Arriving at the Phillip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, I encountered a school alive with a blend of professional focus and creative energy. The reason for my visit was twofold: a screening of Idea Man (Dir. Ron Howard, 2024) and a personalized tour of Merrill from its esteemed dean, Rafael Lorente. As a documentarian and visiting journalism student from “the other UM-D” (the University of Michigan-Dearborn), I came to experience journalism’s future firsthand, in a place that actively explores what it means to tell stories that resonate.
The evening centered around Idea Man, Howard’s documentary on Jim Henson, one of UMD’s most famous alumni, followed by a Q&A with Sara Bernstein, President of Imagine Documentaries and another accomplished UMD alum. The event celebrated Henson’s legacy while exploring the power and responsibility of storytelling itself.
Dean Lorente describes Merrill’s mission as “making journalists,” a phrase that is simple but consequential. In an era when the definition of “journalist” keeps expanding, the statement carries substantial implications. Lorente himself has the intensity of someone who believes deeply in the mission. He presents it as a process that turns students into critical thinkers who attend both to factual accuracy and to the ethical considerations that give stories their importance.
I caught glimpses of Lorente’s vision as he led me through the college. I saw students at the Capital News Service absorbed in datasets and investigative stories, their focus evocative of classic newsroom scenes from films, where facts and details are chased down with urgency and conviction. In another room, broadcast majors prepared for a live segment at UMTV, combing through each element of the production with the precision of seasoned professionals. As the tour progressed, it became clear that Merrill functions as a microcosm of the broader media landscape. At one end, there’s the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, a bastion of accountability and unflinching reporting that forms the serious core of Merrill. Then there’s the Povich Center for Sports Journalism, where students explore the expanding field of sports media, engaging with everything from stats and analysis to the broader social implications of sports.
More recently, Merrill has expanded into the rapidly evolving world of e-sports. A digital arena with its own devoted audiences, strategies, and high-stakes narratives. The physical and mental demands, the fan communities, the tactics all combine to create compelling stories that challenge stereotypes about what qualifies as “real” sport.
The complementary elements across Merrill’s many sub-disciplines show how the program pairs rigorous reporting with storytelling craft. Students are encouraged to try different approaches, develop their voices, and learn when to prioritize factual depth or narrative emphasis. Talking with some of these students in passing, I could see how they each seemed to embody the values Merrill taught, from the thrill of investigative work to the personal stories they sought to uncover. It struck me that these students, too, are discovering Henson’s philosophy: that storytelling can be as close as you get to “the real magic we live with every day.”
This is only part of why many in the Merrill community see the college as more than a job pipeline. For them it’s a flexible program designed to prepare students for a rapidly changing media landscape. That adaptability is essential today, and Merrill’s students are being trained to navigate it with expertise.
During her Q&A, Bernstein shed light on some of the more pressing questions raised by this kind of existential ambiguity. “There’s a huge market for true crime and celebrity docs,” she said candidly, “but it’s not always about what sells. Finding a different kind of story, one that balances entertainment with meaning, is challenging, but ultimately worth far more.” It reminded me of Henson’s words: “You’re assisting the audience to understand; you’re giving them a bridge or an access. And if you don’t give them that, if you keep it more abstract, it’s almost more pure.” In a world where quick, clickable content often dominates, both Henson’s and Bernstein’s words felt like a reminder that meaningful storytelling sometimes means going against the current.
Her Q&A forced a reckoning with what journalism and documentary films can achieve and where they fall short. Bernstein recounted her own journey from UMD to HBO and eventually to Imagine Documentaries. For every piece of advice on narrative voice or the importance of networking, there was an equally telling silence on the difficulty of balancing artistic integrity with marketability. As Kermit the Frog says in the titular song: “It’s not easy being green.”
Leaving that night, I carried questions, perhaps more than I’d arrived with. Still, my visit to Merrill left me reflecting on the evolution of journalism itself and the values that it must retain in a world of rapid media shifts. Jim Henson once said, “When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope is to leave the world a little better for having been there.” At Merrill, students are encouraged to live this very idea, faced with both the weight and wonder of journalism, they are choosing how their own stories will unfold.
Merrill is a proving ground for this kind of introspection, a place that raises questions and encourages students to carry them long after they leave. Questions that don’t resolve neatly but grow, like the best stories, into something meaningful precisely because they refuse to come easy.