Ever since she was the editor-in-chief of Cabrini’s student-run newspaper Loquitur, Amanda Finnegan knew she wanted to be a journalist.
Now, she’s a homepage editor at The Washington Post.
Finnegan graduated from Cabrini in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts in communication and English. Throughout her time at Cabrini, she had many defining moments that led her to where she is now.
Credit: Cydney Cappello
One turning point was the summer she went to a Georgia conference for collegiate editors-in-chief the year she was to lead Loquitur. It is also where she met her future boss Rob Curley. “It was this conference for 50 college editors-in chief and it was really eye opening for me,” Finnegan said in a phone interview. “I kind of thought that in order to go into journalism, you had to be a reporter and the conference really opened my eyes to all the different aspects of journalism and all the different roles you can play in the newsroom.”
Another major turning point in her career came a year later when she was picked from a pool of about 200 applicants for an internship at the Post. “That kind of started my career,” she said.
Additionally, she credits the moment when she and the other editors of Loquitur were producing their first issue as a moment that really sparked her interest. She recalls encountering technical issues and staying in the newsroom for 12 hours, determined to send it off to the printer.
“I realized that this is really [something] that I want to do. It was really something I cared about and really a passion and I never cared about something so much,” she said.
Finnegan led Loquitur during the 2006-2007 school year, along with 15 other members of the editorial staff, covering a variety of domestic and global events—from the time leading up to the 2008 presidential election, to the hanging of Saddam Hussein. Katherine La Hart, a news editor that year, remembers how Finnegan was able to make working on the staff a memorable experience.
“Amanda helped to build [a] staff that was almost like family, and she helped to make working on the newspaper a fun experience for all us,” La Hart said. “Amanda always made sure she was present in the room until the last story was dropped in. We have so many great memories in that newsroom, and our work paid off given some of the exciting awards that the staff received.”
The year that Finnegan was editor-in-chief, Loquitur won the Associate Collegiate Press Pacemaker award, considered to be the “Pulitzer Prize of college journalism.” The paper won “in the category of Best Non-daily College and University Newspaper in the country [and] was one of 18 selected,” according to Loquitur’s website. According to the college’s press release, Finnegan also “helped Loquitur earn second place for overall excellence in newspapers in the Society of Collegiate Journalists national competition.”
In addition to Loquitur’s prestigious award, Finnegan herself also earned a variety of accolades, including being named one of the nation’s top 100 college journalists by UWIRE in 2008.
Dr. Jerry Zurek, who has been Loquitur’s adviser for over 40 years and is the communication department chair, also recounts Finnegan’s work ethic during her time as a student. He fondly remembers her incredible sense of commitment and laser focus with everything she did. In addition to her role as editor-in-chief, he remembers her dedication to the communication department’s convergence capstone, seeking out extraordinary internships and also challenging herself up until the moment she graduated, including taking two Shakespeare courses as a senior.
“She always had a very clear sense of commitment so when she was editor-in-chief of Loquitur, she was wholeheartedly editor-in-chief, she was not distracted by things, by other outside forces,” Zurek said. “She was a great leader, she had wonderful co-editors and they all had a similar commitment to making Loquitur the absolutely best newspaper they could possibly make it. So they had very little ego, it was just very much focused on making the department medium tremendously good.”
Every experience from college, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Las Vegas Sun, among others, has led Finnegan to her role at The Washington Post. As a homepage editor, she is part of a team that monitors breaking news, weighing stories that come in from the newsroom, putting stories on the homepage for desktop and mobile devices, writing headlines, selecting photos, monitoring their competitors and so much more. Finnegan said that she likes to compare the news Hub to the “emergency room of the newsroom.” The stories are weighed and a sort of triage is assigned to those that are most important.
Since starting at the Post in May 2012, Finnegan said that the areas she feels she’s progressed the most are the speed at which she’s able to do things, building strong relationships in the newsroom and learning the audience so that the story can be presented in the best way. As a young digital journalist, she’s also learned to speak up because her instincts are usually right.
“It’s hard, more so than being a woman, it’s hard to be young in a newsroom,” Finnegan said. “You’re with all these people that have all this experience but you realize too that you as a young digital journalist have all this experience that maybe they don’t have or perspective that they don’t have. So I just kind of learn to voice my opinion and speak up and stand up for what I think is right, even if I have to argue about it and so far that has not steered me wrong.”
One of the hardest yet most exciting things that Finnegan has accomplished in her role so far is when she was the lead homepage editor the day the Boston Marathon bombing occurred. She recalls everyone gathering in the Hub that day for the Pulitzer Prize announcement and having to quickly switch gears when the news broke, having to redesign the homepage from something different than the typical, everyday design.
“That I think was a big test for me to see how fast I could really be and that I could do it. For a while, you sit and watch other editors and you wish like, ‘Wow, I wish I could work that fast or I wish I could do that’ and then you just kind of learn, you know trial by fire.”
Finnegan has also seen some well-known people in the newsroom, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Julia-Louis Dreyfus and Amazon founder/the Post’s owner Jeff Bezos. She said that those moments never get old and that people in the newsroom really get a kick out of it, reminding them that they truly work in an important and iconic place.
Among the people that she cites as huge inspirations are journalists Dana Priest, who broke the story on the abuses at Walter Reed, and Jason Rezaian, who was just recently released from 18 months of imprisonment in Iran. She also admires her first boss Rob Curley, Post reporter Eli Saslow, Las Vegas political cartoonist Mike Smith and previous mentor Dr. Zurek, who she said has always been a huge influence in her career.
A piece of advice that she received from Zurek early on in her career has really stuck with her: “Have passion for what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life.” She’s taken it to heart and is thankful to have a job that she really loves.
Advice that she has both received and given, she stresses the importance of learning to adapt, recognizing that the people who don’t are left behind. She recalls how social media wasn’t a huge player in the newsroom when she first started her career but now is a staple for reporting, storytelling and audience growth.
To those with similar aspirations, Finnegan advises to “start small and learn every job in the newsroom,” firmly believing in learning to be a reporter at your hometown paper. Despite never thinking that she would be a reporter, she said her role in Las Vegas was a great experience because it allowed her to cover a beat, and learned so much about every inch of a newsroom. “I think the newsroom is your greatest teacher and you learn from your mistakes there.”