Former Airport student shares 'Daily Gamecock' experiences

For the past year, AHS graduate Joy Branton, has worked as a staff member at The Daily Gamecock.

The Daily Gamecock is a college newspaper published at our very own University of South Carolina in Columbia. It publishes online content daily and print content two days a week. Students at AHS should be familiar with this publication, as it is local, and also because it provides an example of the kinds of extracurricular activities are available in college and how what they participate in today could parlay into a college job tomorrow.

Joy, now a studious and hard-working junior who majors in accounting, currently works for this newspaper as a copy editor. Copy editors are the people who review the articles after the section editors do. They are the people who fact check, look at grammar and style, check formatting, and decide on the overall quality of writing in the articles, Joy says. They cover many sections in the paper, and cooperate with all different levels of people working on the paper.

Joy started working for The Daily Gamecock as a volunteer in February 2016, but was promoted to a paid position in October that year, and gets $90 per two weeks. She works around three to eight hours a week. She decided to work for the paper despite never working for a newspaper before when she learned a lot of professional authors worked for their school papers, and she says, “It’s also a good way to get your name out there, especially with a printed paper," and that writing skills look good to future employers “especially with it continuing to be a dying art, in some ways.”

Before college, Joy took English classes at AHS taught by Ms. Kleine, Ms. Caulder, and Mrs. Fowler, which overall helped her in her current job.

Joy says that one of the coolest parts of her job is hearing people’s interviews of “celebrities” and other important figures, and she says that she must listen to their interviews to check for accuracy in the articles written, which is an important aspect in journalism, especially given the "alternative facts" scandal and "fake news" controversies in the media right now.

Editing Arts & Culture articles is her most favorite in her job, though, and she says that she enjoys her work environment, too. “Everyone really works together as a team and a lot of them are friends...Each copy desk chief tries to be very patient with everyone,” Joy says.

Again, it is interesting to see an Airport alumni and soon-to-be USC graduate doing essentially what we at The Eyrie do: publishing the school newspaper.

While The Daily Gamecock publishes printed versions of its paper each and every day, you can also check out articles online at http://www.dailygamecock.com/.