You have heard them on radio, or perhaps a Podcast. You have seen them on local TV and on YouTube. You’ve read their words and seen their faces in news publications in print and online.
They shape discussions, share important news, and give the community a voice. Their presence resonates on Instagram, Facebook, and new and ever-evolving frontiers.
In this year’s Women Making History special edition, Worcester Magazine talks with women who have been shaping local and regional media.
This includes covering government, public safety, and issues that affect the day-to-day lives of the people. It also includes delving into music, arts and entertainment, or indepth conversations of views local and global, and sometimes, in multiple languages. Like women in every facet of work and life, many have pushed and still push against the headwinds of bias, including those based on gender, race, age, orientation, and even hair and clothes.
We asked all of them what they do and have done in media, and why it matters.
Many are seasoned veterans; some are pioneers in emerging forms of communication. They all have something to say, and they believe everyone does.
Mistress Carrie
Position in media: DJ, radio host and podcast host
If you listened to WAAF before the rock station went off the air, or if you listen to 100FM The Pike these days, you’re more than familiar with the voice of DJ and host Mistress Carrie, who has been a steady presence on Massachusetts airwaves since 1998.
“On the night show back then, in the mid to late ’90s, you could get away with bloody murder on the radio,” Carrie said. “I got to break a lot of new bands. I got to do a lot of things that the guys couldn’t do during the day.”
Growing up in Northern Worcester County, all she wanted was to work in the music industry, a dream that led her to an internship at a recording studio around the corner from WAAF’s Worcester studio. Soon, she was working on commercials at the radio station, and she eventually worked her way up to her own nighttime show.
“Back then, radio stations wanted to have a woman on the air, but they also only wanted one of you. While being female opened the door for me in some respects, it very quickly closed behind me, and I think female musicians felt that too,” Carrie said.
Women Making History: WAAF’s Mistress Carrie on decades in radio
For this year’s Women Making History issue, DJ and radio host Mistress Carrie discusses her years in broadcasting and the changes she’s seen.
Carrie was afternoon drive host and had risen through the ranks to become assistant program director by the time WAAF signed off in 2020.
As she looked for work, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and shut down jobs everywhere, and she decided it was time to set up a home studio of her own and just keep going — this time with a podcast, still going strong today, that features interviews with big-name rock and metal musicians.
“All the bands I had done favors with over the years, I said, ‘You always said if I needed anything, you’d be there for me. Well, I need something.’ Nobody said no,” Carrie said. “The podcast gives me the opportunity to have the fans and the listeners get to know the bands the way I know them — the conversations we would have in the dressing room after the show, the conversations in the radio stations during commercials.”
Like so many others during lockdown, Carrie also began broadcasting live through Instagram and Facebook to keep in touch with longtime listeners, dubbing the series “Cocktails in the War Room” and hosting for 80 nights in a row.
“Cocktails” has continued weekly since then, discussing everything from caregiving for elderly relatives to life milestones, and listeners in the comment section have formed genuine bonds.
“The war room has become this support group, and it’s all by strangers on the internet, but these friendships have developed and now these people meet up at concerts together,” Carrie said.
You can still hear Carrie on traditional radio if you turn your dial to 100.1 FM, where she landed after the end of WAAF and now works with several old broadcaster friends.
“We’re all local and that’s what makes radio really cool and special. You get to be around people that all have the same story, the upbringing of growing up in this area and loving music,” Carrie said.
In nearly 30 years, Carrie said, she has seen a lot of change in the music industry, much of which she credits to the generation of women who came before her.
“I talk to a lot of bands now where there’s a female bassist or a female drummer, or the band is all female, and those things are becoming less and less the exception and more and more the rule,” Carrie said. “I think the hand got forced because we just wouldn’t take no for an answer and we just did a really good job.” (MT)
Suzanne Graham Anderson
Position in media: Owner, Positively Suzanne; YouTube channel, motivational speaker; event organizer and host; contributing columnist, Worcester Magazine
Suzanne Graham Anderson began posting encouraging words on social media, and realized something: her ability to inspire, motivate, and share different views through engaging a dialogue.
She’s a frequent guest and speaker at many community events, including panels, forums and celebrations illuminating leadership, including for women, and people of color.
Suzanne Graham Anderson, owner and CEO of Positively Suzanne
Suzanne Graham Anderson, owner of Positively Suzanne, is part of Worcester Magazine’s Women Making History, focusing on news and entertainment media.
