From Local News to Legacy Media: ICFJ Fellow Adian Brewer's Time at The Wall Street Journal

Adian Brewerwas ICFJ's 2025 New Corp Media Fellow. He received financial support and mentorship from ICFJ before spending two weeks at The Wall Street Journal's New York City office.

"I was placed with the WSJ video team, which turned out to be a great fit. My day-to-day work ranged from compiling data, researching background for stories to tracking down sources and helping light interviews," he says.

Brewer lived in the U.S. Virgin Islands from 2017 to 2025. He's currently based in Wilmington, North Carolina.

This interview has been edited slightly.

Can you please talk about your fellowship experience at The Wall Street Journal?

I wasn't quite sure what to expect going in. Walking into the News Corp building on Sixth Avenue was definitely intimidating at first. I was placed with the WSJ video team, which turned out to be a great fit. My day-to-day work ranged from compiling data, researching background for stories to tracking down sources and helping light interviews. I've always worked in local news, so for me being at a legacy place like The Wall Street Journal felt like it carried this sort of gravity to it.

I remember one morning editors were discussing coverage plans around Nancy Pelosi's retirement before it hit the news. About an hour later, I got the breaking alert on my phone that she had retired and it felt pretty cool to have known it was coming, even if it was just briefly.

What were the most important things you learned during those two weeks?

I got the opportunity to sit in on two of the weekly pitch meetings where all the journalists and editors would go through all the stories they were pursuing. It taught me what editors see as red flags and green flags - but I also got to see how the journalists responded to criticism and how they'd justify different reasons for pursuing their stories. I think as a journalist standing by your work and your intuition is important so I tried to hone in on those moments.

It also opened my eyes to the different ways you can successfully pitch a story. Some of the pitches were very casual, some were planned out beat for beat, there was one that was pitched in this almost cinematic way.

I've been eagerly checking the WSJ video page every week to see how some of these stories turned out/might have changed!

Through ICFJ's News Corp Fellowship program, you produced a story on the education system in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Why did you decide to investigate this topic, and what did you find?

About a year ago I had taken photos for the story about mold in one of the schools in the Virgin Islands, it was a story that really stuck with me because of how bad the conditions were in the schools.

With the dismantling of the Department of Education I was curious as to what the federal government actually funds for the Virgin Islands Department of Education, if those funds are at risk, and what they would do without those funds.

What I found is that everyone is kind of scrambling to figure out how to navigate the current administration's changes. A lot of funding that used to come through the federal Department of Education is being shifted to other agencies, like the Department of Health and Human Services. While those agencies are supposed to fund the same programs, nothing feels certain yet. Because of that uncertainty, the Virgin Islands is already having to move funding for things like special education from the federal budget to the local one.

Officials didn't seem overly worried about funding completely drying up, but the bigger takeaway is that these federal changes are adding more bureaucratic hurdles. And that's hitting a system that already struggles with funding because of bureaucracy in the first place.

What's the most impactful story you've worked on in your career?

I couldn't say what has had the most impact, but certainly what generated the most conversation was a story about a road sign naming a bridge that was colloquially called "The Bridge to Nowhere," the "Wayne Adams Facts Man Memorial Bridge," after a well known local DIY historian who held some avant-garde views on Virgin Islands history and politics.

A lot of people started calling the old "Bridge to nowhere" Facts Man Bridge because of the sign, but I found out it wasn't officially named that - some unknown persons had put the street sign up. The article briefly touched on the territory's effort to name roads in the Virgin Islands and the official process to do so.

After a year or so, that bridge was officially namedthe Dwayne Adams Facts Man memorial Bridge.

How has your career evolved over the years?

I started writing news with the goal of eventually working for big legacy publications like the Wall Street Journal and after a couple years really fell in love with local beats. Now over the last two years I've gotten more into video and I'm falling in love with the craft of editing video, audio, and documentary work. We'll see where that takes me!

Any big projects in the works?

I'm currently working on a fun story about polygraph tests!

Why did you decide to pursue a career in journalism?

I like being able to do deep dives on so many different topics. I think it's fun looking at complex things, trying to understand them, and then translating my understanding into an accurate and digestible nugget of information.

Anything else?

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