Like many students, Lena Folke ’22 came to college not knowing what career path she might take. As a communication major and a theater minor, she was looking for an outlet to continue her love of storytelling. It wasn’t until she attended a journalism-hosted event in Barney-Davis Hall that things clicked.
“I remember being so excited after the event,” she said. “I figured it out — I’m going to do the narrative journalism concentration. The narrative journalism concentration at Denison has since been replaced with a full journalism major and minor.
Studying journalism became a huge part of Folke’s time at Denison. She dove into creative nonfiction, literary journalism, and documentary filmmaking. In intimate journalism classes, she connected with her peers and professors. “You bond over your stories, over trauma, over life,” she said. “If the class is small and people care, it becomes something really special.”
Folke credits much of her direction and confidence to a class with Assistant Professor Doug Swift. She took his Multimedia Storytelling course during her final semester at Denison, and it quickly became a turning point. “That class is what solidified that this is what I wanted to do,” she said.
Working with video, audio, and editing tools gave her a hands-on introduction to the kind of storytelling she hoped to pursue. Swift’s guidance didn’t end with the classroom; he wrote her recommendation letter for graduate school, setting her on her post-graduate path.
After graduating, Folke wanted more experience — more video, more structure, more room to grow. She applied to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, one of the top graduate journalism programs in the country, and spent the next year living in her home city, Chicago, while she studied full-time.
Medill pushed her toward broadcast. “I didn’t expect to be doing news,” she said. “I thought I’d do documentary work. But the more I did it, the more it made sense. It brought together everything: writing, acting, editing, storytelling.”
Today, Folke works as a morning anchor at KBAK-TV, a CBS-affiliated television station in Bakersfield, California, a city far from home and even farther from The Hill where it all started.
Her 4 a.m. wakeups, unpredictable story assignments, and long shifts are part of the job. One day, she’s preparing for a light segment at the zoo. The next day, she’s reporting live at the scene of a shooting. “You have to pivot constantly,” she said. “Think on your feet. And stay calm.”
Folke doesn’t know exactly where her path will lead, whether she’ll stay in broadcast or explore other corners of journalism, but she’s certain she’s on the right track. “I know journalism is what I’m meant to do,” she said. “It brings together everything I care about.”
