By: Tim Eggert, editor-in-chief

From writing columns about campus tobacco bans to investigating university policies and reporting on state elections, I’m amazed at how far I’ve evolved as a journalist in my three years at this outstanding paper. I can only attribute my progression to the countless people who gave me their unending support and encouragement.

Jackie, thank you for your enduring knowledge and advice. You have always been a thoughtful mentor and a true friend. As a defender of the free press, your dedication to objectivity continues to be an inspiration. Monica, thank you for sharing honest experiences and suggestions. Your authenticity motivates me to be a better storyteller. Jim, thank you for your belief in students’ ability to write and report. You influence all of us to be tougher journalists. Thank you to past staff members who believed in and helped guide me, especially Winter, Trevor and Trinity. I wouldn’t be a North Winder without all of you.

Most of all, thank you to my dedicated and hardworking staff. I know the nights were long and our resources were limited, but we did it. Because of you all, the voices and the stories of this university and this community have been empowered and shared. Your commitment to the paper, to the community and to each other serves as a model for modern democracy. Jackie, I’m confident you’ll be unstoppable next year and continue to expand on what we’ve achieved.

Because of the stories and the relationships our newsroom produced, I’m optimistic about the future of the industry and The North Wind. I’m proud to have served as Editor-in-Chief of an award-winning, boundary-breaking publication. I’ll never forget the feeling of exercising this
freedom.

By: Alex Skinner, sports editor

As the final days of the spring semester come to a close, so does my time here at The North Wind. It has been a wild ride, and I could not have done it without the support of my peers, family and all of you readers.

I remember being a bright-eyed freshman here at Northern with a passion for writing who struggled with confrontation and fear of being turned away. I was an avid reader of The North Wind ever since my first days living in the dorms, and people thought I was weird for reading the paper so much. They all thought it was a dead media.

It took a long time for me to build up the courage to grab a staff application from our old office in the University Center. I did, filled it out and immediately tossed it into the trash bin.

I told my parents this story and was met with love and hopes that I would reconsider my decision. It took another year for me to follow through, but I did and wrote a few feature pieces as a contributing writer, and I haven’t looked back since.

I’ve learned so much in my three semesters here and have had a blast the entire time. I’ll always remember the sleepless nights, the countless Jimmy John’s runs, blasting Mild High Club deep into the night and of course our Associated Collegiate Press trip to Minneapolis.

Thanks to everyone who has ever wrote a sports article for me. You guys are the lifeblood that fuels my passion to continue to grow as an editor. Thanks to all of my coworkers, even those who ask what a free-throw is.

A special thanks to our journalistic advisor Jackie Stark for inspiring us to be our best and put out top-notch content every week. I’ll always look back fondly on my time with my crazy journalist friends.

By: Sophie Hillmeyer, assistant news editor

With the end of my college career in sight, I can’t help but think about the time I spent at The North Wind. I spent the first semester of my junior year abroad and was dreading coming back to the Midwest after such a life-changing experience on the other side of the world. I had no idea what classes I wanted to take, so I thought back to my news writing and reporting class years ago, and the day before that fateful winter semester began, I emailed my professor and joined the journalism practicum. Then, before I knew it, I was on the staff at The North Wind and I felt like I had found my place at NMU.

My time with The North Wind taught me so much, both professionally and personally. No, it wasn’t always easy to balance my role with the newspaper and my course load and it would cause occasional headaches, but there were all these little things that made those headaches worth it.


Seeing my name on bylines, yes of course, but most notably, the thing that would always blow me away each week was watching the way my colleagues came together every Wednesday to produce a newspaper to be proud of.

This was a tough semester for some, and we were together for better or worse, in sickness and in health. No matter what life threw at us, we came together and accomplished our shared goal of producing a newspaper.

With that being said, I would thank all The North Wind staff for all their laughs, pranks, encouragement, adaptability and the list goes on and on. This truly has been the most transformative experience of my college career and I can’t wait to see all the amazing things you all accomplish in the coming semesters. Good luck to my fellow graduating seniors.

By: Kelsii Kyto, news editor

In my time working at The North Wind, I have learned what real journalism is all about. Whether it’s staying up all night to do research on a story, or watching the hours pass by as I lay out the news pages, I’ll remember it all. I’ll remember sharing laughs with busy students and NMU’s administrators. I’ll remember when our community members’ eyes filled with tears during the women’s march or the nurses’ strike. And I was able to share it all in the pages of The North Wind.


When I started at The North Wind in February of 2017, I was just a shy contributing writer who needed help making her own interview questions. Now, I am helping my contributing writers come up with questions for their first-ever news stories. I have felt the excitement of having my first story on paper, and of my writers seeing their very first byline in the news section. And there’s nothing better than getting an excited email from a club president asking when their interview would make it into the paper. Nothing ever gets boring when you write for The North Wind.

It doesn’t matter whether a publication reaches 4,000,000 people or 400 people—it’s about having accurate news stories for the good of the people. That is a foundation that I received from The North Wind, and something I will carry with me for the rest of my life. As I walk across the stage on May 4, I will not be thinking of my time as a student, but my time as a student journalist who affected the way other students stayed informed about their campus. In a time where journalism means more than ever, I couldn’t be more grateful.

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