Oliver Egger
Durham, North Carolina
Wesleyan University, Class of 2023
English
Two days after graduating from Wesleyan University, my partner and I piled our books, our clothes, their plethora of plants, their tiny dog named Precious, and my newly Facebook marketplace-purchased kayak into my truck and drove to our temporary home in Provincetown.
This North Carolina boy has jumped right into the excitement of this place: getting lost on a walk in the sand dunes, sea glass hunting with middle-aged ladies by the bay, being by far the least buff man at Mussel Beach, and pretending to be a jaded local at the Old Colony Tap.
Above all, I’ve been feeling a deep gratitude to be at the Independent this summer, covering this complex and beautiful place.
In comparison to the other fellows, I am a bit of a black sheep in terms of my journalism experience. My primary focus for much of my life has been writing poetry and forming and working in art-focused organizations. I founded a literary collective in Middlesex County, Conn., which worked to bridge the literary divide between the local community and Wesleyan University. Through that, I founded several magazines and edited and compiled a literary anthology that brought together writing by university students, faculty, and staff, and community members. The Route 9 Anthology was published in Fall 2022 by Wesleyan University Press.
I am so excited to use journalism as a platform to tell the stories of people here who are creating and nurturing art. I want to get to know not only the established artistic institutions but also the smaller local communities. Bring me your writing groups, poetry parlors, wine and cheese painting clubs, backyard theater, and dining room concerts.
Reading and writing poetry requires paying attention, caring for each word, every punctuation mark. This care can make what once seemed obvious new again. Even in my short time so far at the Independent, I’ve seen that dedicated journalism is about having a deep attention for the stories and people of a place. These stories paint a vibrant picture of a community, and I hope they help a place and people know themselves better. In this stretch of sand abounding with stories, whether I’m covering a reading or a town-hall meeting, the poetry will be there.
P.S.: If you know of any weekly kayak groups looking for an inexperienced but eager paddler, let me know.
Sophie Griffin
Wainscott, New York
Wesleyan University, Class of 2023
English, film studies, social theory
Before college, I worked a bit for a local magazine but hadn’t seriously considered journalism. At Wesleyan, I wrote and edited for our campus newspaper, the Argus. From freshman orientation and beyond, working on the paper deepened my understanding of my campus community and connection to it.
Some of my favorite assignments from my time there were a look back at the university’s coeducation, 50 years on; a piece on a formerly incarcerated musician and his work doing sound design; and interviews with “WesCelebs” — particularly notable seniors who were chosen for profiles. My time at the Argus sparked an enthusiasm for journalism and a desire to put my writing in service of reporting.
The past two summers, I was an intern at the Express News Group: four newspapers plus websites covering the East End of Long Island. There, I had the good fortune to work with and for excellent community-focused journalists and write about the vibrant cultural landscape of the area. Deep-diving into the work of artists and talking with them about their processes, goals, and lives was fascinating.
I particularly enjoyed writing for the paper’s magazine and the occasional news assignments that came my way, which included covering lifeguard shortages and the rental market as well as telling the story of a Ukrainian family who had resettled in the area. For many, the Hamptons is just a summer destination for affluent New Yorkers — all beaches and Balenciaga stores — but as a year-round resident you see it from a different angle.
Reporting gave me a new way of understanding local issues from housing to erosion. Over those two summers, I learned how a local paper operates day-to-day and how valuable a good one can be to the people who read it.
So, with the finish line of graduation bearing down on me, I knew I wanted to continue working in independent local journalism (and stay near an ocean, if possible). I am so thrilled to be spending this summer at the Independent and on Cape Cod. I look forward to exploring the area through the articles I write as well as by bike and surfboard. I feel grateful to join such a mission-driven and dynamic newsroom and such a vibrant community. I can’t wait to dive in.
Georgia Hall
London, England
Davidson College, Class of 2025
Environmental social science and French and Francophone studies
Serendipity and curiosity: the most apt descriptions for my path into journalism. A friend once described me as “flighty,” but I would firmly disagree. Instead, I have an insatiable appetite for new experiences. My high school across the pond didn’t have a school paper or literary magazine. So, when I stumbled upon The Davidsonian in the fall of my freshman year at college, it instantly piqued my curiosity.
The exploratory liberal arts curriculum drew me to study in the United States. Back home, your degree revolves around a single subject, leaving little room for sidelights. Davidson has led me to uncharted waters from scientific labs to the performing arts, and, most significantly, to journalism.
In my first semester, I wrote stories uncovering multifarious nooks and crannies of campus. My articles covered a range of topics, including Davidson’s historical ties to slavery, local entrepreneurs, and the new climate action plan. After becoming news editor, I now sniff out and assign articles for a dedicated team of writers, always keeping an ear to the ground for the latest stories.
Last semester, I wrote for the Lake Norman Citizen, the county paper, along with writing news stories about the college. This meant venturing into fun reviews of local bands and trying out the latest restaurants.
No two stories or days are identical in reporting. I thrive on conversations with new people and relaying their stories.
As an environmental studies major, I naturally gravitate towards the outdoors. Since arriving in Provincetown, I’ve loved waking up to the sounds of cardinals and spotting chipmunks as I run along Old Colony Trail.
During my gap year, I worked in the Costa Rican jungle for two months on an environmental conservation project, and that’s when I caught the travel bug. Don’t worry, not the infectious disease kind, rather the saving-every-penny-for-a-plane-ticket kind. I eagerly seize opportunities for international adventure, whether it’s Cambodia, Fiji, Colombia, or Panama.
