Farewell column: 'By Liv Reilly' and goodbye from Liv Reilly

My mom has kept a stack of newspapers for as long as I can remember. 

Clippings from Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009 when I was in kindergarten or when Queen Elizabeth died in 2022 as I was driving home from Chapel Hill for the weekend. 

These newspapers have sat in stacks, waiting to be put in a scrapbook, following us around in moving boxes and through big life events. 

But now, we have another stack of newspapers that sits somewhere in a pile next to my “future apartment” box.

A stack that shares three common words — By Liv Reilly.  

Whether it be the first article I ever wrote for The Daily Tar Heel that my roommate and I hung up on our mini fridge or the 2022 Year in Review front page that my mom insisted on framing, I’m so proud. 

I’m proud of myself for graduating in three years. I’m proud of myself for not dropping out when I sat across from our general manager Courtney Mitchell telling her I was done with UNC. I’m proud of myself for stomaching every minute spent calling Media Relations about a potential emergency. And I’m so beyond proud to call The DTH my home. 

On a campus where I never seemed to find home elsewhere, I always had 109 E. Franklin St. 

And coffee. I always seemed to find coffee. 

Whether those two are mutually exclusive or dependent on the other, I haven’t figured that out. 

It’s the only place I would ever consider staying till 3 a.m. to see who won the student body presidency. It was the first place I walked to after the Aug. 28 campus shooting. It’s the place I know will always have a crappy office chair to welcome me as I procrastinate doing my homework.

It was probably going to be late anyways. 

When I was hired as an assistant editor after my first semester, I thought I was the coolest thing in the world. I had a place that I belonged to and a place that felt exciting. And I even got the code to the office — please don’t ask me why this was such an impressive feeling, it just was. 

When I began my year as University editor, I thought I was even cooler. What other 19-year-old (except for Emmy Martin, who we’ll get to later) gets to lead coverage and an entire team of writers for an actual newspaper? 

When I started this year as the business manager, I had no idea that I would end my time at The DTH fussing over .05 inch margins while helping design the last few papers as managing editor. But how could I have ever expected anything that my journey through the newsroom has given me. 

I’ve sat in the U.S. Supreme Court covering Students for Fair Admissions v. UNC and passed out thousands of special edition basketball papers. I watched the Franklin Street rush from the office roof (sorry, Courtney) and was bought my first tequila shot by one of the seniors before me at an old booth in Linda’s Bar and Grill (sorry, Courtney).

And speaking of Courtney, she deserves one of the biggest thank you's of them all. The woman who has become my second mother through the past three years. The one who voluntarily looked up my nostril because I decided to re-pierce my nose in the office bathroom. The one who kept me feeling inspired through all those rejections and hard times. 

FYI, my nose is fine now. 

And while I’m thanking people, thank you Emmy Martin for being an incredible newsroom leader. Thank you for the long walks home to South Campus last year and every latte run or Cook Out tray. And thank you for letting me come back to the newsroom for the last few weeks. 

Thank you to my assistants — Ira Wilder, Preston Fore and Abby Pender — who made me giggle and told me to go to bed. Thank you to every writer I’ve ever gotten to know. You have taught me more than I could ever thank you for and given me so much grace as I also learned how to be a journalist. 

And thank you to every single human who cheered me on from afar and waited for me to finish my sentence while trying to type out a Slack message. 

While it’s finally time to finish out my years at the newsroom, I can’t seem to find a way to finish up this column. How to wrap up three years of bylines and dozens of bell dings that ring through the office after print is submitted. 

But, I guess it ends with this.

It ends with me adding one last paper to the second stack of newspapers in my bedroom. The stack that hosts both the The Daily Tar Heel masthead and “By Liv Reilly.” 

But I guess that’s part of growing up. Making room for yet another pile of newspapers and magazines for the future, all with my byline in them somewhere.  

And I owe it all to this very newsroom. 

@livvreilly

@dthopinion | opinion@dailytarheel.com