Two decades later, Medill alum Julie Pace’s education still guides her fight for press freedom

Tia Bethke, Senior Staffer

October 17, 2025

Julie Pace, wearing a blue sweater, leans over Deputy Managing Editor for Operations David Scott’s shoulder while pointing at a computer screen in the newsroom at the Associated Press in Washington. A woman in a grey sweater and glasses stands behind both of them holding a pen and legal notepad and a man in a blue button up shirt sits in an office chair to the left of them.

Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief Julie Pace, right, looks over a headline with Deputy Managing Editor for Operations David Scott in the newsroom at the Associated Press in Washington, Feb. 5, 2020. Pace is now executive editor of the AP, and Scott is vice president of U.S. election services.

Photo courtesy of Associated Press

Two decades after graduating from the Medill School of Journalism, Associated Press Executive Editor Julie Pace (Medill ’04) is leveraging her journalism education to oversee the news organization’s coverage and fight for press freedom through her efforts to restore the AP’s access to the White House.

Pace said Medill grounded her in the history of the industry; she learned about the challenges of producing responsible journalism.

“I think it is really important when you’re a journalist to have a very clear sense of your core ethics and values because they’re going to get challenged in big and small ways,” Pace said. “If you can constantly go back and say, ‘This is my set of values as a journalist’ and pressure test the choices you have to make against them, the decisions become very easy.”

Medill Dean Charles Whitaker said anyone can learn the technical skills it takes to be a journalist. However, he said the ethical and legal foundations of journalism are the most important conversations to have.

Medill experience in South Africa

For Pace, attending Medill was like going to a “trade school,” because her classes involved on-the-ground reporting to prepare students to be professional reporters.

Pace was one of eight in the first cohort to complete a required reporting internship as part of the Teaching Media internship in South Africa. The Teaching Media internship was a previous iteration of what students now know as the Journalism Residency requirement. The program required students to spend one quarter in their junior year working for a publication or media company for credit and professional experience.

Pace was on the broadcast track, but the program was originally only for students on the newspaper track. Pace was allowed to attend after she pitched the idea of reporting as a broadcast student to then-Medill Dean Loren Ghiglione.

Ghiglione, who ran programs at other universities similar to the one in South Africa, said he was very hesitant to take a broadcast student because he thought the stations would not like her American dialect.

However, she went, and despite pushback from the station e.tv, she got on air.

“She did some excellent reporting, and she did wind up getting on air. She wanted the experience,” Ghiglione said. “It’s a tribute to her determination and the quality of her work.”

Pace said reporting on corruption and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in a new democracy opened her eyes to the importance of free press and sparked her interest in international reporting, which led her to the AP.

During the trips to South Africa, Ghiglione said he taught students about apartheid and shared stories of journalists who were punished for speaking out against the government. He said his goal was to give students a broader perspective beyond the American experience.

“South African journalism at that time was somewhat comparable to American journalism (in) that it felt a responsibility to hold the government those in power accountable,” Ghiglione said. “It did have an independent voice. That’s why I was willing to have our students work at South African news organizations because they weren’t mouthpieces for the government. They were questioning what was going on and there was certainly a lot to question.”

Fight for press rights

As AP’s executive editor, Pace is working to restore the organization’s access to the White House.

In February 2025, the Trump administration blocked two AP reporters from an executive order signing in the Oval Office. The stated reason for this decision was that the AP declined to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, which is the name the Trump administration prefers.

Later, the office announced it would bar AP reporters and photographers from limited press pool spaces such as the Oval Office and Air Force One indefinitely.

After the Trump administration declared the name change, AP announced in January 2025 that it would continue to refer to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico while including an acknowledgment of the new name in stories to make geographical names recognizable for international readers.

A day after AP reporters and photographers were barred from press pool spaces, Pace wrote a letter to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and said that the decision to prevent the AP from accessing limited spaces at the White House was based on “viewpoint discrimination.”

Nine days later, the AP sued Wiles, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on the basis of First Amendment press rights and Fifth Amendment due process rights.

Pace said the AP team didn’t want to be confrontational, but it became clear that legal action was the only route to both standing on the principle of free press and being reinstated as part of the White House press pool.

“It’s not about politics,” Pace said. “It’s about this basic, fundamental American right of free speech.”

On April 8, District Court Judge Trevor McFadden ordered a preliminary injunction, temporarily ordering the White House to restore the AP’s press pool access.

Shortly after, the White House announced it would eliminate the permanent slot for wire services in the press pool. Instead of having separate reserved slots in the pool, they are now grouped with print reporters, meaning more than 30 organizations will rotate for two spots.

Pace said though it is possible to cover the White House without having access to those spaces, it is important to be in person with public officials.

“The reason that we feel like it’s so important for the AP to be there, to be in the room when news is happening, has nothing to do with having some sort of institutional right to be there,” Pace said. “We genuinely view ourselves as being representatives of the public when we are there.”

Evelio Contreras (Medill ’04), who was also a member of the first cohort to go to South Africa, said Pace was not only an energetic and dedicated journalist, but an organizer. He said she was proactive about coordinating social events and collaborations with the newspaper students.

He said he wasn’t surprised to see her take the lead in standing up for press rights.

“I expected Julie and the AP to take a strong stand and speak up for journalists who work in the U.S. and around the world,” Contreras said.

In July, the district court ruling was overturned by a federal appeals court, upholding Trump’s decision to bar the AP from events and certain spaces. Pace said she expected to be involved in a drawn out appeals process but remains optimistic.

Pace said the AP defends press freedom globally, so it is essential for them to uphold that same principle in the United States.

“(Americans) depend on us to be there, to ask questions, to have observations and insights about what’s happening there, and to do it through that non-partisan, fact based lens,” Pace said. “If we’re not there, it’s not just the AP that is not there. A representative of the public isn’t there.”

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