pursuing an M.S. in Journalism at Columbia University. At JCU, she was part of the editorial staff of the student led newspaper The Matthew and events coordinator for the Grassroots club.
Tell us about your background. What made you decide to come to JCU?
I was born and raised in Rome and I went to an Italian Liceo classico. When I finished high school, I knew I wanted to be in a more international environment and study in English. There are many reasons why I decided to come to JCU, but the main one is that JCU offers more practical classes in Communications than other universities in Italy. I was also interested in International Affairs, and JCU allowed me to take classes in that field too, combining both my interests.
What made you decide to combine a major in Communications with a minor in International Affairs?
I knew from the beginning that I wanted to study Communications, and the classes JCU offered in journalism, cinema, and media studies seemed very interesting. At the same time, I have always been fascinated by the culture and politics of different countries, and I wanted to gain a better understanding of global issues. The minor in International Affairs seemed like a perfect fit for me, and it turned out to be very helpful in informing my writing as well.
Tell us about the extracurricular activities you were involved in at JCU.
I was a staff writer for The Matthew and the events coordinator for Grassroots, JCU’s environmental club, for most of my time as an undergraduate student. Looking back, I’m so glad I made the time to be part of both clubs because it added so much more to my experience at JCU. It gave me the chance to explore my passions for environmental issues and journalism and allowed me to connect with like-minded people. Some of my best memories are related to club activities. For instance, I had the opportunity to attend and write articles about COP26 and COP27, the 26th and 27th editions of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, with a small cohort of students from The Matthew and Grassroots. Participating in these historic negotiations with my friends made the experience even more special.
You are currently pursuing an M.S. in Journalism at Columbia University. How did JCU prepare you for graduate studies?
The journalism classes I took at JCU helped me greatly in improving my writing and critical-thinking skills. Overall, I think the workload at JCU prepared me for the M.S. in Journalism program at Columbia, which is very intense. The time management and organizational skills I developed at JCU – where I took five classes every semester while participating in extracurricular activities – allowed me to keep up at Columbia and in a fast-paced city like New York, where on average I’m working on three stories at the same time.
How did you become interested in climate change, social justice, and human rights issues?
What I appreciated the most about JCU was that, in most classes, we had the opportunity to choose the topics we wanted to focus on for our assignments and final projects. So, as I started reading about different topics, I was naturally drawn to environmental and social justice issues.
With climate change, the more I learned about it, the more I was surprised there were so many things I didn’t know. I noticed that many people around me also didn’t know about its scale and impact, despite it affecting all of us. I quickly realized that climate change is a social justice issue because low-income people, women, people of color, and marginalized communities are more impacted by it. Joining Grassroots and taking the amazing classes taught by Professor Antonio Lopez (such as Writing for Advocacy: the Climate Crisis and Ecocinema) allowed me to cultivate this interest, and I’m very grateful for that.
What kinds of challenges have you faced in researching these topics for your articles?
The challenge with researching and writing about climate change is that it is a complex topic, and sometimes it’s difficult to communicate information and data in a way that is clear, easily digestible, and engaging. So, when I started researching topics related to climate change, I first had to read a lot about it to make sure I understood everything. Then, I had to find the best way to communicate the information so that people would care about it.
For social justice and human rights issues, there is a strong human component, so it becomes crucial to think about how to tell the stories of vulnerable people without risking causing them further harm. As I was researching some of these topics at Columbia – for example, the intersection between health and climate change or the criminal justice system and climate change – I noticed that sometimes there is a lack of data, which makes it harder to understand the broader picture and figure out how many people may be impacted by certain issues.
What are your plans for the future?
I don’t know exactly where I will be in the future, but I know I want to continue working in journalism. I love that journalism gives me the chance to learn something new every day and interact with people I would have never met otherwise. I plan to continue reporting on social inequalities and climate change to bring more attention to these crucial issues and tell the stories of people who are often marginalized and overlooked.
What advice would you give to students interested in journalism and communications?
I would tell them to be curious, ask questions, and don’t feel intimidated if they hit a wall at first, because it happens a lot in journalism. The best advice I can give to students interested in pursuing journalism is to be persistent – everything else can be learned along the way.
