EMU Alumni Success Story

Contributed by Danielle Etter
EMU journalism student
April, 2006

For Kimberly Warren, a 2003 EMU journalism graduate, life is a bowl of cherries ... and apples and peaches and pears.

Kimberly Warren, a 2003 Eastern Michigan University journalism graduate,
has been cultivating her writing skills in the field of agricultural journalism.
Warren’s mom loved to read and write, and passed that passion on to her daughter. Thanks to her mom’s encouragement, Warren was already reading by the age of three.

            Warren, a native of Traverse City, Mich., knew when she went off to college that she wanted to be in the journalism field. She declared a major in journalism and stuck with it for all four years of college. But she fell in love with anthropology, as well. So, she finished her schooling with a double major in journalism and anthropology.
            During her years at Eastern, Warren, now 25, did many interesting things. During her first semester at Eastern, she worked on and off as a photographer for the Eastern Echo, the school’s student-run newspaper. In her senior year, she joined her journalism classmates for a trip to Washington, D.C. led by professor Charles Simmons. While in our nation’s capitol, they had the opportunity to visit with some congressional representatives.
            The summer after her freshman year, Warren was an intern for 10 weeks at Traverse magazine, where she wrote stories for two sections of the magazine that ran the spring of the following year. Her second internship was for three months at the Traverse City Record-Eagle, where she wrote general feature and news stories and covered the National Cherry Festival with the help of another intern. She was also in charge of hiring high school journalism students to help cover the festival.

After graduating from Eastern in the spring of 2003, Warren knew she wanted to get a job in agricultural journalism.

“My father is a fruit farmer, and my grandfather was until the day he died. And I know the importance they place on fruit-industry publications,” said Warren.

“When I was looking for my first job out of school, I knew I wanted to be involved in agriculture somehow. And that's how I came to work for Great American Publishing, which published The Fruit Growers News, The Vegetable Growers News, Spudman, Fresh Cut, Museums & More, and Party & Paper.”
She knew about Great American Publishing because both her father and grandfather subscribed to The Fruit Growers News. She applied for the job twice, and on the second try she was accepted. An article she had written in her magazine writing class at Eastern helped clinch the deal. The story featured a cherry grower, and it had recently been bought and published by a competing fruit industry publication.

One month into her internship, they asked her to stay permanently as staff writer. Three months later, she was promoted to associate editor. Six months after that, she was promoted to managing editor of The Fruit Growers News and The Vegetable Growers News.

On her one-year anniversary at Great American Publishing, Warren became editor of the The Fruit Growers News and The Vegetable Growers News. She also took over as editor for Spudman, a magazine for potato growers.

About six months after that promotion, Great American Publishing purchased Fresh Cut and she was appointed editor of that publication as well. More recently, she was promoted to editorial director for the company and now oversees editorial content for all six publications, as well as Web development, event marketing and other special projects.