TOLEDO – Who says Toledo is not an attractive summer destination? Not the 250-300 undergraduates who applied to spend nine weeks in the Glass City this summer, and especially not the 17 of them who made the final cut.
Those 17 – representing 14 universities, eight states, and three countries – are the latest intern cohort of the nonprofit multimedia thinkhub called Midstory – so named because its founders tell the stories of the Midwest, notably its base of Toledo.
What attracted those 17 is the opportunity to research, write, film, and produce stories of not only a local but national nature.
“One of our missions is to attract and retain young people and get them invested in a place like Toledo,” said Logan Sander, Midstory’s editorial director and one of its four founders – all with Toledo-area roots who left for schooling and careers elsewhere, then returned. “Most have never set foot in Toledo. Toledo is not usually a destination for humanities majors, people interested in storytelling or media work. We wanted to make Toledo a place where people can apply their critical thinking skills.”
Of the cohort – the eighth since Midstory began in 2018 – “60 percent of the time they’re pitching and completing their own storytelling work. Forty percent they’re doing higher-level research work on multiple long projects – major podcasts, documentaries, and collaborating with universities. We give them the more immediate bread-and-butter storytelling and longer-term research work.
“We encourage them to not only look with a new set of eyes [on Toledo and the Midwest], but also be in love with the story they’re telling.”
Sander said, “While we are firmly rooted to Toledo, our work is Midwest-wide. We do work that hopefully is nationally relevant.”
An example of a nationally relevant story was done in 2024 by then-intern Casey He, a native of China who lived in Maryland and attended Northwestern University. He researched and produced a story about the shifting of Ohio from being a bellwether state during the presidential election, which “reflected the changing politics of the nation,” he said. “It was well-received.”
He is back with Midstory this summer, this time as an editorial fellow, an advanced program for recent graduates – he earned a degree in journalism this spring from Northwestern. His role now is helping to edit the interns’ stories and write and research policy issues affecting the Midwest.
“It’s nice to come back to an area I am familiar with,” he said. “I truly appreciate this opportunity. It’s great to want to contribute to Midstory’s mission and explore Toledo and the Midwest and tell their stories. It was a great experience for me, I hope it’s a great experience for them,” he said of this intern cohort.
One of those interns is Natalie Gordon, a rising junior majoring in journalism and political science at Northwestern and from Washington, D.C. “I came here because I wanted to see what it’s like to cover a community,” she said. “I’m writing feature stories – helping spotlight people who are doing well for others and are hopefully inspirational. That allows for a more creative writing style. I’m excited for that. I want to leave here with a sense that what I did made people happy.”
Fellow intern Anthony Nassar is a Toledo native who hadn’t heard of Midstory until the Honors College at the University of Toledo, where he’s a rising junior in digital communications with a minor in digital marketing, suggested he apply. That was last year; he didn’t make that cohort. Nassar became more involved at UToledo in preparation for re-applying. He did, and made the cut this summer. “I really wanted them to see how motivated I was,” he said of the application process.
The result so far, he said, “is I’m reinventing my relationship to Toledo. A place where I’ve grown up is a new place to someone else. Even though I was familiar with downtown, I’m creating new memories being with other people,” he said of his fellow interns.
Sander said more than 250 collegians have been through the intern cohorts, the coordinator of which she considers “the ultimate success case.” That would be Caitlin Cooper, “a bright and valuable addition to Toledo,” Sander said.
Cooper, a native of Essex, England, came to Midstory for what was to be a three-month fellowship in 2023. “I was looking for a job in storytelling,” she said. She came upon Midstory, and, despite the fact that she had “never heard of Toledo,” applied and was hired.
Then, in a sense, the magic of what Midstory tries to do took hold. “In those three months I knew I wanted to stay,” Cooper said. “I found a community here outside of work that was not [like] anywhere else in big cities. The Toledo mindset is that people have ambitions, but are focused more on the people around them and how they can help. That was eye-opening.”
“Three years later, I’ve married and have roots firmly planted in Toledo.” She’s halfway through her Ph.D. pursuit in American cultural studies at Bowling Green State University.
In May, Cooper started fulltime with Midstory as intern coordinator and editorial assistant. “We’re trying to highlight the stories of this region,” she said. “I believe in this mission and fully support it.”
