Today marks the end of my first week in Phoenix, Arizona, working as a News21 Fellow. 

And even as I typed that, I could hardly believe it.

I am a News21 Fellow at the Arizona State University Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. This summer, I will spend ten weeks working with journalists from across the country covering policing reform in America. I have been dreaming of this program since I was in high school and now that I am finally here, it still feels far too incredible to be real. 

I arrived in Arizona last week and spent the next five days traveling with my family. We camped in the Grand Canyon, a personal bucket list item of mine, and saw Sedona, Arizona, before heading back to Phoenix, where the fellowship is based. I moved into my dorm, said goodbye to my family and barely slept the night before my first day as a fellow.

I struggle to pick just one part of this experience so far that is my favorite. All of it is incredible so far, from exploring a new place to working on a project that will hopefully help people across the nation. But at the end of the day, my favorite part has to be the people. 

Imagine going to summer camp as a kid. You can barely sleep the night before, you’re so excited. With your bags all packed, your parents cart you off to a camp somewhere in the woods. Once you get there, you hug them tightly goodbye and promise you’ll write over the next two months. Then, your stomach full of butterflies, you walk into your cabin and try to make new friends. You discover that nearly all of the kids at camp are like you: nervous, excited and happy to be there. 

That’s what it feels like being in News21. Being surrounded by passionate student journalists is a gift I have been lucky enough to have both in Phoenix and at Elon News Network, but let me tell you: the fantastic feeling that comes with being part of a community of hardworking individuals? It never gets old.

As I met new people, I am also learning a ton of new things: from the fact that you can never drink enough water in Phoenix to learning all about where my co-workers and newfound friends are from.

But most of all, I am learning a lot about myself. In just one short week here, I have proved to myself that I have a capacity to grow, change and become that is far larger than I ever thought. I think seventeen-year-old me would be very proud of how far I have come.

As the end of my first week comes to a close, I am reveling in the joy it has brought me and taking solace in the new week ahead. 

Check back to my blog for Saturday updates throughout the summer. 

We focused on column writing the last few class periods of this semester. While I have never written a column, the process felt cathartic. It was a structured version of the writing I often do for myself, which is often narrative, poetry and creative work in one of over 40 filled notebooks. Our assignment was to write a column about the end of the semester, and I was drawn to writing about my experiences doing breaking news reporting this year.

I remember it clearly. I was standing in the middle of the road, taking pictures of a mass of people kneeling for nine minutes in honor of George Floyd, a Black man who was murdered by a police officer just six months prior. I vaguely heard one shout to disperse. I barely saw the police officer who yelled. But I felt the pepper spray hit my throat.

I was one of many on October 31, 2020 in downtown Graham. Hundreds of people came to a march to the polls event that day, starting in a church parking lot and ending up at the Confederate monument, in front of the Alamance County courthouse. A handful of reporters stood by, cameras ready, to document someone’s first time voting, or maybe catch a glimpse of a proud citizen exercising their right to vote in the tumultuous election. 

But that day, like many others in 2020, journalists instead were witness to violence and brutality. In journalism classes, professors often remind you that journalism is the first draft of history, and on October 31, we really were. From documenting protests and the ongoing impacts of the pandemic to writing about school shootings and a 24/7 government, journalists have been stretched to their limits trying to keep up in a fast paced and often dangerous world.

While only 50 journalists were killed worldwide in the year 2020 according to Reporters Without Borders, a decrease from an all time high of 147 in 2012, the number of journalists killed has been steady since 2019, and the amount of trust people have in media has only increased by 2% since 2019, according to Edelman. 

The impact of the traumatic events journalists cover are akin to the experience first responders have, and that is not a coincidence. Journalists often arrive with police, firefighters and medical workers when they show up on the scene. Tammy McCoy, a former journalist who now works as a clinical psychologist providing counseling to first responders, sees the toll covering traumatic event after traumatic event takes on journalists, particularly journalists of color.

“Hearing about or bearing witness to other people’s trauma can be traumatic or stressful, and creates problems for the journalist,” McCoy said. “If you’re not taking good care of yourself, and all you’re doing is working, you’re really not doing a good job of tending to your own wellbeing. You’re making yourself vulnerable to all the after effects, and that’s not healthy.”

Post traumatic stress disorder for some is a side effect of something they had no control over, a situation they did not choose to be in or had no decision regarding. But for journalists in the field, the decision is entirely our own. We choose each and every day to continue to put ourselves in harm’s way. Sitting with this decision is difficult, knowing that the nights I toss and turn and wake up drenched in sweat from a nightmare are from choices I purposely made.

