I wasn’t expecting to stay at The Daily.
My main motivator for joining as a sophomore was the knowledge that my best friend Whitney Clear had started a few months before and would be in the newsroom with me. However, about a month into my stint as a reporter, Whitney quit. The one person I’d relied on as a social crutch was out of the picture, and I was left to make my own decision — stay or go?
On a whim, I decided to stick around, though I wasn’t sure how long my employment there would last. But shortly after I made that decision, I started reporting on the Norman public bus service’s transition from OU to city control — a story that allowed me to visit a tiny insurance office to sit in on a meeting where residents with disabilities aired their grievances about gaps in transportation resources.
From that moment on, I was hooked. And there was plenty to report on.
The past few years had been clouded by several racist incidents by students, including the use of blackface in a video posted by two students, and in February 2020, Gaylord professor Peter Gade used a racial slur in a capstone class. This sparked an enormous — and justified — outcry from the university community, and shortly after the news broke, the Black Emergency Response Team organized a sit-in in Evans Hall, which housed the offices of some top university administrators.
As a junior reporter at the time, I was expected to help with reporting over the three days of the protest. Though I’d done some live coverage of university coverage in the past, this was unlike any of that, and I remember feeling overwhelmed trying to remember important university figures’ names and monitor the entire building to make sure no important developments were taking place in a weird hallway or backroom.
Ultimately, though, my coworkers and I were able to put together a compilation of live updates that proved pivotal to the community’s understanding of the event, and I look back on that event as one of the most important in my growth as a reporter.
I continued to climb the ranks in the newsroom from there, as I was promoted to senior reporter in the wake of the sit-in and, encouraged by the news editors at the time, applied to be summer editor-in-chief shortly after. Though I was promised a “slow summer,” the appointment of a new university president, the beginning of the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, which sparked Black Lives Matter protests across the country, delivered something completely different.
Since then, we’ve learned to retire the claim that the end of the school year means that the news cycle slows. I’ve done a lot of reporting in different contexts, but I don’t think any have been as eventful as that summer.
Working as an editor-in-chief allowed me to have a more complete view of the newsroom’s operations for the first time, instead of the more siloed view I’d had previously as a reporter focused on only my work. There are so many moving parts in this place, and coordinating them in a way that allows for any story to be published is truly a feat. This is something I’ve tried to remember in all my work at The Daily, whether continuing as an editor or eventually returning to a reporter position.
The summer of 2020 also offered me the first opportunity to make long-lasting friends in the newsroom after Whitney’s departure. It was through that work that I was able to become better friends with Beth Wallis, who was that summer’s news managing editor. Like me, she’s worked in several different capacities, but she’s always been so reliable and encouraged me to think more critically and creatively about every story I work on.
I also worked with Jillian Taylor for the first time then, as she was one of our news reporters. Since then, our roles have been reversed, as I’m now one of the reporters on her news desk. She’s perhaps the most hardworking person I know, she’s an incredible reporter and editor, and she’s also become one of my best friends, both in and outside of the newsroom. She’s made me better as a reporter in so many ways, and I know every project she’s involved in is better because of her.
I’m also extremely thankful to Seth Prince, who offered innumerable pieces of wisdom that guided Beth’s and my coverage of public health and racial strife. He’s always been willing to drop everything to answer late-night Slack messages about stories or calls from Jillian and I about podcast equipment, and I wouldn’t have had any of the success I’ve had so far in my career without him.
I sometimes reflect on the alternate reality where I left The Daily and tried to get journalism experience on my own. I also often think about the parallel universes where I followed other impulses to go to law school, focus on public relations or become an epidemiologist (even though I’ve struggled through every science and math class I’ve ever taken).
Though I think I might have been able to find success in those other lines of work (except for public health — that was never going to work out), I’m so glad this was the one that stuck. I’m forever indebted to The Daily, and I’m so excited for what comes next.
Ari Fife is a journalism graduate with minors in international studies and political science.
