Spencer Brewer

By Colleen Neely 

Spencer Brewer, 23, is the kind of person who embraces new challenges and experiences. So, it’s not surprising that he’s looking forward to moving from the “sandbox” of student journalism to working for the Dallas Business Journal as a Dow Jones News Fund business reporting intern.  

As a student journalist, “you learn the tools, you learn to operate as a journalist, but…there’s still a safety net,” Brewer said. “And so, for me, this is just an opportunity to step outside that sandbox and use everything that I’ve learned to, you know, work in a real newspaper.” 

Brewer has previous experience working as a reporter for The Shorthorn, the student newspaper at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he is a fourth-year student. He has also had an internship working at a radio station in Knoxville, Tennessee. 

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Brewer was raised by his grandmother, who also lives in Arlington. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, he chose to remain in his student housing to avoid transmitting the virus to her.  

Because Brewer has two majors, journalism and advertising, he has one more year of study before he graduates.  

After graduation, he hopes to go into journalism and eventually become a foreign correspondent for The New York Times in the Middle East.  

When he was in middle school, Brewer read about British Intelligence Officer Thomas Edward Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia, who worked with the British in World War I to overthrow the Ottoman Empire. Since then, he’s been interested in Middle Eastern culture and history.  

“I was just fascinated by it,” he said. “I wanted to, and I still want to be able to go over there and tell stories.” 

At the moment, Brewer lives in his fraternity house, Pi Kappa Alpha in Arlington, Texas. He has held several executive positions in his fraternity, which took “an ungodly amount of time,” over the past several years, as it is the largest fraternity on his campus.  

Community service was encouraged by the fraternity, which is how Brewer came to be involved with Millwood Hospital, a mental health treatment facility in Arlington. According to Brewer, many of the patients don’t have visitors, so until the pandemic hit, he went to Millwood every Monday and visited with patients for an hour.  

“…Their only other interactions with human beings are other people on the ward or with, like, doctors and nurses, so it can get really lonely, and it’s not like they can leave,” he said.  

Between classes, his fraternity, community service and working as a reporter at The Shorthorn, Brewer normally has a lot going on.   

It’s not surprising that his editor at The Shorthorn, Rocio Hernandez, said, “he’s an amazing guy and really, he has an amazing work ethic too.”  

“He would take on, like, really difficult stories,” as well as a lot of project stories and would not give up until the story was finished, Hernandez said. 

Throughout his two years at The Shorthorn, Brewer has reported on engineering and crime beats. Now, he says, his editors give him room to cover whatever he wants.  

His experience as a student journalist, especially working remotely during the second half of this semester, he says, has left him well-prepared for this summer with the Dow Jones News Fund. 

Even though he’s disappointed about not working in person in a newsroom, Brewer is looking forward to covering minority-owned businesses and telling their stories. 

According to Laurie Fox, The Shorthorn Newsroom Advisor, Brewer is a very tenacious and curious person.  

“I think that’s the big thing that always stands out to me about Spencer; he’s very quirky and he picks up on stories that other people just don’t really see at first, and then he latches on to something and it’s really hard to get him off of it until he’s completed it,” Fox said. 

Ultimately, Fox said, “when the screw turns, he doesn’t give up.”