In a dorm room at Taylor Place 10 years ago, four journalism students launched a website dedicated to covering the downtown Phoenix community: the Downtown Devil.
Founders Dan Neligh, Salvador Rodriguez, Stephanie Snyder and Dustin Volz spoke about how their creation helped inspire their love for journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication’s weekly Must See Monday panel.
“When we launched it, it was ours. It slowly spread and grew. But being a part of something that you could actually see had an impact on the community… is one of the most important things of journalism,” Neligh said. “Getting to see that from square one and getting to see where it grew was a meaningful thing for all of us.”
The four Cronkite alumni started the online news publication because they saw an opening for more hyperlocal coverage in the area, and they “were freshmen and bored,” according to Rodriguez.
“Fundamentally, Downtown Devil was something that we recognized there was a space in covering downtown Phoenix news, and that it could be incredible to try to fill that space with student media,” said Volz, who is now a cybersecurity and intelligence reporter at The Wall Street Journal.
The Downtown Devil founders said their experiences with the Cronkite School and Downtown Devil have helped them deal with the ups and downs of their careers.
Snyder, an engagement consultant at Hearken, said that the industry she entered out of college is not the same as it is today. But her past work with Downtown Devil helped her adjust to the changes occurring in journalism.
“A lot of it does mirror how we thought about the Downtown Devil,” she said. “We put on community conversations and really thought about what students living here wanted.”
Rodriguez said the Cronkite School and other past experiences helped him through being laid off at The Los Angeles Times.
For Neligh, being a part of something “small like the Downtown Devil” reframed what he thought about journalism.
“It forces you to come up with a clean slate and come up with ideas,” he said.
Snyder also loved being a part of the creation of new ideas that she could incorporate into Downtown Devil.
“Being able to come back and help build a thing from scratch that really was making a difference in the local community really affected my career in a profound way,” she said.
As with any start up, the Downtown Devil and its founders had to deal with failures and disappointments. From fights among staff members to website hacks, the online press has persevered through it all.
“Figuring out what actually motivates people to help work for something bigger, I think was a big struggle for us,” Neligh said. “People got into fights. People left. Relationships were destroyed. I think it’s a constant process of growing and learning from one’s mistakes.”
But at the end of the day, the dorm room-born project allowed the founders to start preparing for everything the real world would throw at them.
“Between the four of us, we’ve been through enough stuff that I think it takes a little more to actually beat us down,” Rodriguez said.
Contact the reporter at ldiethel@asu.edu.
Lisa Diethelm is the Politics editor for the Downtown Devil while she studies at The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in downtown Phoenix. She grew up in California and started her journalism career in high school.