Special to Worcester Magazine/USA TODAY Network
“When the brand started out, it was an opportunity to share encouraging words on social media, and things like that,” said Anderson. A blog and newsletter evolved; a print magazine arose, but printing costs became untenable.
“But I always wanted to continue to have a voice, and speak. There are women who identify with me, and what I have to say,” said Graham. “I started a podcast a few years ago, and then I started the show, ‘Sipping Tea with Suzanne.'” Positively Positively Suzanne is based at the Positive Vibes studio, located in the Ivy Corset Building, once the home of a corset factory owned by a female entrepreneur, Mary H. Bowne.
Reflecting on the nature of journalism, Anderson said, “I have an innate curiosity to gain knowledge you might not know. I truly believe a journalist has to be unbiased.”
Anderson said, “While I’m not a traditional journalist, I’m mindful of the space I’m in. Because for me, again, the core of what I do, is someone who seeks different perspectives. Journalists seek the truth. I also think I have a responsibility as someone in the journalism space to ensure that I’m inclusive. We are in a cruel world. I really want to combat that, even if you don’t agree with my point of view.”
We asked the participants in this year’s Women Making History series why what they do matters. Anderson said, “So, it matters to me for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, at my core, it’s who I am … it matters to me because I want to give people a voice, whether it’s women, whether it’s people who look like me.”
Her enterprise has also become a way to talk with and listen to people with varied life experiences, and views. “I can interiew people who love coffee and bacon, two things I’ve never had,” said Anderson. “As a journalist, you have your integrity, and stand on what you truly believe in. As a journalist, it’s not your job to solve problems. It’s your mission to share the facts, so people can partake of these resources.”
With a background in the fashion and retail industry, Anderson integrates fashion and style into her work, but emphasizes the importance of authenticity and self-expression. “It’s not these shows that pick apart women, and their clothing, and their bodies. We discuss fashion without discussing body size.” Anderson observed that cruel comments and insults have a way of proliferating, including in the immediacy of the digital world. Anderson seeks to counter that by uplifting people, and said, “I think it is critical right now.” (MS)
Dianne Williamson
Position in media: Former Telegram & Gazette columnist
“Some people want to become a columnist so they can give people their opinions and share their ideas and thoughts and feelings,” said former Telegram & Gazette columnist Dianne Williamson. “I became a columnist because I didn’t want to cover any more meetings of the Zoning Board of Appeals.”
Some 25 years of writing three columns a week, after a decade spent as a crime reporter, gave Williamson a singular perspective on Worcester.
Every week, she had to turn in three columns, no matter what, and every week, she set out “to tell stories, maybe push some buttons now and then — make people think, make them laugh, make them cry.”
Writing a column gave Williamson the freedom to choose which stories she wanted to cover, allowing her to draw attention to happenings that otherwise were going unnoticed.
Looking back, Williamson took particular pride in investigating the wrongful arrest of a young Vietnamese immigrant for a murder he didn’t commit. After her story ran, the boy went free.
Another memory that sticks out is covering the Catholic clergy abuse scandal in Worcester County, along with the rest of the T&G’s staff at the time, before The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team made it a nationwide story.
“We got a tremendous amount of pushback from Catholics, from local clergy, from my mother. My mother would beg me not to write about it anymore because she went to church every week,” Williamson said. “A couple of my editors at the time were Catholic, and I knew they weren’t happy with these stories, but they ran them anyway, which was a good thing to do.”
Williamson started out as an office assistant in the T&G newsroom while studying at Worcester State University, then worked her way up to the crime beat. There were drawbacks to being a young woman in that particular job at that particular time, as she recalled having to fend off advances from police officers while she worked.
When she began writing columns, in her recollection, things changed.
“I think I was treated a little differently when I became a columnist. I think I got a tad more respect, whether it was earned or not, just because I had my little mugshot,” Williamson said. “I had my little picture at the top of the page, and for some reason people thought that was a little more impressive than being a reporter.”
Over her quarter century as a columnist, she saw sweeping changes in media as a whole, many of them driven by the internet and the advent of social media.
“The internet made our jobs a lot easier. It opened up the world, and it made a lot of people become ‘citizen journalists’ who had blogs and podcasts. That opened up a lot more voices than there used to be, which is a good thing, except sometimes too many untrained voices are just noise,” Williamson said.
Another change? Corporate ownership. Williamson said during her columnist years, “newspapers changed hands from local ownership to the money-making chains that cared little about local journalism. That started the death rattle.”
