Like any good journalist, Katie Beth Ryan recently invested in a bit of shoe leather and found a job as a freelance reporter. She is writing for the Amherst New Era-Progress and Nelson County Times, sister papers that serve Sweet Briar’s neighboring communities.
The SBC senior’s byline has appeared on at least three stories since taking the job, including a front-page
feature in the Feb. 14 edition of the New Era-Progress. She also has contributed to additional news stories published locally, including in the Lynchburg News and Advance.
“She took the initiative to contact us and she has taken the initiative to go out and really get herself rooted in this community so she can report on it in the limited time she’s here before she graduates,” said Aaron Lee, managing editor of both newspapers.
He believes Ryan realizes her time at Sweet Briar is short and she’s enthusiastically making the most of it. “I don’t know how many college seniors spend the middle of a Wednesday afternoon in the economic development office talking about traffic info and sales profits,” he said, laughing.
The extra help is welcome in a newsroom that juggles more stories than it has reporters to cover. “The role that she’s filling is allowing us to tell some of the more in-depth stories that we’ve been wanting to tell for a while,” Lee said.
For Ryan, who is majoring in English and contemplating a career in journalism with “hopes of landing a writing and editing job in the magazine industry,” it’s a role she relishes.
“It’s been a great way of learning more about both Amherst and Nelson, an area that I’ve driven through for years, but have never truly looked into,” she said, noting that everyone’s she worked with has been kind, welcoming and willing to help her.
Ryan should be to familiar readers of the Sweet Briar Voice and the College’s Web site. In addition to contributing as a writer and editor for the student newspaper, she has written for college relations since her sophomore year. Her stories and press releases have appeared online and in the local papers.
Ryan also interned last summer at St. Louis Magazine, in her hometown in Missouri.
With graduation approaching, writing for the newspapers is her “main gig” now, Ryan said, and according to her editor, it’s a good way to go.
“She wants to be a reporter and that’s the only way to do it, is to throw yourself into it one hundred percent,” Lee said.
— By
Jennifer McManamay,
SBC staff writer
