COSJ Continued from page 16


Paul Singley, Matt Schooley, and Julian McKinley


Patch.com:


For Paul Singley ’03, the key to good journalism has always been compassion. “I’m a person first—and a reporter later,” he says. His time as editor-in-chief of the Springfield Student in 2002-03


gave him the kind of training that no journalist with a heart would ever seek. It was a year of considerable tragedy on campus as four students died in separate incidents (one in a car crash over Thanksgiving, one in a snowmobiling accident in New Hampshire, one of an aneurysm during an intramural game, and one in the Rhode Island night club fire). Singley was cast in the unenviable role of writing most of those stories. He chafed at the unfairness of promising lives cut short. But he also felt a sense of obligation: “I always want to cover those stories because I feel like I can be sensitive to them.”


every story is important to someone, that it is essential to write from the heart. Nothing, though, could have prepared him for last December when


his cell phone alerted him to breaking news from nearby Newtown. Singley brought his not-quite two-year-old daughter to a babysitter and raced out toward Sandy Hook Elementary School for scenes that would r emain indelible: the school cordoned off, huge squadrons of media on hand—“everyone,” Singley says, “from Telemundo to Russian radio.” The story held out anguish for everyone, and quite a bit for Singley,


too, in a very personal way. He was a friend of Dawn Hochsprung, the principal who was killed trying to protect the children. Singley had covered Hochsprung when she was a principal at another school. They had grown up in the same town (Nauguatuck) and knew many of the same people. She had, in fact, set Singley up with his future wife, katie, and attended their wedding. So the school shooting blurred the personal and the professional in


a searing way. “It was difficult to keep it together,” Singley acknowl- edged, but he knew he had no choice. He spoke to many of Hochsprung’s family members and friends and wrote a poignant remembrance just two days later that would be read widely not just on Patch, but on AOl and Huffington Post. “I wanted it to be a real news story that would be a tribute to her life,” he said. “She was a pretty amazing lady.”


“patCh haS Come to Serve aS a hub of InformatIon In a lot of townS,” SayS julIan mCkInley ’10, edItor for the wIndSor and SuffIeld, Conn., SIteS. “we fIll a voId that a lot of large newSpaperS left when they SlaShed budgetS and pulled theIr CommunIty edItorS out of theSe Small townS.”


Rising to the painful challenge of reporting tragedy was also a


burden for fellow Patch editor, Matt Schooley ’08, in Wilmington, Mass. Wilmington was the childhood home of Sean Collier, the former MIT police officer killed in the wild chase of the Tsarnaev brothers after this year’s Boston Marathon bombings. “Within that week, I helped cover two funerals, two wakes, a memorial service, and two candlelight vigils,” recalled Schooley. It was kind of a heavy time. Pretty intense.” Thankfully, that is not the norm at Patch.com, whose hyperlocal,


multimedia focus has become a modern town common, an online place to exchange stories that build a sense of community. “Patch has come to serve as a hub of information in a lot of towns,”


In almost a decade of fulltime journalism experience—


first as a reporter for the Waterbury Republican-American, and for the last three-plus years as an editor for Patch.com, Singley has written about a huge range of topics: local government, police, fire, little league baseball, soldiers returning from the war. He practices what he tries to teach to his students of journalism at Naugatuck Valley Community College and Southern Connecticut State university—that


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says Julian Mckinley ’10, editor for the Windsor and Suffield, Conn., sites. “We fill a void that a lot of large newspapers left when they slashed budgets and pulled their community editors out of these small towns.” He explains that Patch is old-time local journalism in a modern, multimedia format. “We’re a place for conversation and interaction, where we really try to mirror life outside of the Internet world, kind of bring people together.”1­


TRIANGLE 1 Vol . 84, No.3


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