If you were at this week’s mayoral and councilmember swearing- in ceremony hosted at the Richmond Hill City Center, you may have seen a new face in the room.
(Well, there were a lot of faces in the room, but I’m referring to the new face right next to my stupid face camped out in the back of the room, hunched behind the camera crews from various TV stations from the Savannah area. Sidenote: I definitely have a face for radio…).
Standing right next to me that night was our new reporter Lucy Lannigan. I say “our” because this paper is above all, a community- led enterprise–not to be confused with the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek, although that would be cool if our Ford Avenue office could get a galactic re-design.
Within the Morris Multimedia Cinematic Universe, Lucy is our Regional Growth and Development reporter, which is newspaper- speak for covering all the shiny new houses, businesses, and industries that gather, ahem, strong opinions from folks in city hall meetings all across America.
Her position is completely brand-new, and she’ll be reporting and writing on stories in Bryan, Bulloch, Effingham, and Liberty County. Think of her as the Peter Parker to my Daily Bugle’s J. Jonah Jameson, except I don’t think she moonlights as an annoyingly cool superhero in her free time.
What can I tell you about Lucy? She was born and raised in Key West, Florida, and attended the University of Florida (ugh), graduating with a degree in Journalism in 2023. During her time there, she wrote for Florida’s student-run newspaper The Independent Florida Alligator, which is similar to Georgia’s The Red & Black–except less cool, obviously. (Okay, okay, they do have a cool Spanish-language section on their paper’s website called “El Caíman” so kudos to them. What can Georgia come up with? ‘El Bulldog?’) Lucy is passionate about community journalism; she moved here from Albany, Georgia, where she worked as a staff writer at the Albany Herald covering all sorts of happenings. I spoke with her last month during the holiday season interlull, and I was already impressed by the fact that she could locate our office using Apple Maps with zero issues. (So many people get lost trying to find us, it’s ridiculous).
While we chatted over coffee (or chai latte in my case), I quickly realized that we had so much in common, despite our alma maters. We both love reading, writing, listening to podcasts, and complaining about our parents. But there is one area where she is way better than me–inspiration.
Lucy is clearly someone who’s not afraid of new beginnings and new challenges, which is why she took this job and moved across the state to pursue it, despite this industry seeing constant upheavals every single day/minute/nanosecond. News can drive anyone bonkers; just ask my predecessor, who luckily still graces this paper with the occasional college football column mixed with sharp social commentary (Please don’t leave us, Jeff! Who else will insult Ohio State fans living in Coastal Georgia).
Even though I am technically Lucy’s editor, I feel like we’re partners, like Batman and Superman. (I don’t know which hero is me and which one is her, but I’ll ask her for her thoughts later). I have learned a lot from her already, and I hope she can learn a lot from me too. Because at the end of the day, our goal is the same: to bring high-quality, hyperlocal, insightful, and meaningful news coverage of Bryan County to our readers.
I’ve already asked Lucy to write an introductory column of her own to run next week, so keep an eye out for that. But in the meantime, if you see Lucy Lannigan out and about in Bryan County, struggling to get onto GA-144 after exiting the Publix parking lot on Richmond Hill Plantation, be sure to say “hello” and help her navigate traffic if you can. After all, she’s now our friendly neighborhood Growth and Development reporter. (Driving in Bryan County is a superpower in and of itself these days…).
Andrea Gutierrez is the managing editor of the Bryan County News.
