Farewell Column: All the things I know and don’t know

When I ran for editor-in-chief last spring, I thought I knew what to expect. I knew the responsibility of leading The Daily Tar Heel meant late nights, too little sleep and too many cups of coffee.

If I got the job, I knew I would become intimately familiar with the broken chairs and exposed brick of 109 E. Franklin St. I knew I would face hard questions and complicated situations. I knew I wouldn’t have all the answers. 

But even then, I didn’t really know. 

I didn’t know that in our second week, the newsroom would face the unimaginable challenge of covering the fatal shooting of one of our professors. I didn’t know I would wake up at 5 a.m. from nightmares about the safety of our student journalists. 

I didn’t know just how brutal the news cycle could be. 

The news never stops. That’s the beauty and horror of journalism. When students organized protests and demonstrations this year, The Daily Tar Heel was there. We are still there. This year, I went to sleep thinking about the news and woke up still thinking about it. I checked my inbox and Slack at 4 a.m. 

In the moments when my shoulders sagged from the weight of the job, I am thankful for the people who picked me back up. The people who jumped in to lead the newsroom when I was stuck at home with COVID-19 in the days after the August shooting. The people who showed up at a protest just to ask their fellow journalists covering the event if they were OK. The people who handed out thousands of victory papers when we defeated Duke. 

This newsroom rewards those who sacrifice everything for it, it’s true. Sacrificing class assignments for print deadlines, missing meals and foregoing sleep. We processed a school shooting (or attempted to) while we continued to report on it. Covering breaking news and editing stories took priority over college classes.

But, even with the sacrifices, I know it was worth it. I know we did work that mattered. 

I will forever be grateful to the people who leaned in when things got tough. The people who were ready to drop everything to chase a story.  A piece of my heart will always remain at 109 E. Franklin St. once I hand over my keys and clean out my desk.

Many of us have cried in the storage closet of the office, but we’ve also celebrated UNC’s wins over the Blue Devils there too. We’ve enjoyed sunsets, and even eclipses, from the roof. We’ve shared election night pizza and DTH Thanksgiving potluck dinner.

I haven’t had many quiet moments to sit down and think about what I’ll do next year when I don’t receive daily Google Calendar reminders about our 3:30 p.m. budget meeting or when my phone doesn’t crash from the hundreds of Slack messages in #random. 

When I close the newsroom door for the final time, I will think about it.

For now, all I know is that The Daily Tar Heel has changed me. It’s defined the past three years of my life. I learned how to be a journalist here. I learned to enjoy black coffee here. I learned that people actually do still read the newspaper — and still solve the crossword puzzle. 

But I also learned how to lean on others. Because it’s the people that make The Daily Tar Heel what it is.

Next year, it will be weird to pick up a newspaper on Wednesday morning and not know what’s inside. But it's also incredibly exciting. I’ll miss the stains on my fingers from printer ink, and I’ll miss the sleep-deprived laughter over a basket of loaded fries at Linda’s.

I won’t know what to do with my Sundays.

It seems there’s a lot I still don’t know. 

But there is one more thing I’m confident I do know, which is this: It’s been a privilege to serve as the editor-in-chief of this newspaper. I will remember the experience for the entirety of my life. Thank you to every staff member, editor, friend and reader of The Daily Tar Heel.

I'll see you around campus. 

@emmymrtin | opinion@dailytarheel.com

---