If you’ve ever been on the second floor of Vaughn late on a Tuesday night, you can hear the hustle and bustle of The Minaret staff getting the school paper ready for the week. The person directing and organizing the production of the paper is the Editor-in-Chief, Mia Glatter.
Mia Glatter is a 22-year-old senior hailing from Satellite Beach, Florida. She is majoring in journalism with a minor in professional and technical writing. After graduating in May, she plans on pursuing a job in magazine print journalism. She wants to be the editor of a smaller magazine where her work and ideas would make a larger impact.
Her story began in high school, where she was the editor for the school paper, ‘The Roar’ for three years. In that time, she became interested in newspapers and wanted to pursue it as a career. With this passion in mind, Mia entered UT wanting to write.
As a freshman she attended a general meeting for The Minaret and began her journey by becoming a reporter.
“I was terrified,” she stated, “I had no idea what I was doing and I even got yelled at once in an interview. I’ll never forget it, I was frazzled by the situation and I asked a question that was poorly worded and the faculty member was pretty offended. He yelled at me saying I had no idea what I was talking about. It was pretty scary but I learned a lot.”
Even with that situation fresh in her mind, Mia continued to write for the Minaret. She became the news editor her sophomore year, then the managing editor, and now her current position as Editor-in-Chief.
Mia describes her favorite part of working at The Minaret is the family that she’s made there. “Being an editor of The Minaret comes with its own unique struggles,” she says. “So, we help and support each other. We also have a lot of fun and some seriously silly things happen at 3 am in the office when we’re trying to finish the paper.”
She believes that the hardest part of being an editor of The Minaret is the people who are against it. “The nature of good journalism is often invasive and sometimes that means asking questions and writing about things that students and faculty are against,” she said. “I’ve been sent some pretty nasty emails by people who don’t agree with what we do and that’s really difficult to deal with, especially when you want the community to appreciate your work. We try to be as professional as we can but we’re still students and we’re learning as we go.”