How a Journal Sentinel intern snapped 'the photo of the day' during Wisconsin's coronavirus pandemic election

Patricia McKnight
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Like many other voters, on Tuesday morning I headed to my designated polling place to exercise my right to vote. I didn't realize, of course, that as I walked to the back of that long line at Washington High School in Milwaukee I would come across what Georgetown professor Donald Moynihan would later call “an era-defining image.” 

But as I walked to take my place, I noticed a woman with a scarf around her face — almost everyone in line had some sort of mask on because of the threat from coronavirus. She held a hand-lettered sign.

"This is ridiculous," it read.

I pulled out my iPhone 11 Pro Max and snapped a few photos, switching to portrait mode to make sure I got one that emphasized her, the sign and the massive line winding into the distance.  

I filed a blog post for our ongoing report on the election, along with the photo, and not long after, through the miracle of social media, those three words and that cardboard sign rocketed around the world.

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Related:Complete coverage of Wisconsin's spring election

That single photo made its way to every major news outlet, from CNN to ABC World News. Rachel Maddow of MSNBC gave me a shout-out on her show and said that picture was “the photo of the day in American news.” If I wasn't already star-struck enough, she called me an “intrepid intern.” The idea of my photo going viral and having thousands of people, many who are journalists I look up to, congratulate me has me in awe.

But consider the woman in the photo for a moment.

"I'm disgusted. I requested an absentee ballot almost three weeks ago and never got it. I have a father dying from lung disease and I have to risk my life and his just to exercise my right to vote," said Milwaukee resident Jennifer Taff (holding sign).  She had been standing in line at Washington High School for almost two hours.

Jennifer Taff of Milwaukee is in so many ways the perfect embodiment of what happened in Wisconsin on Tuesday.

“I’m disgusted," she told me. "I requested an absentee ballot almost three weeks ago and never got it. I have a father dying from lung disease and I have to risk my life and his just to exercise my right to vote."

By the time, I interviewed her, she had already been standing in line for almost two hours. 

This experience has highlighted three key points for me:

First, interns are not just interns. We are full members of the staff at the Journal Sentinel and are expected to carry our load.

Second, it pays to be tenacious. This wasn’t an assignment; I simply went to vote — that's my duty as a citizen — and noticed something interesting.

Finally, this experience reinforced that my duty as a journalist is to tell stories that help people understand their world just a little bit better.

Patricia McKnight is a senior majoring in journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her internship in the Journal Sentinel's Ideas Lab is funded by the Solutions Journalism Network, a New York-based organization that supports for solutions-oriented reporting worldwide. Email: PMcKnight@gannett.com. Twitter: @Pmcknightnews