Staff Spotlight: Timothy Becker

Timothy Becker got his big break in journalism in middle school. Bestowed with the high honor of Editor in Chief of the school yearbook, Mr. Becker didn’t foresee a career in journalism beyond that. It was always on the “backburner”, as he put it. After dabbling in high school with poetry and creative writing, he originally enrolled at Florida Atlantic University as an anthropology major. Only to switch to multimedia journalism two weeks later.

“The deeper I got into the program, the more and more I fell in love with it,” Mr. Becker said.

“The idea of investigative journalism and journalism as a powerful force for good is very important to me. The deeper I got into it, the more passionate I became about it.”

This year, Mr. Becker joined Dreyfoos as an Artist in Residence for the communications department, specifically helping with the publications run by Mrs. Gates. Recommended for the position by one of his professors, Mr. Becker described the opportunity as a “divergence from the path.”

“It's not exactly what I wanted to do,” Mr. Becker said. “You expect to get out of college and go work in a newspaper, go work in a newsroom, and I'm not doing that. But I think it's great because how many people can say that they were a journalism educator?”

Working with students on Dreyfoos publications The Muse and The Marquee provided Mr. Becker with not only a unique perspective into the future of journalism, but inspiration from the potential of young student journalists.

“Being around students is incredibly fulfilling,” Mr. Becker said. “... [They] are like cream of the crop at the top. It's insane. Every time I talk to people about the school I'm like, ‘this program here is almost as good as my college program, if not, maybe better.’ So it's inspiring, and it helps reaffirm my own passion for this type of stuff. Because if you guys are doing this at the high school level, I can only imagine what other people are doing in the future, you know?”

Throughout his time as an Artist in Residence this year, Mr. Becker has offered insight into how to be a good, ethical journalist to students by giving presentations on things like fair use and copyright laws, as well as participating in class discussions about how to make the publications better.

“I think that journalists, even though the industry of journalism is shrinking and is going through a lot of growing pains,” Mr. Becker said. “I think that actual strong professional journalists with a very strong set of ethics are becoming more and more and more important as we dive deeper into the information age.”