When I was a Roaring Fork High School sophomore in Carmen McCracken’s AP English Composition class, a man named James Steindler came to speak with us about a relatively new invention: The Sopris Sun’s Youth News Bureau.
James himself was a somewhat disheveled man wearing a mismatched suit and a cowboy shirt. He was enthusiastic, a tad bit intense and clearly passionate about journalism in all its forms. He tried his hardest to convince a group of teenagers that journalism was cool, and sadly, I believe it may have fallen on quite a few pairs of deaf ears. However, a younger Gus Richardson was beyond interested.
I had always been a pretty good writer, but also I didn’t know what to do with that. I enjoyed writing short stories, screenplays, Dungeons and Dragons adventures and hey, even the occasional essay, but I wanted to do something more real with these skills.
So, that same night, I sent my application to Mr. James Steindler, and after submitting an essay I had written about Animal Farm and the Russia-Ukraine war, as well as attempting to capture why journalism seemed so interesting to me (all the while trying not to make it obvious that I was very excited about the “paid” aspect of this internship), I got the job. Next Wednesday, a few other teens and I settled into the living room-sized Sopris Sun office, and the rest is history.
I have now been working at The Sun for almost two years. In that time, I’ve written many articles, varying in topic from theater reviews to organ donors to high school happenings. My fellow youth journalist Yesenia Benavides Burgos and I have also co-hosted more than 50 episodes of Everything Under The Sun, The Sopris Sun’s weekly radio show, adding more detail to a story from that week’s paper every Thursday on KDNK. However, in my opinion, the best thing to come about from my internship at The Sopris Sun so far was The Boston University Summer Journalism Academy.
Every summer, BU brings a bunch of high school journalism students from around the world to their school for a month with the express purpose of teaching them as much as possible about journalism, and thanks to financial assistance from The Sopris Sun in the form of a scholarship, I was able to get enough money together to attend, and it was incredible. I met many great journalists and eager students, all working together to further our knowledge and produce some genuinely spectacular stories. And in the end, we really did! You can read my and the other students’ stories produced during our time in Boston here: www.bit.ly/BU2024stories
However, while the BU program taught me a lot, it also showed me a bit of what I didn’t want to become. A few of my instructors were quite jaded and seemingly cared more about getting the best story than the people they were writing about. They weren’t bad journalists, they were exceptional, but the way they thought about journalism was wildly different from what I want to do. I want to connect with people, share stories and contribute to a more empathetic and informed community, and lucky for me, these tenets are exactly what The Sopris Sun stands for. This paper is something truly special because of that, and I am beyond grateful that I was given the opportunity to work for this amazing organization.
And if that sounds like something you’re into, keep supporting community-focused and top-quality news by donating today at www.soprissun.com/donate or send a check to PO Box 399, Carbondale CO 81623