Greetings readers, you may be reading today’s Herald and wondering who this new byline is.

My name is Alex Hargrave and I recently moved to Torrington to work as a general assignment reporter for The Lusk Herald and The Torrington Telegram. By recently, I mean just over one week ago. My dad and I drove the 23 hours from my hometown in Northeast Pennsylvania, passing through five states along the way. Now that I’m settled, I’m eager to start reporting.

Just under a month ago, I (virtually) graduated Magna Cum Laude from Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia with a bachelors’ degree in English and communication studies. At St. Joe’s, I was an editor for the university’s weekly student newspaper, The Hawk. I stumbled into an interest meeting for the publication in the first week of my freshman year knowing I loved to write and that working for a newspaper entailed writing. I started covering sports, as there was an opening for a women’s soccer beat writer, and I happened to have played soccer for 13 years up until that point. From there, I became the publication’s sports editor, then features editor, then digital managing editor and finished my tenure there as special projects editor, primarily coordinating coronavirus coverage. 

The work I’m most proud of from my time as a student journalist is my reporting on the St. Joe’s cleaning staff’s fight for a higher wage. Illuminating the voices of vulnerable populations on my campus is why I decided to pursue a career in journalism, and therefore part of why I’m in Torrington right now. 

My career path was solidified by a month-long study tour in South Africa with two journalism professors and advisers for The Hawk. I, along with 11 other students, travelled around the country working as a foreign correspondent, shooting photos along with researching and reporting stories on a range of topics including sexism, racism, sexual violence, education and cuisine. 

Connecting with a community and telling their stories is what I love to do, and I’m grateful to be doing just that for Telegram and the Herald, with a team who I already know from just a few conversations is passionate about local news and delivering factual stories to their readers. 

In addition to working for my school’s newspaper, I completed a sports reporting internship with The Philadelphia Inquirer and a social media and communications internship with Coal Creative Digital Marketing in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. I also worked at the SJU Writing Center as a tutor and spent a semester abroad in Galway, Ireland.

When I’m not reporting, I’m enjoying a coffee, running, travelling, reading a good book, petting a dog or scrolling through Twitter. 

Feel free to shoot me an email at ahargrave@luskherald.com or DM me on Twitter @_AlexHargrave if you have a story you think should be told or if you just want to say hi and chat.