By Katie Hanson ’25
For Maria Heeter ’22, economics isn’t just a major—it’s a discipline she “fell in love with.” Although she came to Scripps planning to pursue a degree in the humanities, after taking an introductory macroeconomics course in the spring of her sophomore year, she was drawn in by how economics encouraged her and her classmates to question the world around them—a trait that will serve her well after graduation. This spring, with her degree in economics under her belt, Heeter will join The Information, an online news outlet focused on technology and media.
Despite her academic focus on economics, Heeter isn’t new to journalism: She worked for The Student Life (TSL), The Claremont Colleges’ student-run newspaper, for three years. Heeter began as a news writer, covering breaking news stories on different campuses. Later, she filled the position of news editor, overseeing news writers and helping them develop their stories, and in her junior year, she served as the paper’s editor-in-chief, leading TSL’s online content during remote instruction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Her work on a story about student housing and social media in the age of virtual learning earned her an award from the California College Media Association.
Heeter says her time at TSL motivated her to pursue a career in journalism. “Witnessing the impact of TSL’s stories made me see the power of having a news organization that was closely following different things on campus, like student government and administrative decisions,” she says. “Watching my stories be talked about by my peers, and seeing administrators react to the stories that we were publishing—it inspired me to do it full- time.”
Aside from her years of experience with student reporting, Heeter also held a series of summer internships with noteworthy news outlets, including the Sacramento Bee and Bloomberg News. At the Bee, Heeter covered business and COVID-19 as a general assignment intern. At Bloomberg, she utilized her interest in economics, covering the rental market and student housing as a real estate reporting intern. There, Heeter was able to combine her interests in both economics and journalism.
At Bloomberg, Heeter helped break stories on private equity firms’ deals around private student housing complexes. “Those stories piqued my interest in doing business reporting and also just finance journalism generally,” Heeter says.
She credits the numerous resources at Scripps and The Claremont Colleges for preparing her for her internships, as well as her upcoming job, noting that her Scripps education has been crucial in her development as a journalist. She’s spending her final semester conducting research on rental prices and the predictive power of the rent-price ratio, meeting weekly with her thesis advisor, Assistant Professor of Economics Nicholas Kacher. Heeter says economics allows her to still explore her earlier humanities interest because of the discipline’s overlap with history, government, and public policy.
“Scripps’ interdisciplinary education has allowed me to take a lot of classes in different areas,” Heeter says. “That’s taught me to pick up subjects quickly and write about them with authority.”
After graduation, Heeter will move to New York City to begin her new role at The Information, where her economics background will once again serve her well: She will report on topics that fall under the cryptocurrency, venture capital, and finance umbrella. Heeter has been a “long-time fan” of the publication and the reporters who work there.
“I’m excited to be working with such excellent colleagues and for a publication that I’ve admired for so long,” Heeter says. “I think that my classes and my thesis have prepared me to go into such an exciting, fast-moving area.”