Emory University student Madison Bober was at her family’s home in Florida listening to a professor in an online class when she got confirmation that the board of trustees had elected the university’s next president.
It was big, breaking news, and Bober, 20, who had been named editor-in-chief of The Emory Wheel just a month earlier, wanted to post an update to the student newspaper's website immediately. The problem? Many of her staff were still asleep, spread across the world from California to India in different time zones.
College campuses and high school buildings around Georgia closed last month in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus. In-person class morphed to online instruction. Dorms emptied. Sports teams stopped playing, and many schools canceled graduation ceremonies.
But student journalists took their laptops from newsrooms to bedrooms, where they’ve kept up with a deluge of news that impacts their classmates.
Newspapers at Emory, the University of Georgia, Georgia State University and Grady High School stopped printing and distributing thousands of paper copies and beefed up online news sites. Their young reporters have continued to cover everything from student government elections to life under quarantine.
"If there was ever a time to be a journalist it's now," said Bober, who scrambled to get the latest news up about Emory's new president.
Journalists at the Southerner, the award-winning paper at Atlanta’s Grady High School, typically publish a 16-page monthly edition. They print about 2,000 copies, the bulk of which are distributed at school. Hundreds of others are sent to subscribers, mostly parents, school board members and city officials.
The paper’s 18-year-old co-editor-in-chief, Charlotte Spears, spent part of her last day at Grady interviewing the district’s superintendent about the shutdown. She asked Meria Carstarphen to be frank: Could this be the last day of school? It was a pressing question not just for her readers but also for Spears, a senior who plans to pursue journalism at Davidson College.
Her story about the closures published online the next day. In it, the superintendent hinted at the uncertainty ahead. Within a few weeks, the governor had ordered school buildings to stay shuttered for the remainder of the school year.
The Southerner's staff of about 50 journalists have continued to report and write. They pitch stories in virtual meetings and have attended a Zoom video-conference press call with APS officials. They've interviewed teachers about the shift to online learning and eulogized the track season's abrupt end.
“We are kind of like the last man standing as far as high school organizations,” Spears said.
Still, she mourns the loss of the last print editions — “ghost” papers that never published, newsprint she poured her heart and soul into, pages that captured her teenage years.
“I won’t get to have my last newspaper. I could talk for days and complain about this newspaper, and I could also talk for days about how much it’s changed my life,” she said. “When I graduate high school, the thing that I’ll look back at most fondly at Grady High is going to be the Southerner. This is what made my high school experience what it was.”
The Red & Black’s newspaper boxes are scattered through the University of Georgia and downtown Athens. But the paper has suspended its typical press run of 8,000 to 10,000 copies, except for a special issue that editors plan to produce for posterity.
The online site now features a special tab highlighting the COVID-19 coverage. It’s chock full of stories about the move to online orientation, updates on cases and hospital operations in Athens-Clarke County and feature pieces about how to cope in isolation. Page views are up.
Reporters have written about a surge in commercial burglaries as thieves target now-vacant businesses and the struggle of rural students searching for internet access to finish their classes.
Sports reporters switched beats to cover coronavirus: “ Everyone is a COVID reporter,” said Hunter Riggall, a 22-year-old senior from Atlanta and the paper’s editor-in-chief.
The paper canceled its traditional graduation issue, because, well, graduation is canceled. End-of-year staff parties that traditionally had started at the Taco Stand and then progressed to the divey Boar’s Head Lounge, where reporters and editors gathered near an old Red & Black sign that hangs on the wall, aren’t happening.
Without print editions, advertising is hurting, as are the local businesses that buy ads. Student reporters are wondering if internships they’d lined up will fall through.
The Signal, the Georgia State University student newspaper, is producing a mini e-paper that's laid out like the print publication. The website has a steady flood of news stories.
A late March issue dedicated to mental health was already in the works when the campus shut down, but it became even more relevant amid coronavirus fears and isolation woes.
Ada Wood, the paper's 21-year-old editor-in-chief, has kept up with her roughly 100-member staff remotely.
“People are pretty willing to keep working, and I feel really lucky,” she said.
They’re covering the unique issues facing their campus, like the disappointment felt by many seniors who are the first in their families to graduate from college.
The Signal's news editor, Brooklyn Valera, has continued to investigate problems with this year's student government elections. The 20-year-old junior is working from her home in Snellville, connecting with sources via Instagram as she balances a 15-credit-hour course load.
“People kind of assumed that once school got shut down we’d have nothing to report on, but it’s been kind of the opposite,” she said.
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