“People should still be reading local news because journalists and newspapers are the watchdog, and a dead watchdog is a bad thing,” she said. (MT)
Stephanie Twine-Haig
Position in media: Former head of training, WCUW Radio 91.3 FM
“I liked the Friday- and Saturday-night shows,” said Stephanie Twine-Haig, in a phone conversation regarding her time as a volunteer and later head of training for WCUW Radio. When she started with the station, around 2000, those nights were largely dominated by hip-hop, culminating in DJ Chuck Chillin’s “The Love Session,” an R&B and soul show that is often still the last live voice on the Worcester airwaves deep into a Saturday night.
That show and others were magnets for local kids looking for a career in radio, or more often, looking to have their songs played on the air. Twine-Haig said that one of the reasons she accepted a larger role at the station was to look out for those shows. “Everybody else complained about them,” she said, but she could see how vitally important a lifeline those shows were for neighborhood kids.
I never had kids of my own, said Twine-Haig, “so intersecting with those kids was a lot of fun. Listening to their thought processes, not just their situation.” The affection was reciprocated.
“A lot of them would get into a little bit of trouble,” she said, “and have to do community service. When they found out they could do community service with me, they never missed a day,” adding that she had them do fun stuff, like learning how to operate radio equipment, but also hard stuff, like cleaning the studio. She says she still hears from a lot of those kids to this day.
For Twine-Haig, “community” was always the most important part of “community radio,” saying that “some communities put blood, sweat and tears” into the station. But working with kids was always her favorite part of the job, even if they could be a handful, especially if they wanted to use their airtime to promote their house party gigs.
“It was hard to explain to the kids … that you can’t self-promote,” although they could get advertising on their shows. She said she had to explain the difference between commercial and community radio. They thought radio was something that was free.
“We used to have fundraisers from the hip-hop kids,” she said. “We made a lot of money, but police had to be there.” She said she was lucky because she was usually able to get a particular police officer who “was really good with kids,” she says. “He made the kids see that not all the cops were looking to grab them by the scruff of the neck.”
Twine-Haig was forced into early retirement through disability in 2008 after kidney failure. Although she’s no longer active in radio, she said she’s proud of the work she did there.
“I think working with the teenage kids, helping keep them off the street, out of jails and helping them get through high school” was her proudest accomplishment at the station, saying, “It’s never too late to get and education.” (VDI)
Michelle Willson
Position in media: Production manager and “Morning Vibe Time” host, WICN 90.5 FM
As someone with an extensive background as a blues performer, Michelle Willson is able to impart great knowledge and context to all the jazz, rhythm and blues and other music she plays as “Morning Vibe Time” host from 6 to 9 a.m. Mondays to Fridays on radio station WICN 90.5 FM in Worcester.
Willson has what she calls her “Vibe Tribe” of loyal listeners.
“With AI people can say whatever they want. You kind of need a tour guide to help you figure it out,” Willson said. “I love telling people the history of the music – ‘Here’s why it’s important.'”
A young listener thanked Willson for one segment recently. “‘I’m so glad you told me. I didn’t know who Aretha Franklin was,'” the person said. “‘Now I’m playing it for all my friends.'” Willson was enthused. “I said, ‘Yes. Yes.'”
Known as Michelle “Evil Gal” Willson for her great stage presence, powerful renditions and critically acclaimed albums as a singer (“‘Evil Gal” comes from Dinah Washington’s song “Evil Gal Blues”), she said there was a time as a performer after 9/11 when “I was lost.”
She was still doing live gigs occasionally around 2004 when Brian Barlow, the late general manager of WICN, got in touch and hired her to perform a Brown Bag Concert at Mechanics Hall co-presented by WICN.
During her performances, Willson likes to engage the audience and give details about a song. Barlow was impressed and asked Willson if she had ever considered being a radio host.
“I took to it. It just felt at home,” Willson said. She started gradually, with a weekend show, “Jazz n’ Blue,” and also started doing another program on Friday mornings, “Voices of Jazz.”
She also found her own voice as a performer again. “Being on the radio and playing the music it revived my love for the music. WICN – in many ways it saved my life really,” Willson said.
Willson has now been the host of “Morning Vibe Time” for about 10 years. She gets up at 3 in the morning.to drive into Worcester from her home near Sturbridge. “Let’s just say I used to still be up at that time in the morning,” she said. “But once I get here (WICN) I love being the morning person and knowing my show starts the day off for people.”
