For the last issue of the Record this semester, members of last year’s management team discussed their retirement from the Record and memories from their time leading the paper. In spring 2023, Ella Marx ’24 served as the Record’s editor-in-chief, with Megan Lin ’24 and Kent Barbir ’24 as managing editors. In fall 2023, Lindsay Wang ’24 served as editor-in-chief, while Marx and Kiara Royer ’24 served as managing editors. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Shane Stackpole (SS): How has retirement from the Record been? What have you been up to?
Kiara Royer (KR): My perception of the week has changed, because I was so used to working on a Wednesday-to-Tuesday schedule. It’s funny to now think of Tuesdays as a regular day and not a Record Tuesday, which is sad on one hand, but on the other, it’s really nice to have extra time. It’s also fun to pick up a paper on Wednesday morning with no background knowledge of what might be in it. It’s really cool to be on the other side of the College’s campus now.
Megan Lin (ML): Retirement has been weird. I’ve definitely been struggling with a large amount of free time this year, but I’ve been trying to fill my time with other structured activities: I now work at Goodrich and Log Lunch, and I actually get paid for those jobs, which is nice. As disorienting as it’s been, it’s also been freeing.
SS: Your class was the first that joined that Record during the COVID-19 pandemic. In what ways did this shape your Record experience?
Kent Barbir (KB): It was definitely hard in that there were two separate learning curves. First, when we all joined the Record, everything was completely virtual, which made it harder to get to know everyone else. And the second learning curve was learning how to do layout and produce an in-print paper after only publishing online our first semester on the board. It definitely made our experiences as new Record board members challenging.
Lindsay Wang (LW): I think one silver lining to joining the Record board during COVID was that it encouraged us as journalists to be a lot more creative and expansive in the ways we thought about what reporting is and what community is. I was a sports staff writer my first semester here, and we really didn’t have much to write about. We really had to find stories in places we wouldn’t normally expect, which I think helped us when we came back to an in-print paper.
SS: Collectively, you all have contributed a total of 219 articles to the Record — is there one you wrote that stands out to you?
Ella Marx (EM): The article that stands out most to me is one I wrote on the results of an independent investigation commissioned by the Town into allegations of sexual assault and racial harassment by the Town police. I think it was important to highlight things going on in the community that mattered to Town residents. I don’t think a lot of students followed along with the reporting. But even if just a few students picked up the newspaper, realized what was going on, and thought more about how to interact with the Town, that meant our reporting had value.
KR: My favorite article was one I co-wrote with Izzy [Polanco ’25] about the first female athletic teams on campus. I got to talk to so many female athletes who, during their time here, really loved sports and wanted to have the opportunity to play sports when that opportunity didn’t exist at all. It was really incredible to talk to these individuals to see the transformation of female athletics at the College from the 1970s to today, especially as someone who was a varsity athlete at the time. It was really cool to be able to mark that trajectory and [think about] how our teams today will impact the future of female athletics at the College.
SS: In what ways was your Record experience both challenging and rewarding?
LW: I think the most challenging part of my experience was figuring out how, after the events of Oct. 7, 2023, we as student journalists should go about reporting on something that has so drastically changed the way we function as people. We had to contend with the ways in which we as student journalists work within the larger journalism industry that, as a whole, has had to grapple with issues of how to report on these events in a way that conveys information that people need while also being in service to the community. This showed me the ways in which the Record serves this community, and how, at times, it also fails this community. It was definitely a challenge at times, but it was also rewarding because it has reframed the way I think about journalism and changed the way I connect with others around me.
ML: The most rewarding part was easily the people I got to work with. I have made some of my closest friends on the Record. Just getting to spend time with everyone, doing something we cared so much about, was so beautiful to see every week. I feel like, every Record Tuesday, I would walk into the office and it would sort of feel like walking home. But it was also hard to be a student journalist in general. You can’t always get things right — and that’s hard to grapple with. Even though we may care about something, we can’t always report on it correctly. And it’s hard to know that sometimes we shouldn’t report on something at all.
SS: What is your most treasured memory from your time on the Record?
KB: Neither of these are specific memories. But the first thing that I will always remember is the feeling of accomplishment and relief —like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders — when we hit that 10:30 p.m. deadline on Tuesdays and narrowly submit the pages. And my second thing is just seeing how much the Record has grown in scope and scale since my freshman fall. From then to now, the staff writer program and the scope of our reporting has expanded — that’s something I’ve really enjoyed watching happen throughout my time on board.
EM: I don’t have one memory in particular, but just the overall feeling I get when I think about the friendships I made on the Record and the tomfoolery that occurred in between editing and layout — important and silly conversations — is something I’ll always remember. I didn’t really expect that the Record would become what it did for me when I first joined — I thought it would be cool to learn more about the College. But I’ll always treasure this network of people that I care about so much.
