Journalists are more apt to experience a beauty pageant from the audience, covering the proceedings, than up on stage. But Eryn Lowe will do her part to glam up our profession when she struts her stuff, vying for that coveted tiara and the title of Miss Pocatello. If she captures it this April, she will be one step closer in her quest to being named Miss Idaho, and then -- drum roll, please -- Miss America.

Lowe, 20, is a junior at Idaho State University whose love of newspapers transcends her role as news editor on her school paper, The Bengal. Lowe says her Miss America aspirations are steered by her enthusiasm for journalism. And in the part of the beauty contest where judges grill contestants on their high-minded, socially conscious ideals, Eryn will stump for media literacy in local high schools.

"I'm so passionate about [newspapers]," she says. "That's kind of why I'm doing this: because I have something that I want people to know."

But Lowe is not just all talk. She proposes a campaign to get more students interacting and developing relationships with newspapers. "The Idaho State Journal puts the newspapers in schools and I would love to see that go statewide," Lowe says. …