The show has evolved, particularly from when the COVID-19 pandemic came along and people needed an engaging voice more than ever. “Everything changed,” Willson said. “This voice coming out of the music. Talking to people. Making connections. They (the audience) just loved it.”
The VIbe Tribe sends Willson emails and messages to each other. “It’s become a real community.” Each day the show has a different theme. Friday is “Dance Party.”
After her show, Willson moves into her role as production manager. Her involvement evolved from helping the previous production manager as he was nearing retirement to taking over. She handles all recorded aspects of programming, including station promo spots.
Between the two, “it’s more than a full-time job.” But, “I love both parts of my job so much,” she said. (RD)
Edith Morgan
Position in media: Host, “Senior Speak,” WCCA TV
Edith Morgan, former Worcester School Committee member, educator and foster parent, hosts her WCCA TV program “Senior Speak” from her home these days.
Previously, many episodes of the show were taped at the Worcester Senior Center until the COVID-19 pandemic came around.
“I’m 95. They come here,” she said of the videographer and the guests she speaks with at her home near Green Hill Park. Most recently on “Senior Speak,” Morgan talked with Donald Perron, former vice president of customer service at Fallon Health, who was once a first-grade student of Morgan. Previous guests have included former Worcester Mayor Raymond V. Mariano.
Morgan has a lot of connections she can draw from. “I try to keep it interesting,” she said.
Also these days, she is spending a lot of time writing her autobiography, which should be of interest to many.
Morgan was born in Germany in 1930. Her father was a liberal judge and Jewish, while her mother was a convert to Judaism. “For two-and-a-half years things were pretty good,” Morgan said. Then “in 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor.”
Morgan, her brother and parents made what sounds like a hair-raising escape, first into Switzerland, then France, which in turn was invaded by Nazi Germany. Somehow the family, with the help of a Swiss family who gave them their life savings, made it on to a Portuguese boat to the United States, arriving on Labor Day, 1941. Pearl Harbor was just a few weeks later, after which refugees such as Morgan’s family would not have been able to come here.
“My mother always said that at about five minutes to 12, help will come. And it always did.”
The family settled in Minnesota, and Morgan graduated from Macalester College in St. Paul. She said she will be donating all her documents and pertinent information about her life to the college.
Out of the experiences, “wherever we went we learned right from wrong,” Morgan said. “We always knew that wherever you are planted you grow and you try to make the world a little bit better from when you arrived on the scene.”
Morgan met her first husband at Macalester College and his work took them to Worcester. They later divorced. Morgan received a master’s degree in education from Worcester State College, now Worcester State University, and was an educator for many years, including being a first-grade teacher in Shrewsbury. She served on the Worcester School Committee from 1994 to 1998. Morgan was also a foster mother for decades and is in touch with many of the children and now their children. One takes Morgan shopping every week. Morgan’s second husband, Guy Froehlig, died in 2019 after the couple had been married six years.
“I don’t know that I made history. I put my fingers in a lot of stuff,” Morgan said.
“I’m still active,” she added. That includes being involved with Worcester City Democratic Committee Ward Three and neighborhood initiatives.
She has hosted hundreds of episodes of “Senior Speak.” Guests can come from different backgrounds and cover different topics, including a recent informational episode last year with Clare M. Robbins, Worcester Deputy City Clerk, about the then-upcoming Sept. 2 preliminary Nov. 4 municipal elections for Worcester Mayor, City Council and School Committee.
“There’s always something that presents itself that needs doing,” Morgan said. (RD)
Sarah Connell Sanders and Molly O’Connor
Position in media: ‘Pop It’ podcasters
When Sarah Connell Sanders started teaching at Auburn Middle School, she was the youngest staff member by about 10 years, so she was overjoyed the day in 2015 when she met substitute teacher Molly O’Connor.
“I was so excited to see somebody else in my peer group,” she said, and the pair became fast friends. About the same time, Sanders began writing a column for Worcester Magazine that still runs monthly in the newspaper.
“We would sometimes eat lunch in my classroom,” said Sanders, “and (WoMag reporters) Bill Shaner and Josh Lyford would call during my lunch to be like, ‘What’s going on in your column today?’” This was right before Shaner and Lyford would appear on the WoMag Radio Hour on Unity Radio, “and Molly would always be in the background. And then we’d be like, you know, we should do this.”
O’Connor agreed, saying, “We should be on the radio. For sure.”
