It's National Newspaper Week: Here are our stories
Oct. 6-12, 2024 is National Newspaper Week. “Since 1940, Newspaper Association Managershas sponsored and supported National Newspaper Week, a week-long promotion of the newspaper industry in the United States and Canada,” according tonationalnewspaperweek.com. This year’s theme is “telling our stories,” so this week’s front page of the Lexington County Chronicle has columns written by its three full-time journalists, editor Bryn Eddy, sports editor Jacob Phillips and reporter Sophia Sousa, detailing their journeys to journalism and their passion for reporting fact.
Why I report with fact, fairness
By Bryn Eddy
I was a freshman in high school when I decided I hated journalists.
What a way to start off a column celebrating National Newspaper Week, right?
Bear with me.
One of my teachers at the time told us to pick a current event from the news and write about it. Long story short, my teacher ended up reading a news article with the class that hit too close to home for me. It was riddled with adjectives and lacked objective reporting but, of course, had a headline that made you want to read more.
And with that, my 14-year-old mind conjured a blanket statement: all news stories are written for flair over fact.
Yet, a decade later, I’m sitting here in the Lexington County Chronicle’s office as its editor with a wealth of impactful yet fair reporting behind me and before me, knowing well the value behind my job, that there is a truthful and fair way to go about informing the community.
You’ve heard the trite expression, “I want to be the [X] I never had.” Well, I’m in this job to be the community reporter I wish the community I grew up in had. One who’s fearless but fair. An excellent writer but never at the cost of accuracy.
That trite expression and that scary moment from my first year of high school was in my mind as I picked my college major, only I decided I wanted to study to become the teacher I never had.
An English education major still with a distaste for journalists, I reluctantly joined the student newspaper just to make new friends. I was hoping to be a copy editor so all I had to do was edit for grammar, but I was assigned to be the news editor.
I soon fell in love with storytelling. With interviewing people. With making connections. With reporting fact. I then took as many journalism classes as I could while keeping my English major and was even editor-in-chief of the student newspaper my senior year. Not long before graduating, I decided I was better suited to be the community reporter I wish I had over becoming the teacher I wish I had, so I quickly garnered some job offers from South Carolina news organizations.
Since graduating, I’ve written stories under every beat there is, except sports; you don’t want me covering sports. I’ve written stories about murder, menstruation, pigeons, poets, ghost hunters, government, veterans, violence, clarinets, coast guards and alligators. Lots of alligators.
A decade after my sudden distaste for journalists was formed, I sit here and write this column for National Newspaper Week as the editor of my local paper, and I couldn’t be more convinced I have the coolest job in the world.
At the intersection of creativity and public service, I write. I write stories I hope matter to my readers, that put my community in the know, promote the “knowledge is power” mantra and, most of all, exude fact and fairness.
I've always been a reporter
By Jacob Phillips
As a kid, I’d sit in my bedroom with a pen and some folded sheets of paper, creating my very own newspaper. I would write about whatever my young mind thought was noteworthy. From neighborhood raccoon sightings to the Charlotte Bobcats’ latest head coach hire, it all seemed so important, and I wanted to share that information.
I’ve always been around the news industry. My parents worked at two local Charlotte stations, and I remember being fascinated with all the ins and outs that went into producing the shows. My parents eventually left the industry because of economic reasons, but my interest never swayed.
Fast-forward to high school, I was thinking about my future, unsure of what I was going to pursue in life. I found a class taught by two reporters from The Charlotte Observer, and because of that, I was no longer unsure about what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a reporter.
I wrote my first real story while taking that class. As an avid sports fan, I wanted to do a profile on a coach at my school. I decided to reach out to our basketball coach and see if he would let me write about him. I was nervous and almost got cold feet. It was my first time interviewing someone, and I felt so overwhelmed. But once we sat down and started talking, I felt my nerves melt away as the conversation flowed nicely. I learned about his past, his ambitions and his family. I made a connection with someone I never met before. Since then, I’ve made a lot of meaningful connections.
I quickly joined my high school paper after that and wrote articles about a wide range of topics. I wrote about sports, school news, national news, opinion pieces and editorial columns. I even won two state-wide awards for my work. Then in college, I joined The Daily Gamecock and put my sole focus on sports. My experience at my college paper was unlike anything I’d ever done. I covered some of the biggest games for the school, including the final four games in Dallas featuring the WNBA’s brightest upcoming stars in Aliyah Boston, Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. I covered the South Carolina versus Tennessee football game, and my postgame press question went viral, being seen by millions of people. It felt surreal.
Opportunities like that are why I joined the news business. The chance to cover the biggest moments and share them with the people. That is why I came to the Chronicle. In my opinion, there isn’t a better county in all of South Carolina for covering high school sports. We have some of the biggest, most successful teams in both boys and girls athletics. I’ve shared many stories in my first year at the paper, and I’m looking forward to sharing even more in the future.
My love of journalism started with my love of writing
By Sophia Sousa
Envision a young girl forcing her family members to let her interview them and ask questions about their lives in her room. Fast forward to years later and imagine a 22-year-old still interviewing individuals, but for the Lexington County Chronicle. Well, that’s me! Becoming a journalist has always been a dream of mine. Growing up, my favorite subject was English, and unlike most people, I got excited knowing I had to write a 10-page essay. I thrived writing anything from school projects to journaling to handmade birthday cards. I could write for hours.
The idea of interviewing people and reporting on topics such as breaking stories, events, storms and much more fascinated me. On my television, I saw journalists discovering truths, informing the public on events and making changes in people’s lives. It didn’t take long for me to grasp that becoming a journalist was my dream job.
I always loved interviewing my friends and family. I made my family members sit down with me to ask them questions about their lives and even made my aunt pretend to record YouTube videos of me doing anything I found fascinating. Without recognizing it, my passion for journalism was always in my life.
Working as a news writer for my college newspaper was a turning point for me. It evidently made me realize I could see myself doing this for years to come. Sitting in the library, researching, uncovering the truths and informing my community of students about what was going on around us became my favorite thing to do.
Receiving the call that I got the job as a reporter here at the Lexington County Chronicle made my dream come true. I screamed, jumped around my room and called my parents right away letting them know the news. My hard work paid off.
In this day and age, misinformation spreads like wildfire. Any individual can post a story with false information and have thousands of people believing it. From reposting to sharing with friends and family, false information is spread around the world.
As a journalist, it’s my responsibility to report factual information, inform my community on events going on, allowing them to come to their own opinion.
If I could change one life for the better, just one, with my writing, that’s success to me.
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