Since October, I have covered countless protests and demonstrations in Graham. I always say to myself, “this will be the last time. I won’t go back after this.” But each time something happens, I am there, with a camera, a pencil and a sick feeling in my gut. I can’t even listen to the recording from that day any more. I hear myself say “oh my God” in a horrified, shocked voice and the feelings I had then flood my body. I remember thinking that I didn’t call my parents that day. I texted my best friend “pepper sprayed,” before calling and asking him to come down to the courthouse, just in case.

But I keep coming back. All of us do. Call it crazy or a moral obligation, but we keep coming back to protests and covering the death toll of the pandemic. We keep telling stories because, in all honesty, there is nothing else we can do. But the events of the last year have made it clear: in order to continue reporting on traumatic, dangerous events and providing a valuable service to our communities, we need to realize the challenge in such a responsibility. 

To see my thoughts on this piece, check out my reflection post here: Writing about vaccines proves a service to community and to self – Kyra O’Connor (kyraoconnor.com)

One year after the COVID-19 pandemic started, vaccine efforts are bringing hope to university and town community members alike in Elon, North Carolina. But the lack of data on vaccination and case trends may become an obstacle in lifting restrictions and mandates.

Just three months after Alderwoman Emily Sharpe contracted COVID-19, she went with her mother to get her first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Sharpe was vaccinated in Alamance County, something she and those around her have been since the vaccinations became available.

“The day after my birthday, so last week, my mom and I went and got it together,” Sharpe said. 

For Sharpe, getting the vaccine was about more than protecting herself or others. As an elected official and someone who is not high risk, a vaccination allowed her to make those around her more comfortable

“It’s important that if someone had hesitancy in our town or in our personal lives, that they felt more comfortable when they were able to see more healthy people and younger people who are at less risk getting it and not having any issues,” Sharpe said. 

Sharpe is one of over 1,000,000 people partially vaccinated in the state of North Carolina, as of March 12. Alamance County is currently vaccinating people in groups one through three, which includes healthcare workers, long-term care staff and residents, adults 65 and older, and essential workers, like Elon University student workers.

The County vaccination data, available through the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, shows that at least 30,000 people have been partially vaccinated in Alamance as of March 14. But there is no data specifically for the town of Elon, nor for the university population or Twin Lakes, two large communities within the town with many eligible community members. 

Elon Town Manager Rich Roedner said that because of the lack of data available at the town level, his recommendations to the mayor and for town restrictions and actions will be based on state and county vaccination rates.

“It does make it harder because we don’t have the ability to say that x percentage of Elon residents are now vaccinated or been sick,” Roedner said.  

Students, faculty and staff at Elon University do not have to adhere to town restrictions, members of the town community have been under the same emergency order since the beginning of the pandemic. The town of Elon did not increase mass gathering limits in accordance with Gov. Roy Cooper’s executive order on Feb. 24. that eased restrictions on gathering limits both indoors and outdoors and lifted the statewide 10 p.m. curfew. The town of Elon has kept both restrictions in place. 

Alderman Monti Allison asked board members at their regular meeting March 9 to discuss when the town would consider altering its mass gathering limits. He said residents have expressed concerns to him. 

“We don’t know what the future holds,” Allison said. “We know that each day that we restrict our residents, it’s not fair to them, particularly when the entire state is taking a different approach.”  Good one.

Roedner said his recommendation to the mayor to keep the mass gathering limits the same stems from the makeup of the Elon community, which is not like “other North Carolina towns.” Because faculty, staff and students travel differently than regular residents and may be vaccinated outside of North Carolina, the county data or local data could be only partially correct. 

 “They’re here, they’re interacting everybody else, but they don’t live here, so I have no way of knowing if they’re vaccinated,” Roedner said.

One of my favorite classes of the semester was hearing from Pulitzer Center reporters Jenna Kunze and Alice Qannik Glenn. All I want to do with my life is write stories like they do, stories that really touch people’s lives and educate people on things they might not have known about otherwise. Listening to the complexities and nuance in their reporting was incredible. For my assignment after they visited class, I chose to focus on the challenge Qannik Glenn faced writing about her home, as well as the most interesting new information I learned about Alaska.

Jenna Kunze and Alice Qannik Glenn explained their reporting process and the challenges they faced writing about underrepresented communities to a journalism class on Friday and led a discussion on media coverage of the North Slope of Alaska.

The pair worked together to produce “Alaska Natives on the Frontlines,” a reporting series funded by the non-profit Pulitzer Center that promotes underrepresented indigenous voices and seeks to address climate change from a native lens.

Kunze and Qannick Glenn reported as two of 16 journalists granted funding as part of the center’s Connected Coastlines initiative. The nationwide project documents the impacts of weather patterns on coastlines, including in Hawaii and Alaska, from where Kunze and Qannick Glenn reported.

