While senior Casey Qi’s time at the KO News has been short, it’s certainly been sweet! Casey has been on the KO News staff for one year, and she is an Associate for the News department. She was drawn to journalism because of her interest in analytical writing, and she thought that the KO News would be a great way to engage with the community here. “I really like interviewing and talking with people, seeing how they think,” Casey said. Her favorite memory of her time on the KO News was seeing her article in the paper for the first time. “That was really nice,” she said.
Casey learned about her love of writing her sophomore year in English. “I really liked writing papers, stream-of-consciousness stuff, that’s why I took journalism,” she said. At the KO News, she said that she will miss interviewing people at KO. She said she will also miss laying out articles on News Day. “I won’t miss brainstorming ideas for the paper, or more so, struggling to brainstorm ideas though,” she said.
Her advice to next year’s news staff is to make sure that they incorporate more perspectives into their stories. When you’re sampling perspectives for interviews, …“just make sure it’s a wide range of perspectives,” she said. “Sometimes people, and that includes me, just interview the people they’re closest to because that’s easier, but it’s important to reach out to people.”
From her time at the KO News and in journalism class, she learned that there are many perspectives on an issue that lay outside of the writer’s angle, and that it’s important to include those perspectives, even if it fits outside of your angle. It’s a bit harder, she said, but it’s important. “I think journalism and writing are, and this is a weird word, but they’re sacred,” she said. “In a way, you’re helping other people’s voices to be heard.”
She also said she hopes that the KO News will accommodate more viewpoints on things like school events. “If you’re writing an article about a school event, obviously you’re not going to really bash it, even if it was really bad,” she said. “The school paper should be more democratic, I think.”
In college, she said she will probably write for the school newspaper, if the opportunity presents itself. Casey will be greatly missed in the News Department, and the KO News as a whole. Everyone on the newspaper wishes her best of luck in college and beyond.
