About Elissa Sonnenberg

Contact Info:

sonnene@uc.edu

About Me:

Elissa began her journalistic career before she could read or write. She spent hours taping her interviews with a series of toys about their Olympic ambitions while her older siblings hung out in elementary school. She resurrected her high school's newspaper, where she served as co-editor, then joined the ranks of UC undergrads with writing aspirations. She served as copy editor, news editor and finally editor of The News Record and as copy editor and writer for the student quarterly magazine, Clifton. After years working in newspapers and custom pubications, she went to Northwestern University to study education. She worked for more than a decade as a freelance writer for print and online publications before serving as a contributing editor at Cincinnati magazine. She finally gave in and took a full-time job at the magazine in 2001, and continued to work there as an assistant, then associate, then editor of special projects, including Home & Garden, Wedding and City Guides. While she still freelances, though mostly for national publications, she loves her current job teaching Journalism at UC and working for Jon Hughes, one of her greatest mentors and role models. 

Projects I'm Working On:

• Journalism Program Spring celebration
• UC Association of Black Journalists
• Feature Writing class
• Women in Journalism seminar class
• UC Journalism internship program
• UC Journalism internship website
• PARADE magazine "Where America Lives" freelance assignment

Where I Get Inspiration:

• The Poynter Institute
• The Neiman Center for Narrative Non-fiction
• The New York Times
• The Washington Post
• News U
• SPJ
• ABJ/Unity

My Dream Job Is:

How I Plan To Get There: