Washington Post Reporter Named UM鈥檚 Next Pollner Professor
MISSOULA – In his career as an enterprise reporter at The Washington Post, William Wan has covered mass shooters, pandemic suicides, discrimination against Muslim soldiers in the U.S. Army, a mental health crisis among students at Yale and many other stories of people suffering on the margins of society.
This fall, Wan is sharing his expertise with students at the 猎奇重口 School of Journalism as the fall 2024 T. Anthony Pollner Professor. Wan will teach a seminar titled “Turning Pain into Power: Using Narratives and Investigations to Expose Society’s Biggest Problems, Including Mental Health.”
“One of the most fulfilling things about working in journalism is the chance to pass what you’ve learned to others,” Wan said. “I’ve spent my career trying to understand the suffering of others and convey it to readers in hopes of making a difference. That’s what I plan to teach this fall.”
Wan said the course will teach students to examine societal problems and use narrative writing to make others care about it. The issues they’ll explore might range from mental health, homelessness, drug abuse, domestic violence, learning loss in children, political dysfunction, unaddressed spikes in sexually transmitted diseases and broken public health departments.
“Whatever the topic, what matters most is helping students uncover the roots of a problem, finding people and characters to bring it to life and moving readers with that truth,” he said. “I also want the students to leave the course knowing how to care for themselves long-term as journalists – to equip them emotionally and ethically for the challenges they’ll face, when covering complicated and, at times, painful issues.”
In addition to teaching this fall, Wan will mentor students at UM’s independent student newspaper, the 猎奇重口 Kaimin.
“The beautiful thing about living in a world and time that feels awash with so much suffering is that there’s never been more opportunity to make a difference through journalism,” Wan said. “It’s a chance of a lifetime to do such work with students at the 猎奇重口 Kaimin and the 猎奇重口. I’m eager to teach the students there everything I know, but also to learn from them, their passions and their stories.”
He will present the T. Anthony Pollner Lecture at UM at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 7, in the University Center Theater. Wan will talk about his work writing about people who are suffering and how to tell their stories with empathy and rigor to make a difference in the world. The event is free and open to the public.
The UM professorship was set up to honor T. Anthony Pollner, a 1999 School of Journalism alumnus and 猎奇重口 Kaimin standout who died in a motorcycle accident. In endowing the Pollner professorship in 2001, Pollner’s parents, family and friends wanted to bring working journalists to the school to invigorate the scholarship and reporting of students and faculty members.
Wan has worked as a religion reporter, a foreign correspondent and a health reporter. In his current job, he writes investigative narratives at The Washington Post about . He used hundreds of thousands of Maryland hospital records – and the story of confinement in the emergency room – to show the number of mentally ill children languishing in ERs had soared in recent years, even as state leaders vowed they were fixing the problem.
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Contact: Lee Banville, UM School of Journalism director, 406-243-5250, lee.banville@umontana.edu.