By Borislava Panayotova
The skills learned within the classroom now can expand beyond high school and can even help students land great opportunities in their future college and career. This is especially true for alumna Annie Goodykoontz, TPA class of 2023, who was recently elected as editor-in-chief for The Maneater, the student-run newspaper at her school, the University of Missouri.
While the name may seem unusual, Annie explains that “it’s just our student paper.” The title is supposed to be a play on Mizzou’s mascot, a tiger, to make it fit with the university theme.
Annie’s career at the Maneater started with her application to write as an opinion columnist at the beginning of the school year.
After she joined the section and worked on it in her first semester at Mizzou, she became an assistant editor for the opinion section in her second semester. This was also when her campaign and election for editor-in-chief began as well.
While juggling the assistant editor position and now having joined the news section as well, Annie declared her candidacy.
The election process for the job is composed of two steps: a 20-page paper with future goals for the paper and explanations of the qualifications necessary for the job, as well as an open forum where members of the paper can ask questions to the candidates.
Annie says, “It kind of honestly really reminded me of senior thesis.” She also highlights that the open forum was especially similar to the defense part of the TPA senior thesis.
“I think just going through that process because it was so lengthy and involved, just that alone kind of made me more reassured,” she says.
She expands on this by talking about how she felt after being elected: “I put in the work for this; I feel good about this.”
One of the qualifications that let her run for the position, outside of her Journalism major, is her past involvement in the TPA student newspaper, De Equitibus.
While on staff, Annie had both led the newsroom as well as edited many articles to prepare our paper for print. These are skills that she would be able to use at her new position as the Maneater’s head editor.
Her experience at De Equitibus also helped her gain a broader understanding of different types of writing. She says, “I think because De Equitibus is a smaller paper you kind of have a little bit more freedom to do sports or do reporting like on student events. I think it kind of gave me a little bit more experience in different types of journalism.” Annie explains that being a part of the smaller TPA paper gave her an opportunity to experiment.
Finally, her induction as official head editor happens on May 3. For her goals in the next year, she wants to make The Maneater a more inviting place for writers of all skills levels. She says, “I’m really excited to see what I can do this next year.”