For Kunze, preparing to write about Alaska was much like any other assignment. The Pulitzer Center grantee traveled abroad after graduating Marist College in 2016. Upon returning to the states, Kunze settled in Alaska as a way to continue to challenge herself as a reporter and found a job at a local paper.

Kunze said she prepared by reading beforehand, connecting with community members while she was in Alaska and relying on her reporting partner, Qannik Glenn, who she said she could not have done any of her reporting without.

 “The idea that she was willing to trust me and let me into her home and introduce me to these different people so then they in turn trusted me… What she’s saying about a lack of trust in journalism, I felt palpably.”

But for Qannik Glenn, reporting on Alaska meant reporting on the place she grew up. Qannik Glenn is Iñupiaq born and was raised in Utqiaġvik, Alaska. After going to Florida to pursue her bachelor’s degree in aerospace studies from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Qannik Glenn moved back to Anchorage and started a podcast called “Coffee and Quak,” which is how she connected with Kunze.

“Coffee and Quak,” celebrates and dives into the lives of Native people in Alaska. The stories she brings to listeners on her podcast are the same narratives she explored with Kunze, and are the issues from her own community.

“I moved back to Alaska, here to Anchorage and was just so inspired by people and place and connection and culture … but then also a little bit disappointed about the representation of Alaska native media,” Qannik Glenn said. “To come home to my home state and still see a lack of representation in media kind of bugged me, so I decided to start my own podcast.”

As a Native woman, Qannik Glenn said she wanted to ensure that the storytelling she and Kunze worked on was representative of her community, and those around her.

“We need to be really careful with this because there’s a history of exploitation of our Native communities,” Qannik Glenn said. “It was a little nerve racking for me because I want to represent myself in my community as best as I can, and in order to do that I felt like I had to do it a certain way.”

One example Qannik Glenn gave was the media coverage of a young man who was whaling and caught a whale that fed his entire community. While whaling is a legal practice in Alaska, media coverage of the event in the lower 48 states focused on the “barbaric” and “disgusting” nature of the story, Qannik Glenn explained to students.

While covering the impacts of climate change on Alaska, Kunze said she had to address her own misconceptions about Alaskan people. Similar to the lower 48 states viewing whaling differently than Native people in Alaska, Kunze said she previously thought Alaskan people would advocate against drilling for oil, or other acts that could contribute to global warming. But for many, including Qannik Glenn, oil extraction afforded people opportunities and funds many Alaskan industries.

“I interviewed the mayor … and he’s like we’re not into renewable energy, but until someone else comes up with an idea for renewable energy and introduces it to our community and it works, who are you in the lower 48, who drives cars and use cell phones with these resources that we extract from our land, to say that we shouldn’t extract them?”

Through class assignments I was able to dig into many angles of the vaccine rollout process

If you had asked me a year ago what I would be writing about during my sophomore year of college, I would not have said vaccines. No one saw this past year coming, and it has changed our world in many ways, but I think one of the ways that fascinates me the most is how the COVID-19 pandemic changed storytelling.

For numerous Elon News Network and class assignments, I have been tasked with writing about the vaccine rollout process. From the emergency authorization made by the Food and Drug Association of some version of the vaccine to the arrival of the first doses North Carolina received to now, how students, faculty and staff are getting the vaccine, there is no shortage of angles and stories to cover when it comes to the potential end to the pandemic.

My favorite angle of the vaccine story I have written about is looking at the challenges facing small communities, such as the Town of Elon, who have no way of tracking vaccine rollout in their area. In the state of North Carolina, one can track the vaccine rollout through the health department. In Alamance County, there is also a relative count to how many people have received the vaccine. While both systems are tentative and bound to have mistakes or miscounts, the data is invaluable even when incomplete to illustrate the percentage of the population who have received the vaccine, who are eligible to receive the vaccine, and who is still waiting. 

But for small towns without their own sets of data, there is no way to know how vaccine rollout is going. While this may not seem like a problem, for communities like Elon, without knowing the vaccinated population, it is hard for town officials to make important decisions such as how and when to increase the number of residents allowed indoors, or how to reevaluate mask mandates within different settings. 

I love writing about the Town of Elon for many reasons, but with this story, I loved writing about the unique situation our town faces because it is not an obvious challenge. If you don’t spend an abundant amount of time in the surrounding town area, which many Elon University community members do not, the challenges presented by a lack of data may never even occur to you. I know before I spoke with town officials, that was not a challenge I knew existed. It was only by reporting and really listening did I find out about this issue.

To keep up with coverage of the vaccine rollout, the pandemic, and more, click here to see my latest stories.