U of I journalist looks back at his tale

After spending time speaking with Joshua Reisenfeld, it’s clear why the journalism major spent the last two years of his time at U of I working at the Argonaut student newspaper.

Reisenfeld has stories to tell. Stories like:

• How watching endless hours of Japanese anime at home during the COVID-19 years led him to study the language in high school.
• How he became interested in writing by talking about books with a nurse who was helping him with weekly allergy treatments because he was so allergic to bees, he had to be hospitalized after a sting.
• How glad he is to be graduating debt-free, which gives him the option of getting rid of all his possessions and wandering around the world untethered.

Reisenfeld is seemingly interested in just about everything, so it makes sense that his college story is about how he was able to explore all those interests at U of I.

“I think it’s important to be interdisciplinary and take classes in whatever interests you,” he said. “You’re introduced to a lot of concepts in high school, but college is where you get the opportunity to really figure out what you like to do.” 

Making the write choice

When he first came to Moscow, Reisenfeld, who graduated from Renaissance High School in Meridian, thought he wanted to be a mechanical engineer. Being the son of a physicist and a civil engineer, he assumed he would follow a STEM-related path.

He felt his interests shifting while working on a physics project during the first semester of his freshman year.

“It was one of those awakening moments,” he said. “I liked the writing piece, and I got really annoyed with the rest of my group, because they didn’t really care about writing a good report.”

He began taking writing classes during the second semester of his freshman year and changed his major to journalism.

After spending his sophomore year in an Education Abroad program at Hiroshima University (HU), which ultimately allowed him to complete a minor in Asian studies, he started writing for the Arognaut during his junior year.  

“I had to really commit and get back into journalism after being in Japan,” he said. “I didn’t feel I had a strong enough background before I went to Japan, so I think writing for the Argonaut helped me really get into the mindset of what my path looked like.”

After concentrating on writing for one year, Reisenfeld worked as the Argonaut’s news editor for 2025-26. He said that his experiences while living abroad, like having conversations with people who have different backgrounds than him, helped him not to focus on preconceived notions when either writing or editing a story.

“In his role as a journalist, it’s never about him, it’s about who he’s writing about,” said Moritz Cleve, assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Media. “It’s a skill to be able to put yourself into someone else’s shoes and be willing to consider views other than your own. A good journalist should always be willing to look at stories from different angles.”

Toughing it out

Despite obtaining what he thought was a solid head start on learning Japanese in high school, Reisenfeld figured out rather quickly that college-level classes were different.

“I signed up for Japanese 101 and figured it would be easy,” he said. “Three weeks in, everything I had learned in two years of self-study had been covered.”

Undeterred, Reisenfeld committed to studying abroad in Japan after hearing an in-class presentation from HU. And it took a fair amount of commitment, given some of the issues he ran into living in a foreign country.

“I got sick during the first semester and learned there were a lot of barriers with language and health insurance as far as getting medical care there,” he said. “But it was important for me to stay there for that second semester and push through the growing pains.”

One of things that helped him was keeping in touch with Azusa Tojo, Japanese instructor at the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS).

“When he got there, he shared with me that he wanted to start having conversations with people but was hesitant,” Tojo said. “I think after three months, everything changed. He realized he could talk with people and gained a lot of confidence.”  

He brought that confidence back to Idaho where he has continued using the Japanese language. He gave a campus tour to the HU leadership group that visited U of I in February 2025 as part of the U of I - HU Mega Exchange program through CLASS.

He’ll also speak to the delegation of U of I students going to HU later this summer to give advice on what to expect while living in Japan.

“I hope I can prepare them for some of the things they’ll experience,” he said. “Eating in restaurants, shopping, buying groceries, explaining the culture … things like that. I haven’t been there in a couple of years but hopefully I can give them a little insight.”