I joined the Picayune Item Newspaper as a sports and news reporter in June of 2019. The paper was a daily that published five days a week along with its sister paper, The Poplarville Democrat, which published once a week. I was responsible not only for providing two stories for each publication, but was also in charge of my own layouts. This meant that each day I was responsible for several page designs that would then be edited before being published. The majority of my work was in sports, so those were the pages I was most often responsible for.

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I took all of my own photos for the articles that I wrote, which meant I spent just as much time outside the office as I did in it. I would attend games several times a week to take photos before then writing the requisite recaps and gamers. I also used this freedom as an opportunity to shine light on some of the less traditional sports that may have not received coverage in the past. I covered everything from team roping to swim to the dominant sport in the county, football. 

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There were three high schools in our coverage area that I was responsible for covering, which meant at any given time there could be half a dozen or more teams in season I was covering. This led to me creating a wide variety of content while creating cordial relationships with coaches and players.

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However, outside of my main job as a sports reporter, I would also help cover news events when the other reporter on staff was busy. My experience in news coverage included school board meetings, BLM events, religious occasions, Mardi Gras parades and more. This gave me an in depth look into our community outside of the sports aspect and led to me appreciating the citizens and their perspectives even more as I became more engrained in the local scene.

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I was also responsible with helping produce several magazines that were put out each year. The magazines had varying themes and the stories were more feature-esque as opposed to a straight up news article. This allowed me the freedom to be more creative and eloquent in my writing as I created pieces that not only included an in depth story, but accompanying photos as well.

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Overall, my time at the Item was incredibly rewarding personally and professionally. Finding a way to keep up the same level of content during a pandemic where sports, my main source of stories, came to a standstill really pushed me to be creative and tell stories that hadn't been told before. My wide ranging responsibilities and the small staff meant I gained ample experience in a variety of fields and honed skills that I'd never had before. Communication and working as a team was essential given the size of the staff and I truly believe my experiences at the Item will help me tremendously moving forward.

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