Country Community Journalist - Alexandria Randolph
Alexandra Randolph (“Alex for short”) told us all about her experiences of being a local reporter for the Highland News group of papers.
She recently diverted from those chores by taking a role in “Drop Dead” at the Hill Country Community Theatre. A 2012 graduate of Texas A&M, Alex makes her home in the Highland Lakes.
Alex talked about community journalism as a form of community service in a small town setting. She enjoys our interesting communities with its variety of people. She also discussed the challenges of the small-town print media in transitioning to digital forms and competing with social media, bloggers and the internet in general – all of which some people, erroneously in her opinion, treat as a source of news. “You can’t get accurate news from the grapevine,” Alex noted.
The Highlander has been named the best large twice-weekly newspaper in Texas in state press association competition. It also has won numerous advertising design awards. Founded in 1959, it achieved distinction early in its history for thorough coverage of news and events in the region and is listed in the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture as one of the best non-daily newspapers in the state.
The Highlander has been a “hyper-local” focused paper from its beginning whereas many small papers are just now finding that to be a direction. She highlighted the benefit of that approach in pointing out that large stories have low impact whereas the small-scale story has a huge impact locally.
Taking questions from the attentive audience, Alex dealt adroitly with the blending of editorializing into real news. In summary the Daybreak Rotarians learned that the small-town paper business is anything but easy. Thanks for coming, Alex!