For Nicole DeCriscio, journalism was not something she always knew she wanted to pursue. It began more quietly, with a writing class at Homestead High School in Fort Wayne, Ind., and a growing curiosity about what it meant to tell other people’s stories.
By the time she arrived at DePauw University, she planned to become an attorney and study political science and philosophy. Journalism was not part of the plan.
Then, during her freshman year, she answered a call for writers for the university’s student newspaper, The DePauw.
DeCriscio quickly found herself drawn to journalism. She worked her way up through the paper, eventually becoming editor-in-chief. An internship at The Salt Lake Tribune helped solidify journalism as more than a college interest.
“I fell in love with journalism,” said DeCriscio. “I said, ‘Wow, if I get to do this every single day, that seems like the dream.”’
But during her senior year, journalism became personal in a different way.
In fall 2015, DeCriscio was removed as editor-in-chief of The DePauw after a dispute over an article involving street preachers. She had given some of the street preachers sandwiches and then reported on what she witnessed behind the scenes. University officials characterized her actions as a “damaging and avoidable conflict of interest.”
DeCriscio disagreed, arguing that she could have removed herself from any future coverage of the group and that her personal interaction with the people involved did not prevent her from editing a story for structure, grammar, spelling and AP Style.
“I would also argue that a good editor can kind of compartmentalize,” said DeCriscio. “None of that impacts the content or the angle of the story.”
The dispute ultimately cost her the editor position, but it also introduced her to an organization that would become a defining part of her career.
The Society of Professional Journalist (SPJ) s came to her defense. Michael Koretzky, then an SPJ regional director, wrote about her firing and quoted SPJ’s ethics chair, Andrew Seaman. The College Fix and the Student Press Law Center also picked up the case.
For DeCriscio, the experience could have become a story about a difficult ending to her college career. Instead, she remembers it as the beginning of something.
“At the end of the day, in hindsight, as painful as it was, I’m incredibly grateful that it happened because it installed in me this love for SPJ,” she said. “And it set me on this trajectory that I’m very happy, very proud of where I’ve landed.”
SJP President Nicole DeCriscio speaking at “The Confidence Tax: Imposter Syndrome in Freelance Journalism” panel. Photo by McKenna Manzo.
DeCriscio said SPJ gave her a professional community and eventually a way to help other journalists who found themselves in similar situations.
That commitment has followed DeCriscio for more than a decade. She joined SPJ in 2013 and went on to serve on committees and chair Generation J, a group focused on early-career journalists and students transitioning into the industry.
Along the way, DeCriscio also formed relationships with journalists who helped shape her understanding of what SPJ could be.
One of those people was Koretzky, whom DeCriscio met in March 2014 at the College Media Association conference in New York City. He later helped connect her with Will Write for Food, a program that brought college students from across the country together to produce an issue of The Homeless Voice, a street newspaper serving people experiencing homelessness in South Florida. DeCriscio participated in the program in 2014 and returned the following year as an alumna.
Those experiences helped turn SPJ from an organization that had once intervened in a painful moment into a community DeCriscio wanted to remain part of.
Koretzky remembers meeting DeCriscio a decade ago and seeing the experience at DePauw shape her into the journalist and advocate she is today.
“Like quenching a red-hot sword in a cold-water bath, nothing sharpens your journalism quite like a university firing you as the student newspaper editor,” said Koretzky. “Nicole is still the same quiet-speaking, Midwestern-mannered woman when I met her a decade ago, but embedded within that serene personality is a spine of steel.”
Koretzky said that experience helped shape DeCriscio’s approach to journalism and advocacy.
“That spine was forged in her singular experience at DePauw, the birthplace of SPJ,” he said.
His view of DeCriscio also extends to the role she is preparing to take on as SPJ president. He said her experience with journalism’s challenges gives her a perspective that will be valuable in leading the organization.
“Nicole will be a good president because she cares more about what SPJ can do for journalism than what it can do for her career,” said Koretzky. “She’s been on the other side of free-press harassment, unfair job loss and feed-the-beast deadlines, so she knows better than most what SPJ must do to help not only journalists thrive, but their readers, viewers and listeners understand what journalism is.”
Those experiences helped turn SPJ from an organization that had once intervened in a painful moment into a community DeCriscio wanted to remain part of.
Her commitment to journalism also extended beyond traditional newsrooms.
DeCriscio became a founding board member and the inaugural executive editor of The Owen News, a nonprofit news organization created to serve rural Owen County, Indiana.
After realizing the cost of launching a traditional newsroom, she began exploring nonprofit journalism to make the idea possible. She pulled together a board, filed for 501(c)(3) status and spent nearly two years building the organization’s infrastructure, branding and community relationships.
The Owen News began publishing monthly in April 2024, making it Indiana’s first nonprofit newspaper and the only nonprofit news outlet specifically serving a rural community. She transitioned to working full-time in January 2025.
The experience also gave DeCriscio a close look at the challenges facing local journalism. She said people in rural communities want news that reflects the nuances of where they live, rather than coverage that focuses only on problems.
“I think of local journalism like a balanced diet,” she said. “You can’t have a healthy diet — you need a vegetable every now and then.”
After leaving The Owen News in July, DeCriscio began working on another venture: Sweet Owen Current, an online-only, for-profit news outlet. She is considering podcasts and other ways to reach a rural audience that is accustomed to getting its news from a traditional newspaper.
The Sweet Owen Current is a return to the reasons she fell in love with journalism in the first place: telling stories she cares about and holding local governments accountable.
That same mindset now follows her into SPJ’s national leadership.
As incoming president, DeCriscio is thinking about the organization’s financial future, support for local chapters and how SPJ can make its advocacy more active and strategic. She wants the organization to do more than issue statements when journalists face threats.
“If you issue a bunch of statements, you just talk a lot,” she said. “It is a lot harder to be ignored when you’re actually putting an advocacy strategy behind an action.”
Her approach is also rooted in curiosity and evidence. DeCriscio said she likes having data to support what journalists and organizations believe to be true, especially when trying to figure out what needs to change.
DeCriscio never planned on becoming a journalist. She certainly did not plan on becoming president of SPJ when she first walked into the newsroom at DePauw.
But a career that began with a student newspaper has taken her through local newsrooms, nonprofit news, journalism advocacy and back to the organization that stood beside her when she needed it most.
More than a decade ago, SPJ stood up for DeCriscio when she was a student journalist fighting to keep her voice. Now she is preparing to lead the organization that stood beside her.
“I wanted to give back,” DeCriscio said. “I wanted to one day make sure that I could stand up for students who were being messed with.”
As she steps into the presidency, DeCriscio is carrying that experience with her from the student newsroom, where her career took an unexpected turn, to the organization that helped her find her place in journalism. What began as a moment when someone stood up for her has become a reason to stand up for others.
Featured photo by Skylar Paxton.