Madison Cook is the Director of Student Media at West Virginia University. She oversees three programs, the student run newspaper The Daily Atheneum, radio station U92 The Moose, and the student run ad agency Prospect and Price Creative. The Daily Atheneum partners with the local newspaper, the Dominion Post, where it is inserted into every Friday issue.  This provides it an even larger audience than just the campus community. Much of Cook’s work involves advocating for the students, including giving them feedback on their content, advocating to get resources from the university, and working with area partners to create job and internship opportunities. She is building a collaboration between West Virginia University student journalists and Black by God, a statewide news outlet that tells stories from Black communities.

Cook was hired in May 2022 so as a recent hire she has focused on creating relationships with her students, “So they do feel comfortable coming into my office and saying, hey, we're thinking about covering this. What do you think? I don't want to control what they cover, but I do like it when they just want to talk things out and make sure that they are covering all their bases.”

She also enjoys observing the diversity of students who join the WVU programs beyond just Journalism students, saying “That's really kind of the beauty of student media is it doesn't have to be limited to students who want to do this long term as a career. It's really just kind of a fun thing for a lot of them.”

Read more about the West Virginia University program here.