These are extraordinary times.

When our students in the University of South Carolina’s Senior Semester capstone program left for a much-needed spring break, they expected to return to the newsroom energized for the final six weeks of daily reporting.

We anticipated the usual routine – caffeinated morning meetings, deadline madness, job interviews, graduation portraits on the university’s historic Horseshoe. The march of the coronavirus has irrevocably altered that experience. Now our students are scattered, back to their families or to college apartments, to lives upended by the pandemic.

But they are still reporting. From their bedrooms and living rooms, they are anchoring daily newscasts, writing compelling stories, covering news conferences, interviewing community leaders, taping sports and weather. We meet on Zoom instead of across the newsroom, but even in virtual space their resilience is amazing. They have taken to heart their role as journalists in a democracy.

They know this is a historic time – and perhaps no better time to be a journalist.

--Carolyn Click, Senior Semester instructor