The Under-Told Stories project, a PBS NewsHour program that partnered with St. Thomas last year, hosted PBS NewsHour Executive Producer Sara Just for an exclusive discussion with students on Wednesday to further their goal of blending international journalism and teaching.

As the project’s name suggests, they aims to find and tell stories from around the world that often go unheard.

“The places I go are not tourist spots in the world, they’re places that people don’t care much about and are very foreign to a lot of American eyes,” Executive Director Fred de Sam Lazaro said. “The goal of the Under-Told Stories Project is to […] help you connect and make the foreign less foreign.”

St. Thomas students and faculty gathered in Anderson Student Center’s Hearth Room Wednesday afternoon to talk with Just about this style of journalism and the state of the media today. During the talk, Just answered questions brought forth by her audience.

“Obviously PBS is a big news outlet and she (Just) is a big name in it,” audience member Matt Mitchell said. “So, I thought that it would be interesting to hear her.”

Just tackled a number of different topics, including an explanation of how PBS NewsHour does what they do, her feelings on the idea of “fake news” and advice she would give to future journalism students.

“I thought it was really cool seeing the inside of what they have to do for stories and how they have to change based on the demographics of who’s looking at their stuff,” Mitchell, a business management major, said.

Just also talked about the importance of covering all aspects of the world, something that the Under-Told Stories Project prides itself on.

“It’s just the right thing to do,” she said.

The Under-Told Stories project came to the University of St. Thomas in January of 2016 in an effort to educate the campus’ students about the world around them.

“St. Thomas is a campus that is committed to having students work for the common good, as the slogan says,” de Sam Lazaro said. “If you want to have all of the options in the world open to you, you need to see them so that you know about them.”

Through the stories they post on their website and events they host on campus, like Just’s talk, the project hopes to teach students things they do not know and open their eyes to the world.

“Part of all of this exercise is to expose young people to the world out there and to say ‘it’s not on these shores, it’s way beyond our shores, it’s a whole world’,” de Sam Lazaro said.

Gamiel Hall can be reached at hall0211@stthomas.edu.