Savannah Athy-Sedbrook | STUDENT JOURNALIST
How did it all begin?
As a sophomore, my adviser sat down next to me during our after-print taco party to inform me of how I would become Editor-in-Chief my senior year.
While overwhelming at the time, it felt like lightyears away and I knew with the help of the talented and supportive people I was surrounded by, I would be ready to take over the Oriole staff one day. They would provide the foundation I needed to become a confident reporter with the skills to lead the people who would soon depend on me.
However, when the time came, one detail became a major aspect of organizing my staff— Augusta is tiny.
We have a school size of around 650 students, and because of this, the biggest staff I have ever been a part of was 16 people. This means tasks such as covering a football game can become difficult. We don't have the number of people or resources to post score updates every quarter, record a video interview with a player after the game and have someone taking pictures all at the same time.
As the Editor, I decided what the primary purpose of The Oriole staff needed to be; consequently, that narrowed down what our focus would be. While we may not be able to give play-by-plays, we consistently put out information students need to know. I chose four words to summarize the purpose of our newspaper: timely, accurate, present and unique. It was important to me that we were timely with the content being produced, accurate with the information published, were present at school functions and that we covered events in a unique way.
Typically, when someone thinks of reporters, they picture a movie version of the paparazzi overwhelming a celebrity figure with microphones pushed at their faces and cameras flashing everywhere, and assume that's what all of the press looks like, but we are so much more than that. At its core, journalism is not about hunting down groundbreaking stories in an attempt to make people want to read your work, or twisting facts in a way that supports your individual opinion. Journalism is about capturing the stories of people around you, and retelling them to inform, entertain and educate readers to provide them with a wider perspective than their own.
Newsworthy does not immediately mean writing the sob stories and woes of students. It can also mean telling readers about why students in high school suddenly all have an obsession with Squishmallows or Noodles the Pug. I am still a journalist even if I do not report on the typical definition of 'news' all the time. I tell the stories of my community, good or bad, regardless of whether that suits me as the reporter. It's not about me, it's about them.
Journalism has given me the opportunity to expand my own world knowledge and learn more about what happens in the community around me.