The pair got their opportunity in 2018, when they visited the Unity Radio studios, and Sanders told executive producer Ernie Floyd that “I was just looking at your website. I noticed there are no shows run by women here.” Sanders thought they were in for a fight. Instead, Floyd replied, “Well, maybe I’m looking at her …. We thought we were gonna have to sell him we set a meeting and he was just like, ‘Yeah green light, OK’ … He gave us his full support.”
The result was “Pop It,” a radio program and podcast about “popping questions, popping bottles and pop culture.”
Molly O’Connor, Sarah Connell Sanders talk favorite ‘Pop It’ podcast bits
Molly O’Connor, left, and Sarah Connell Sanders launched the “Pop It” podcast in 2018. They discuss their favorite segments for WoMag’s “Worcester Women Making History” issue.
While podcasts were beginning to catch on nationally, there were still very few local ones and none created by women. According to O’Connor, their first idea was that it would be about weddings, as Sanders had just become engaged. The pair explored that thread for a bit, before realizing they had the potential to do more.
“It became an opportunity to have conversations with women we admired to, where I’m like, oh, I have a reason to call this person that I really am excited to talk to. One was Megan Jasper, she’s the CEO of Sub Pop. Who, you know, like, birthed Nirvana?”
The pair delved into more serious subject matter, including the scandals surrounding the restaurant The Chameleon in 2018. Later interviews included Amy Peterson, who at the time was marketing director for the DCU Center and is now general manager; Jenny Pacillo, who at the time had been named “Server of the Year” and would later serve on the City Council; Diane Cotter, who was campaigning to get PFAFS out of firefighting equipment after the death of her husband, Paul Cotter, a retired city fire lieutenant, who died of prostate cancer; and, for a live show, Heather Bish, sister of murdered 16-year-old Molly Bish.
They never lost their sense of whimsy, though, and other segments included “Rosie Report,” where they followed rumors that comedian Rosie O’Donnell, who was then engaged to a Worcester police officer, was living in the city. The two made a complementary pair, with Sanders being prepared and sticking to the script, and O’Connor being more improvisational. Together, they made 132 installments, a number which O’Connor remembered off the top of her head.
“That is exactly why I knew I wanted to do a podcast with Molly,” said Sanders. “She calls her brain the files. She really does have this sponge of a brain where whenever I’m trying to have a pop culture conversation, she can fill in all the pieces.
O’Connor says that “once we found the dynamic of like, not just figuring out what our strengths were, but then also like understanding how to streamline our process … and enhance it.” The pair worked discover if they had a music, said O’Connor, saying, by way of example, “I talk a lot, right? So part of it for me was how do I pull back and listen more and ask more questions rather than just being with the answers. Sarah was really good at keeping me on that. And I think we learned anyway, so I think we also just naturally settled into it. But that came with time. It wasn’t just one of those things where, all of a sudden, we started a podcast and we were really good at podcasting.”
Eventually, real life began to overtake the time they had to commit to the podcast, although both women insist that they never actually “ended” it, and might do another episode at any time. In the meantime, though, “Pop It” opened doors for other female podcasters.
“It’s funny, I heard a speaker this week say, Be the thermostat, not the thermometer … So the thermometer tells you, ‘It’s too hot, or it’s too cold.’ But the thermostat works to actually change the temperature. And that’s how I felt. And thanks to Ernie Floyd when I was like, ‘Why do you not have any women on your radio station?’ And he was like, ‘Be the thermostat, Sarah. Sounds like you just volunteered.’” (VDI)
Tania Romero
Position in media: Radio show host, Voz Latina de Worcester, WCUW 91.3 FM
When on the air, Tania Romero does more than share the music of the nations and cultures in which Spanish is a major language; she takes listeners on a virtual tour, to understand the depth of places in the world where Spanish is spoken, including the U.S.
Her show, Voz Latina de Worcester, airs Tuesdays 3-4 p.m. at WCUW.
“It’s imaginary, it’s through music, and the history,” said Romero, a native of Dominican Republic. “Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua — all Central America and South America. I visit the United States, too.”
The list includes Equatorial Guinea, the only African nation with Spanish as an official language; and nations and places where Spanish number among languages spoken, whether as an official language, or a maternal language — learned from birth, and passed on through generations.
Romero has some 25 years in broadcast, but began at WCUW in 2015. “I am the first to have this kind of program. I never see anybody have a program like this, talking about the history, the folklore, and play the music of the countries that speak Spanish,” Romero said.
