Abbie Dymond, Executive Editor
@abbiedcourant
In April, the Courant, nchscourant.com, announced its new Editors-in-Chief (EiC) for the 2022-2023 school year. Teacher advisors Roman Cebulski and Mike McAteer announced that Lauren O’Malley, Peyton Zaletsky, Ava Fonss, and Serena Platt will be leading the Courant.
In terms of their preparation for the role of EiC, all four new editors have leadership experience. “Because I was the media director this year, I definitely have a lot of experience overseeing a large portion of the paper, so I think that’s given me a lot of experience that I can use,” Serena said.
From being section editors, the new EiCs have learned valuable tools. “I was the blogs editor, the arts and tech editor, and a features editor. With all that experience, I feel like I’ve learned how to be on a team, how to talk to people, and how to lead a section, so I feel ready to lead a class,” Lauren said.
According to English teacher and co-advisor of the Courant, Mr. McAteer, being experienced in multiple areas of journalism is an important skill EiCs need to have. “All of the EiCs have shown that they’re comfortable getting out of their comfort zone, and they have all shown that they are going to be supportive of other people on the staff and lead by example,” Mr. McAteer said.
Mr. McAteer also noted that the new EiCs have a variety of overlapping skills that they have acquired from being in multiple parts of journalism, which will help them work well and complement each other.
Ava wants to use her experience to help acclimate the newcomers to journalism. “I want to use my experience to help others and make them feel comfortable,” Ava said. “When I was in ninth grade, I had a lot of trouble with interviewing other people, and the EiCs at the time made me feel really comfortable so I want to have the same impact on other students.”
As soon as the preceding EiCs left for their senior internships, the new EiCs have immediately set goals and are preparing for next year. “We want to improve the sports section, it was really great this year, but I think we can make it even better and expand it to have more people working on it,” Peyton said. “We also hope to expand the arts and tech section to include more tech this year because it’s important as well.”
Additionally, Serena hopes to expand the Courant as a business. “I’m hoping we can run subscriptions to the paper. I know we haven’t had many years with a strong business team, so that’s what I hope to bring,” Serena said.
Mr. McAteer is excited for the new EiCs to leave their unique mark on the Courant. “I think that Ava, Lauren, Serena, and Peyton, are not going to be last year’s editors in chief, or 5 years ago’s editors in chief. They’re going to be who they are,” Mr. McAteer said. “That’s the exciting thing for me, doing what I can to help them say yes to the things they want to achieve for next year.”
Managing the Courant is a big responsibility that the new EiCs are capable of doing. “This is about credibility, about having a mission to report what’s going on in the school, to tell the stories of all the students, to point out things that need to be corrected, or changed, or addressed, and I think that Serena, Lauren, Ava, and Peyton are exactly the kind of people that we want to take on this kind of responsibility,” Mr. McAteer said.
