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Writer's pictureHannah Eason

Richmond Magazine: The Innovators

By D. Hunter Reardon, Richmond Magazine



History


For the past 51 years, the Commonwealth Times has been distributed across Virginia Commonwealth University’s campus every Wednesday. The student-run paper prints 2,500 copies a week, posts regular Twitter updates and is also available online at commonwealthtimes.org. After racking up a number of past awards from the Virginia Press Association (VPA), the paper won its first VPA sweepstakes award for its work in 2019,  beating out professional publications of a similar size.


Commonwealth Times Managing Editor Hannah Eason and Executive Editor Andrew Ringle (Photo by Jay Paul)


“The paper is a huge positive for VCU journalism students,” says Andrew Ringle, executive editor and a VCU senior majoring in mass communications. “If you’re studying journalism and want to get into the field, it’s hard to get those jobs just by taking classes. But if you’re working for a paper that’s winning VPA Awards, that’s really valuable.”


What They Do


It’s rare that a student newspaper can compete with local professionals when it comes to covering big stories, but the Commonwealth Times has had boots on the ground ever since racial justice protests began in Richmond on May 29.


“Like everybody, we were caught off guard the first night, but we had a reporter downtown anyway,” Ringle recounts. “That was the night the Pulse bus caught fire, and windows were smashed everywhere. The next day, I went out and took pictures of the aftermath. I was shocked by what I saw. I knew from that moment that we had to be out there.”


Ringle and the 10 other members of the newspaper’s staff committed to appearing at every protest throughout the summer, arriving beforehand and leaving as late as 4 a.m. While on the scene, team members would make regular posts on Twitter, providing a real-time look at what was going on. “It was very intense, and we learned a lot,” he says. “We were out there right in front of the police, in the midst of moving marches.


“I’ve been pepper-sprayed, I’ve been put into handcuffs. All of us have been exposed to chemical agents while reporting. That can make it difficult to keep going out there, but we want to show exactly what the police are doing, and how the protesters are acting beforehand.”


On the Horizon


Like most public universities across the United States, VCU has made many adjustments to open its doors during the pandemic. “Recently, the biggest chunk of our print production has been dedicated to how VCU students are interacting in a COVID-19 world,” says Hannah Eason, managing editor and a VCU senior with a major in broadcast journalism. “And of course, there are still protests going on. We were out until 4 a.m. on Wednesday just this week.” That protest, held Sept. 23, followed the decision of a Louisville, Kentucky, grand jury not to pursue homicide charges against police officers responsible for the killing of Breonna Taylor.


The next big story? The 2020 election. “We do a big election night issue every year, and that’s something that’s going to be a lot of work,” Eason says, “but I can’t wait to nerd out and stay up late working on it this year.”


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