Among her audience members are educators who teach the Spanish language, Romero said.
A listener may here musical genres and styles such as the meringue, cumbia, which originated from coastal Colombia in the 1800s; contemporary pop sounds, and more.
Romero said, “People don’t know how many countries speak Spanish in Africa, Europe, or South America.” Romero said, “So people don’t know about that, until they listen to my show. They learn all these things from my show. I feel very comfortable doing that, because in the first place, I like the music. I like the countries. People listen and learn.” (MS)
Leah Lamson
Position in media: Former editor, Telegram & Gazette, current managing director of the New England High School Journalism Collaborative
As the first-ever female editor of the Telegram & Gazette, Leah Lamson sailed the newspaper through some of the news industry’s most tumultuous times, but her road to journalism almost took a different turn. While a student at Simmons University, she was pursuing a career in education. But, she joined the staff of the school’s student newspaper, The Janus.
“My first assignment was covering a lecture by Germaine Greer, author of ‘The Female Eunuch,’” says Lamson, in a recent phone conversation. “I attended the talk, wrote it up for the newspaper, and when it got printed, I saw my byline. It was like seeing your name in lights.” Lamson says she sees journalism as a life-long learning experience. “It started there … By being a reporter, you’re educating yourself every day.”
From there, Lamson took an internship for the Worcester Telegram and Evening Gazette, working in the Marlboro bureau. When she graduated, she was turned down for a position at the papers, and began working for the Fitchburg Sentinel and Enterprise, before joining the Telegram & Gazette’s Milford bureau in 1978.
“The way the system used to work,” explained Lamson, “when you were experienced out in the bureau, you could be tapped when the Telegram or Gazette had an opening. I joined the Gazette city staff.” She worked a variety of beats, including features, education and business, before becoming assistant city editor in 1985.
While working in features, Lamson wrote an entertainment column called Tempo, which ran five days a week, and which often took her to Boston to interview prominent figures, including actress Lee Remick, musician Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits, actress Lauren Bacall and author Erica Jong, whom she interviewed in a limousine because Jong was only available between engagements.
“I absolutely loved that job,” says Lamson, but was dismayed to return to the office one day to discover she was being removed from the beat, and transferred to covering education. She began applying elsewhere, before deciding that if her byline was going to be on the education stories, she wanted them to be the best they could be, coming to see education as a “cool, vibrant beat.”
In 1989, when the Telegram & Gazette merged, she became the managing editor for regional news, eventually rising to the editor job in 2009. Her tenure was marked by several changes, including the launch of Worcester Quarterly Magazine, later called Worcester Living, a glossy lifestyle magazine, and the introduction of several new content management systems, each one bringing changes to how the newspaper was edited and laid out.
She was there for when the Telegram opened its printing press in Millbury, and oversaw the newspaper leaving its Franklin Street offices for its current home across the Common in the Mercantile Center. But the industry was changing, as the newspaper was sold, along with the Boston Globe, to Red Sox owner John Henry, and later spun off and sold to the newspaper chain Halifax.
Lamson says she was part of the group that met with all of the prospective buyers, and it soon became clear that most of those potential buyers “thought the newsroom head count was too high.” Eventually, she was instructed to institute layoffs, culminating in an enormous staff cut as the Telegram transitioned to ownership by Halifax in 2014.
“The Telegram and Gazette wasn’t about the buildings or the offices,” says Lamson. “It was about the people. That was heartbreaking.” Lamson saw the process through and resigned quietly.
The experience soured her on journalism for a time, until she was contacted by former Telegram staffer Milton Valencia, who at the time was a reporter for the Boston Globe, about taking the position of managing director of the New England High School Journalism Collaborative.
Says Lamson, “It’s not the daily grind of being a newspaper editor, but I still keep my hand in journalism. I like working with young people.”Lamson had hired Valencia at the Telegram because he had graduated from the very program he was now hiring her to lead.
The program takes 15 participants each summer, out of roughly 80 applicants. While not all participants end up going into journalism, Lamson says she heartened by the interest the program receives from students.
“I hope that they will obviously stick with journalism, and find a job in the industry that is meaningful for them,” says Lamson. “Who knows what those jobs are going to be?”
As journalism continues to change, Lamson said, its fundamental values don’t: “Fairness, not being biased, being accurate, keeping their stories free from opinion, and keeping themselves out of the story.” (VDI)
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.worcestermag.com ’
