Sara Wilson: Where are you from? What high school did you go to? What was the type/name of publication?

Elizabeth Moseley: I'm from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and I went to Tuscaloosa Academy. It's a small private school, and our student monthly newspaper is called The TA Knight Writer.

 

SW: Describe the publication a little bit: how big was the staff? How did y'all fund yourselves? What was your role and involvement?

EM: Journalism was an elective class offered at TA, and those who signed up for it worked and wrote for the TA Knight Writer. I was asked by my English teacher, who was the journalism teacher and newspaper sponsor, to be the managing editor my junior year. There were probably around 15 people in the class, and we all wrote different kinds of feature stories, sports coverages, opinion columns, book and movie reviews and profiles. The editor-in-chief and I, along with the teacher, edited the stories and compiled them into monthly issues. The teacher primarily designed the publication, which at the time was distributed online via Issuu and in print around the school. I never knew too much about the specifics of the budget, but I knew an outside printing company printed the stapled magazine-like issues each month.

 

My senior year, I was the editor-in-chief of the TA Knight Writer, there was a new journalism sponsor and the printing budget had been cut. Since the school was so small and scheduling accommodations were often tricky, I was taking French and journalism during the same class period. My French teacher was less than lenient about about allowing me to fulfill my duties at the newspaper, so I was less involved than I wish I could have been. However, with the help of the new journalism teacher, we continued to publish monthly issues of school news. However, I was stubborn about wanting to continue the print edition as well as the digital one, so we printed black-and-white pages in the office and manually folded them together to be distributed in classrooms.

 

SW: Why did you decide to join the publication in high school? What are some of your most interesting memories from your time on it (censorship stories, scholastic conventions, student reception, etc?)

EM: Writing has always been one of my strengths, and journalism was the obvious elective choice. The TA Knight Writer was very small, and we never went to any conventions or were entered for any awards during my time. I did have a lot of fun putting the newspaper together with my friends. It was definitely not a very serious newspaper. I wrote some faculty profiles, event coverages and opinion pieces, but I also wrote an article about candy canes.

 

SW: What were the strengths of the publication? The weaknesses?

EM: Tuscaloosa Academy had only around 450 K-12 students when I was there, so the small school had to juggle its priorities. The newspaper fell by the wayside in favor of other programs, but the students were often so involved with other activities that there wasn't much room to prioritize student journalism. The TA Knight Writer staff was generally just students filling an elective credit, so it was not very serious. The middle-brow content was the norm, and students seemed to enjoy it. I would say one of the strengths of the paper was publishing what the students wanted to read. We had some harder-hitting pieces about in-school suspension, dress codes and arguments about which books should be in the curriculum, but students generally enjoyed the lighter and more humorous pieces.

 

SW: What is your current involvement in campus media?

EM: I am the chief copy editor of The Crimson White and I absolutely love it. I was working as a mentor in the UA Media Writing Center, and one of my fellow mentors could not hold the chief copy editor position anymore, so I pounced at the opportunity. As my senior year comes to an end, I can say one of my biggest regrets is not getting involved with The Crimson White sooner.

 

SW: Why did you decided to continue your involvement in scholastic journalism into college? How has it benefited you?

EM: I came into college as a business major, but after getting a D in Econ 101, I realized I needed to switch back to what I was good at. I was then a media and journalism major at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and I did not get involved with campus journalism until I transferred to The University of Alabama. It really wasn't until the summer of 2018 that I fell in love with being in a newsroom as an intern at The Tuscaloosa News, and I can say I think I have found my niche. I am so grateful for the opportunity to get real newsroom experience under my belt during college at The Crimson White. Scholastic journalism has not only allowed me to find what I want to do as a career, but it has helped me develop a strong foundation that will hopefully help me down that path.

 

SW: Why do you think scholastic journalism is important?

EM: Scholastic journalism is important because it gives students the opportunity to gain knowledge about a potential career field. Students have a lot of decisions in regard to what they study in college or what career path they pursue, and allowing students to have a glimpse into the field of journalism better informs these decisions. There are scholastic programs for many other fields of interest like medicine, business or politics, and journalism should be included in these programs.

 

SW: Another one of my underlying questions is about the lack of programs (it seems) in Alabama. Tuscaloosa, for example, really only has a high school newspaper at Northridge. 

EM: Being from Tuscaloosa, I knew that Northridge had a really good newspaper that I earnestly admired. I remember this story about sagging pants that had a great photo I think on the cover. I recently read a big story on Juuls that was really well-written, so I'm impressed with Northridge's program and wish I could have had something of that caliber at TA. I think TA has stepped it up since I left and I still get the digital edition emailed to me.