Jacob Lujan and Aynsley Larsen are part of a two-year mentorship program with the news outlet, making Texas Tech the only university to have multiple students selected.
Texas Tech University students Jacob Lujan and Aynsley Larsen spent the last week of July nervously checking their email.
Open page. Refresh. Nothing.
This was their rhythm. They attempted to distract themselves from the potential incoming message. Although, an email could also mean rejection. Either way, they longed to know.
Finally – an invitation to an interview.
“We were impressed with your application, and we’d like to set up an interview as part of our selection process for the Times Corps Program.”
Times Corps
The New York Times launched its flagship mentoring program in 2022. The “Times Corps” is a talent-mentorship opportunity for college undergraduates to gain guidance from Times journalists.
This year, 20 students were selected from hundreds of applicants. Upon creating a group text, the new cohort members quickly noticed there was one university represented twice: Texas Tech University.
Lujan and Larsen were both interviewed and selected.
“I think it’s pretty cool there are two of us from Texas Tech,” Larsen said. “I would imagine they wanted as much representation from different universities as possible, so I think that says something about the program at Texas Tech.”
Not only are Lujan and Larsen both personally benefiting from the program, but as leaders at The Daily Toreador (DT), other Texas Tech students reap the rewards too.
Set Up for Success
Lujan and Larsen sit across from each other at a local coffee shop. It’s a Friday afternoon during the home stretch of the fall semester. After an abnormally warm autumn, the weather has finally dropped and rain-soaked bricks surrounding campus reflect the busy silhouettes of students preparing for finals.
The two student-journalists were already friends before becoming Times Corps mentees. They’ve traveled to the Texas-Mexico border for a reporting class, visited Times Square for the university’s centennial coverage in The Daily Toreador and regularly spend time reporting together.
Lujan quickly downs a latte while Larsen slowly sips on an iced coffee, despite it being 52 degrees outside.
“I want to report on humanitarian crises in war zones,” Larsen offers. “But even general international reporting would be interesting. I want to report on the communities and the people directly affected by conflict.”
The third-year journalism student admits her parents are a bit apprehensive about the idea, but she believes there’s ongoing need for reporters in war zones.
Larsen is the news and features editor for The Daily Toreador. She works with other student journalists to pitch, write and distribute stories relevant to campus.
Lujan is the photo editor for The Daily Toreador. He started at Texas Tech as an electrical engineering major, but after three semesters he transferred to the creative media industries (CMI) program within the College of Media & Communication (CoMC). Lujan had always enjoyed photography, helping with his high school’s yearbook. When he got to college, he joined the paper to keep his skills sharp.
The Daily Toreador took a few staffers to New York City in 2023 to cover the university’s presence at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Lujan and Larsen were both on the trip.
“That trip solidified my decision to change majors,” Lujan said. “I like to try everything. If I go to a new restaurant, I’ll find the weirdest thing on the menu. Journalism was attractive to me because I get to hear everyone’s stories and see different sides of life.”
He craved the everyday adventure that came with a new assignment.
Larsen came to Texas Tech as an English major but changed her major her second semester. She’d already been studying in the CoMC for a semester before they went to New York. While Lujan was capturing photos, Larsen was looking for human feature stories.
“I wrote a piece called ‘Pom, moms to take on New York,’” Larsen said.
The article followed four mother-daughter duos who danced together in the parade. Texas Tech student Emma Thelen was joined by her mother, Keli Thelen, who’d appeared in the parade 30 years prior.
It’s articles like these, little stories within the larger picture, that make for an effectual features writer.
Guided Growth
When the New York Times opened applications for its mentorship program earlier this year, Director of Toreador Media Sheri Lewis forwarded the email to some of her students.
“I wasn’t familiar with the Times Corps when I stumbled across it,” Lewis said, “but after reading about it, I knew the Daily Toreador newsroom had several strong candidates.”
Lewis says she’s always on the lookout for opportunities that allow students to go above and beyond what’s offered on campus. She forwarded the information to students she thought were qualified and followed up with in-person encouragement.
“When I learned Jacob and Aynsley were among the 20 selected for this year, I was speechless,” she said. “I even teared up a bit; to see two of our staffers earn a place on that list was more than I ever expected. It’s an amazing opportunity for a pair of extremely hard-working students.”
Lujan and Larsen said the application process was a long one, and they waited months to find out if they’d been accepted.
“We applied at the beginning of the summer,” Lujan said. “And they announced the list in September.”
Lujan applied thinking he probably wouldn’t get in, but he knew it was good experience to try. Larsen was equally skeptical but agreed they had nothing to lose by applying.
“I got an email in late July from the Times, asking for an interview,” Lujan said.
Both students went through an interview process with the Times’ Deputy Director of Career Programs Carla Correa.
