Morgan Alum and journalist Sophia Muce visited Journalism teacher Leslie Chausse’s journalism class on Tuesday, December 20th. When Sophia Muce graduated from Morgan in 2018, she was planning to attend Suffolk University in Boston majoring in journalism. She decided to attend Central Connecticut State University last minute because it had a good journalism program and made more economic sense. She also minored in computer science. 

Sophia admitted that she didn’t know if she wanted to major in journalism at first. During her years at Morgan, Sophia took Creative Writing at Morgan with English teacher Eric Bergman and Journalism with Mrs. Chausse. She was not sure if she wanted to major in journalism partly because journalists can make little money. At CCSU, she was close with different professors in the journalism classes and had many opportunities she took advantage of to develop her skills. She told the class, “If you’re interested, remember that there’s an opportunity to grow.” She was a copy editor for the CCSU student run newspaper called The Recorder. After she graduated, she completed a prestigious internship with DOW Jones News Fund at The New Britain Herald. She stressed the importance of maintaining a good relationship with your professors and teachers, who helped her be where she is today.

Sophia has been working with The Connecticut Examiner as a reporter for 5 months, covering Fairfield County. She enjoys working here with only seven people on staff and claims that having one-on-one time with her editor is really helpful. As the newest hire, she is flexible in the workplace to cover stories where needed. For example, on October 16, she published Renovation of Water Main in Clinton Taints Drinking Water for Shoreline Towns. Even though this was outside of her assigned county, she makes exceptions and tries different things when a story seems interesting. She enjoys working at The Connecticut Examiner because she thinks it is important to care about the small towns, and realizes that people genuinely care about their town. She said it reminds her of the hit TV show “Parks and Rec”. When writing an article that she may not know much about or care about, she tries to get every point of view and learn as much as she can. Her favorite story so far has been No End in Sight to Dispute Between Tweed Airport and East Haven Officials. This is about how Tweed New Haven Airport plans to extend its premises with a terminal and runway, stretching into the town of East Haven and the environmental justice community. The expansion may affect the help of the people who live in the community. Many individuals had strong opinions on this change, whether it was financial or environmental issues. Sophia helped these East Haven residents voice their opinion on how pollution is affecting their lives severely, especially as a town with a high population of minorities and low income. She mentioned how it was a burden to hear that people’s dogs were dying due to this, but even with these devastating events, Sophia stuck to the facts in this article. During her visit, Sophia gave us advice such as how to prevent bias. 

For her future plans, she hopes to move to Boston or New York to write for The New York Times one day: “Local news is important but not forever.” She is not sure if she will be staying just as a writer. Instead she said, “I can see myself going into editing one day. I think it is more fun to edit others’ articles as well.” Her heart will always be in journalism. She said it is helpful to be able to write for anything and to have interpersonal skills like talking to people. She encourages students to work hard to develop a good skill set. Sophia told the students you should “be able to do anything with your degree or without, it’s about the work you put in that matters.” Morgan PawPrint thanks Sophia Muce for her visit, and for informing the class on her work as well as providing advice for future journalists.