A Tale of Two Professors
Don Shelton and Natalie Breymeyer bring different experiences and perspectives to JOUR 307
Story by Basil Humke
This spring, Don Shelton and Natalie Breymeyer are each teaching a section of Western’s reporting course, JOUR 307. While these two professors may have very different journalistic backgrounds, both hope to inspire through instruction.
Don Shelton
Before his current gig as an adjunct professor at Western Washington University, Don Shelton spent three years as executive editor of the largest news organization in the Pacific Northwest.
When he was 22, Shelton may have inadvertently willed his future career into existence. A recent college graduate with no long-term plan, he was working at a small newspaper in Yakima, Washington, when his then-boss encouraged him to say, out loud, the title of his dream job. His answer? Sports editor at The Seattle Times.
“I had no business even saying that, but I had to say something,” Shelton said. “He had me on the spot.”
Shelton would go on to not only achieve that career milestone, but also to surpass it. In 1988, 12 years after graduating from the University of Idaho, he met The Seattle Times’ sports editor at a conference and was offered a job as assistant sports editor within a year. Shelton took over as sports editor in 2009, and in June 2016, he was named executive editor of the Times.
“I really pushed the digital part of the department,” Shelton recalled, “and then the publisher decided that the newsroom needed to make that same transition, so he hired me to do it. He just said, ‘I want you to do the same thing in the newsroom that you did in sports.’”
Shelton was 62 when he took over management of The Seattle Times. When he turned 65, he decided it was time for something new.
“I never really plotted it out,” he said. “If I had, I probably would’ve gone and gotten my master’s and all that. But I always loved teaching.”
In May 2019, following his retirement from the Times, Shelton contacted Western about a potential adjunct post. He soon found himself teaching JOUR 207, the department’s introductory newswriting course. After teaching journalism classes at his alma mater, the University of Idaho, for the past four years, Shelton returned to Western this spring to teach JOUR 307, the department’s introductory reporting course.
“I’m coming at this as a professional journalist, not as a teacher,” Shelton said. “There’s plenty of people at Western … that have a way better background in how to teach, and that have done it for a long time. But I think by dropping in here after my career was over, and not having a master’s or a PhD, it allowed me to just kind of have this freedom of doing whatever I thought would work.”
Natalie Breymeyer
As of spring 2024, reporting is also being taught by Natalie Breymeyer, a Western journalism alum whose career was just getting started around the same time that Shelton’s was nearing its end. After graduating in 2018, Breymeyer enrolled in an accelerated master’s program in social justice and investigative journalism at Northwestern University, which she completed in one year.
Breymeyer currently works full-time as an editorial research associate for Axios, a Virginia-based news company founded in 2016, while teaching a single section of JOUR 307 at Western. Balancing the two roles hasn’t been easy, but Breymeyer feels that it’s worthwhile if she’s able to be a unique resource for students.
“I think it’s valuable for students that I can offer them insight into working in a newsroom right now,” Breymeyer said. “[Journalism is] an ever-changing industry. … I graduated and started working at a tech company and then went into more traditional journalism. It’s not as linear of a path as it was before.”
She also mentioned how she’s been able to provide her students this quarter with a real-time window into Axios’ experiments with AI.
“It’s definitely a new thing,” Breymeyer said of AI in news. “I can tell [my students] exactly how we’re doing it right now, in my newsroom, and if it’s successful or not. So I think that’s valuable.”
The developing presence of AI is only one aspect of what makes modern journalism such a dynamic, ever-evolving industry. Students hoping to work in the field will need to possess an increasingly diverse set of skills, so it’s essential that they get the chance to learn from professors with a wide range of experience.
While Breymeyer may not be able to speak to the challenges of running a 175-person newsroom like Shelton, her perspective is that of a journalist currently working in the field, which has its own value for students.
“I think we have totally different skill sets that we can offer to students,” Breymeyer said of herself and Shelton. “I’m not gonna walk into a classroom and be like, ‘I graduated six years ago, I know everything.’ … I’m really hoping to emphasize that I can give [my students] some insight into what it’s like working right now.”
Although Shelton and Breymeyer may have very different skill sets on offer, the value of a good professor has the potential to reach far beyond subject matter. College is definitely about learning things, but it’s not only about that.
As Shelton put it, “young people want to be inspired.”