Pat Wingert is an award-winning reporter at Newsweek Magazine. She was a graduate of the University during the ’70s, and wrote for The Daily Illini in her college career. She was always interested in journalism in high school and continued her passion at the University. As the University held great opportunities to pursue journalism in Illinois, Wingert knew she wanted to attend Illinois. 

At the time of Wingert’s academic career, The Daily Illini had about 300 staff members and was funded about $1 million. Due to political activism throughout the Watergate scandal at the time, journalism had an opportunity to make a huge impact on political justice. Hence the reason how the previous Daily Illini had more influence and staff. 

During this interview, Wingert emphasized the importance of The Daily Illini at her time. She described how her work at The Daily Illini held the same importance to her as earning a degree. Through The Daily Illini, she was able to gain journalism experience which later impacted her future career. As many of her peers worked to gather information and provide direct feedback to each other, she enhanced her abilities.

Her living experience consisted of her sorority and The Daily Illini. As she was more so focused on producing work at The Daily Illini, she mostly spent her days in The Daily Illini office, whether she had to finish her academic work or the productions of The Daily Illini. 

Wingert described how The Daily Illini truly treated everyone equally with their production of work regardless of age and gender. While this was a time period of prevalent sexism and women being restricted from professional jobs, The Daily Illini was ahead of its time when it came to production of its work and the treatment of its staff. Wingert was part of the time period where direct change of sexist workplaces developed into places of equality. To see that change toward equality develop in other professional work environments while The Daily Illini already had that type of environment, made her cherish her experience even more at The Daily Illini. 

Wingert initially received her first internship through her class. Her assignment was to get a real world experience in the writing and journalism field. She got her first internship at the Chicago Sun-Times. During her internship, she was able to correct a mistake of a person’s name on an obituary article, which landed her her first professional job offer.

When Wingert was asked about any advice for current University students, she told us to take advantage of all the opportunities given to UI students. The extent can go from professors and academics to registered student organizations and further beyond. For those preparing to become journalists or reporters, she told us that experience in photography, video, radio and the knowledge of how to set their own interview can be necessary for a future in journalism. 

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