I visited Cape Cod when I was 13 and have many fond memories from my summer here. I can’t wait to make more by tapping into local dilemmas, exploring coastal wildlife, finding my favourite chowder in town, and experiencing something new every day.
Nicholas Miller
Baltimore, Maryland
Brown University, Class of 2024
English, Portuguese, and Brazilian studies
For a period of two weeks last year, bail bonds websites blanketed my computer screen.
I was reporting on a Rhode Island bill to ban cash bail for misdemeanor cases, and I quickly realized that the state’s bail system is exceptionally complex, mired in vague technical terms, confusing exceptions, and various options for judges and defendants. The legislative sponsor of the bill, a representative of the public defender’s office, and those various bail bonds websites that I kept rereading provided conflicting explanations. Even the state attorney general told me he didn’t fully understand the system.
Eventually the legal codes, legislative hearings, scholarly articles, statistics, and interviews began to elucidate for me the intricacies of what bail is all about. As a journalist, I could hope to shed some light on it for readers.
I see that our world is complicated, full of issues that affect people’s daily lives significantly, but whose origins, procedures, and impacts are below the surface and inaccessible. To me, journalism’s greatest power is to explain these structures and systems that shape our lives.
Enough reading, researching, and speaking with people allows a reporter to explain how a law operates, or why a road is designed the way it is, or who decides where a tree will (or won’t) be planted. It is this kind of explanatory reporting I have most enjoyed in writing for my college newspapers, the Brown Daily Herald and the College Hill Independent, for a news site in Cambridge called Cambridge Day, and for RioOnWatch, an outlet that focuses on the peripheries of Rio de Janeiro, where I spent last semester studying.
Besides being a fellow at the Independent, I am currently a fellow at The Nation, where I am learning how to apply this explanatory lens to national issues regarding employment trends and worker rights.
My world is not all nonfiction: at Brown, I founded Sole Magazine, a creative nonfiction publication. (But it does also publish longform journalism.)
I am thrilled to be spending the summer with the Independent on the Outer Cape, an area I have become enamored of over the course of several family vacations. During these 10 weeks, I hope to develop a far deeper understanding of the place as I report on the unique combination of issues faced by residents of the Outer Cape.
Elias Schisgall
Brooklyn, New York
Harvard University, Class of 2025
Social Studies
I never really expected to live in — much less write about — Provincetown and the Outer Cape in this way.
I’ve been coming here during the summer for essentially my whole life, to a place in Truro shared by my mother and her siblings. I grew to have a genuine — if somewhat surface-level — awe for Provincetown’s controlled chaos and artistic vibrancy, though always from the fleeting perspective of a visitor.
But as I began to embrace the independence of adulthood, I assumed that my path would largely diverge from the Cape and from Provincetown, save for the occasional visit.
At Harvard, I doubled down on journalism. I joined The Harvard Crimson as a staff writer, and in my first year did beat reporting on city politics and government in Cambridge. There, my work revolved around the issues plaguing Cambridge: government structure, transit, and above all, housing.
Only vaguely aware of the politics of housing as a high schooler, in college I got the opportunity to sink my teeth into its ins and outs through reporting. I spoke regularly with policymakers, local politicians, developers, and residents to understand the causes and impacts of Cambridge’s housing and affordability crisis and what the city was doing to alleviate them.
This work prompted me to think about more foundational questions of place and politics. I wanted to understand how location and housing could fundamentally shape peoples’ political and social lives; how towns, cities, and neighborhoods develop and grow; and how art, politics, and inequality manifest in the built environments in which we live.
Through it all, I gained a deep appreciation for the importance of local news in a well-functioning community. Good local journalism finds and amplifies stories that would otherwise never be told. More important, it fosters social trust and networks of care and support, making a place into a community.
Up to now, I’ve only approached Provincetown with an outsider’s wonder. But this time with the Independent is giving me a way to turn my wonder into something meaningful and real. I’m intrigued by how the newspaper both draws from and builds on this strange, brilliant universe. I’m excited beyond words to spend my summer in Provincetown as a fellow here. There’s a kaleidoscopic world here for me to discover, and I’m thrilled to begin learning.
Lesniak in a New Role
PROVINCETOWN — Janet Lesniak of Wellfleet, the founding director of Wellfleet Preservation Hall who retired from that spot in January, is the newly appointed executive director of the Local Journalism Project. She has been a member of the board of the nonprofit organization since its incorporation in 2022.
Lesniak moved to Wellfleet in 2009, “the same day the Obamas moved into the White House,” she says. Before that, she was the general manager of the Big Sur River Inn, which her family owns, for 20 years.
She directed Preservation Hall for almost 12 years. Her new job is part-time, 10 hours a week.
“I’ve been a newspaper junkie my whole life,” says Lesniak, “inherited from my parents. My dad would bring the New York Times and the Monterrey Herald every morning to sell at our store. We ended up getting two sets of each paper so each of us could have our own copy.”
The Local Journalism Project is the nonprofit partner of the Provincetown Independent, providing funds for journalism fellowships and other educational initiatives.
“I’m looking forward to getting people engaged in what the Independent is doing in our community,” says Lesniak. “The crazier things become in our country and in the world, having a clear understanding of what’s happening in our back yard becomes even more crucial. It’s one of the greatest tools we have in trying to maintain the integrity of our democracy.” —Edward Miller
