Q&A with Ellie Heffernan of Mountain State Spotlight

Ellie Heffernan is a Report for America corps member and community watchdog reporter at Mountain State Spotlight, based in Charleston, West Virginia. She is a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill and has written for several North Carolina publications, including INDY Week. In this interview, conducted by email, Heffernan discusses her role at Mountain State Spotlight, including…

Discovering and remembering the Green Book

The Green Book was started in 1936 by postal worker and travel writer Victor Hugo Green. He died in 1960, and the Green Book ceased publication in 1966. "Green Book" was a trending topic this week on Twitter because of its appearance on "Jeopardy!" In the Final Jeopardy round, the category was travel. Here was…

Learning the jazz beat

This week, I am stepping out of the journalism school at UNC-Chapel Hill and spending my afternoons at the music department. I am one of several instructors in the UNC Summer Jazz Workshop. It’s the seventh year that I’m participating in the program. So what does journalism have to do with jazz? I’ll work with students who want to learn…

Q&A with Meg Kinnard, politics reporter for The Associated Press

Meg Kinnard is an Associated Press politics reporter based in Columbia, South Carolina. A native of Tennessee, she is a graduate of Georgetown University and UNC-Chapel Hill, where she earned a master's degree in digital communication. In this interview, conducted by email, Kinnard talks about her work at the AP, discusses her diagnoses and treatment…

Q&A with Weird Homes NC

Weird Homes NC is an anonymously run Twitter account. It shares links to listings for odd properties across North Carolina. In this interview, conducted by email, Weird Homes NC discusses what inspired the Twitter account and what qualifies as a "weird home." Q. Why did you start the Weird Homes NC account on Twitter? What…

What we can learn about word choice from two tweets

For many of us, Twitter is a place that is more forgiving when it comes to errors in spelling, grammar and usage. We all make mistakes now and then, and we don't have editors to back us up. Twitter famously lacks an "edit" function, so once a tweet is posted, you can't change it. News…

On Twitter, two contrasting views on COVID-19

Memorial Day weekend 2020 is consumed with news about the COVID-19 crisis. For many of us, doomscrolling on social media has become part of our daily lives. Two trending topics on Twitter represent a study in contrasts about the way individuals and news organizations share information about the pandemic. First came this tweet from Scott…

Q&A with Sara Pequeño of INDY Week

Sara Pequeño is digital content manager at INDY Week, an alternative weekly newspaper and website that covers the Triangle region of North Carolina. A 2019 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, Pequeño was a student journalist at The Daily Tar Heel and an intern at Our State magazine. In this interview, conducted by email, Pequeño discusses her…

Student guest post: Who is the arbiter of truth on social media?

Students in MEJO 557, Advanced Editing, are writing guest posts for this site this semester. This is the seventh of those posts. Maya Jarrell is a junior in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media with a double major in journalism and film studies. She has previously written for The Daily Tar Heel as…

Q&A with Stu Horvath of Vintage RPG

Stu Horvath is a writer and editor whose podcast and Instagram account Vintage RPG documents and analyzes the history of role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons. He is also editor-in-chief of Unwinnable, and he previously worked as a photo editor at The New York Daily News. Q. What is Vintage RPG? What inspired you…