“We selected Aynsley and Jacob for the program because in their applications and interviews with us, they expressed a commitment to the kind of independent journalism we practice here at The Times and a sincere desire to take advantage of every opportunity available to them.”
Correa says their involvement and leadership in the student paper also stood out.
“Having two students from Texas Tech join the Times Corps was exciting because a key goal of the program is to provide access to quality mentorship and career guidance over a sustained period to students from all kinds of backgrounds. That includes geographic diversity, which brings a range of perspective into journalism.”
The Times Corps program is a two-year commitment for both the mentors and mentees. Each participant is matched with a Times mentor. Matches are made based on types reporting and areas of interest. Lujan was matched with Times photographer Ruth Fremson. Meanwhile, Larsen was matched with senior news editor for Latin America Edla Cantú.
“When I found out my mentor was going to be Fremson, I immediately looked up everything she’s shot,” Lujan said. “She was really busy covering the election at that time.”
Fremson has covered national politics for many years, including the campaigns of John McCain, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. She’s also shot the 9/11 attacks, the 2002 Olympics in Utah, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the 2022 Oscars ceremony.
The pairing was perfect for Lujan, since he wants to go into political coverage himself.
“We often don’t see the humanity of candidates,” he said. “These are people with the weight of an entire nation on their shoulders, and they’re real human beings. I want to show that human dimension.”
That’s easier said than done. Journalistic bias is everywhere, and it’s hard to avoid in the split-second it takes to capture a photo.
“Media literacy is something we’ve learned a lot about in classes at Texas Tech,” Lujan said. “As a journalist, we have to make sure we’re telling all sides of a story.”
In photojournalism, this can mean waiting hours, days or even weeks for the shot that captures that balance, or, taking multiple shots to represent each point –of -view. It’s these matters, and much more, that Lujan has been able to talk about with Fremson.
Recently, Lujan has been trying to narrow down the images in his portfolio with no luck.
“Fremson told me, ‘Imagine your portfolio is an assignment your editor has given you, and they’ve asked for 10 images,’” Lujan recounted. “All of the sudden that clicked, and I knew what to include. She never told me which images she would pick.”
Fremson additionally helped Lujan out of a recent creative rut. He traditionally has always shot with a wide lens and felt he was taking the same kind of picture over and over. So Fremson let necessity be the mother of invention.
“She told me to shoot a story I’d normally shoot with a wide lens, but purposefully only take a narrow lens,” he said.
The experiment forced Lujan to look at a scene he’d seen 100 times, in a different way.
Larsen’s partnership with Cantú has been equally productive. Cantú joined the Times in 2018, where she writes “El Times,” a newsletter featuring the best of Times coverage, translated for Spanish-speaking audiences. Her reporting has covered a range of issues including international affairs, business and digital transformation, migration, and gender and women in leadership.
“Our first meeting was supposed to be 40 minutes, and we ended up talking for two hours,” Larsen said. “She’s been so generous and open to all my questions.”
Larsen says Cantú has especially been helpful when it comes to editing advice. As the editor of the features section for The Daily Toreador, Larsen juggles multiple pitches from many student reporters each week. Cantú’s guidance helped Larsen encourage her staff to look for different angles and think more fully about story ideas.
“She suggested I have each of our reporters stand up in front of each other and pitch their ideas, complete with a headline,” Larsen said. “That’s helped immensely.”
The students meet with their mentor three times each year. There is also a monthly meeting that the whole cohort attends virtually. The topic changes month –to -month. Last month, Times staff shared best practices for resume and portfolio curation.
“They went through real resumes that secured jobs at the Times,” Lujan said. “That was valuable since I’m applying for internships right now.”
Hit the Ground Running
Lujan and Larsen plan to graduate from Texas Tech in May 2026. Upon graduation, and the successful completion of the two-year program with the Times, they’ll be invited to travel to New York and visit the newsroom in person.
“That’ll be so cool,” Larsen beamed.
It’ll be a full-circle moment for the two to return to New York and see the whole operation, rather than just taking photos in the lobby like in 2023.
It’ll be especially meaningful to Lujan since that was the trip that launched his fulltime interest in photojournalism.
For the highest-performing members of the Times Corps, some may gain acceptance into the Times Fellowship, the newsroom’s one-year work program for up-and-coming journalists.
Lujan and Larsen say the Times Corps is evidence that journalism is far from dead. Even with the migration of news moving to digital spaces, the need for journalism will never go away, they say.
“Texas Tech has set us up to be competitive,” Lujan said.
Larsen added they were unsure what to expect when they started the program.
“We weren’t sure if we’d be behind, or like, how our experience would compare,” she said.
Both agree they’ve been pleased with how they’ve been able to hit the ground running. They felt prepared for working with staff members at a publication as prestigious as The New York Times.
“The ability to take great courses and get hands-on reporting experience at Texas Tech is the reason we’ve been competitive nationally,” Larsen said.