Mason Galemore
Contributing Writer
[email protected]

Alumni of The News have been invited to reconnect for The News’ virtual Homecoming reunion.

Assistant professor and The News adviser Stephanie Anderson and professor Leigh Wright organized the event in coordination with the Murray Alumni Office.

Along with other well-known Homecoming reunions, the goal is to make this reunion an annual event. Because of COVID-19, this reunion will kick off unlike any other Homecoming reunion since it will be in a virtual format over Zoom.

“Alumni are used to coming back to campus for Homecoming, so we felt it would be a great time to reconnect with our alumni during this time, even if it’s virtually,” Anderson said.

Anderson, who has been an adviser since 2016, is an alumna of The News and worked as a sports writer during her undergraduate days.

She said being an adviser is a wonderfully challenging job and she loves the hands-on experience she gets to provide to student journalists.

Wright, who often coaches features writers and assists with trainings at The News, is also an alumna of the paper. Wright said she has been around The News since 1985 when her mother returned to be an adviser. Wright joined the staff as a freshman in the early 1990s and remained throughout her college career, obtaining various editing positions and gaining lots of experience.

“I loved every moment of my time at The News,” Wright said. “We spent so many Wednesday nights in the newsroom on production nights. It could be stressful at times, but we had a lot of fun, too. And we made lifelong friendships.”

Wright started as a staff writer and worked as an assistant news section editor, news section editor and associate editor. She said The News taught her real-world experience of covering stories on campus and in the region on a deadline and producing a weekly newspaper.

“We joked about seeing the sun rise over Wilson Hall after production night, but production nights used to be very late,” Wright said. “We stayed in the newsroom until the wee hours of the morning to design our pages and write our stories, but we also joked around quite a bit as we worked.”

She said they didn’t have the technology that students have now, so the production nights were more labor intensive. They had to write articles on video display terminals in the newsroom rather than on laptops and stuff the inserts, or ads, into the paper at the old Printing Services building.

“Some of our best memories were made during these experiences,” Wright said. “I tell the freshmen in my classes that they will make the best friends of their lives when they work at The News. We’ve had several couples that have met at The News and later gotten married.”

During the event, they plan to allow everyone to simply discuss and share about their past experiences, funny stories and memories. Wright said she may even Zoom from the newsroom and show everyone what the newsroom looks like in 2020.

Wright explained that she and other alumni have tried to have a reunion for several years but it has been difficult because people are busy with jobs and families. With a virtual event, Wright hopes several more alumni and past advisers can hop on and laugh about past adventures in college. Wright said it will be nice to see their faces and hear their voices even if over Zoom.

“Zoom sometimes gets a bad rap, but it allows us to connect more easily,” Wright said. “I hope that eventually we can meet up again in person to exchange stories and laugh about the things we did in college.”

The reunion is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 29, at 7 p.m.