During her time as a Bugle staffer and editor, Kennedy McKinney ‘19 decided that she wanted to make journalism her career, but it was during her freshman year of college at Florida Atlantic University when she made the decision to start a newspaper.

McKinney originally joined FAU’s school newspaper, The University Press, but after seeing that they were failing to cover the minority side of FAU, she decided to take matters into her own hands and start FAU’s first Black newspaper.

It started out, really, by just asking people in my classes if they were interested in joining this newspaper,” McKinney said.

The group began having meetings in dorm rooms and study lounges, and eventually launched their online newspaper: The Paradigm Press.

“The idea was that we wanted to be a model for the community, and a paradigm is a model or something to go after,” explained McKinney. “We wanted to serve as a model for the community, and also since it was the first black newspaper at a predominately white institution, it was a big deal, a big shift, from the normal, so that’s how we got the name.”

McKinney said the focus of The Paradigm Press is hard news, politics, and current events, anything “affecting the minority community.

“We do current-events stories that are affecting the minority community. So, anything happening in politics we do cover that as well,” McKinney said.

In addition to their usual topics, McKinney explains that the location of FAU has given them the ability to tell especially riveting and special stories.

“Since we’re in South Florida, we have a very rich Caribbean diaspora here, so just being able to talk about them and their history … just being able to highlight the work that they’re doing has been the best,” said McKinney.

The process of creating a newspaper at her college was relatively simple. As FAU is a public campus, students can start clubs and organizations easily. While starting the paper posed no issues, maintaining it has been a bit tougher.

“It wasn’t that hard to start it but definitely trying to maintain it has been a struggle because people graduate, so it’s definitely hard to keep our staff fully working,” McKinney said.

McKinney describes the struggle of maintaining staff through the pandemic and this year’s recovery.

“It’s definitely fluctuated, we started off with like 20 staff members, but when Covid happened, that got cut down to like 10. People had to just let it go, because of their lives at home and stuff. Now we’re back to like 20 staff members, so that’s been a positive,” McKinney said.

Though she didn’t see any major changes in responsibilities going from editor-in-chief of the Bugle to the same role on The Paradigm Press, McKinney’s writing style and subject matter have both evolved.

“Back when I was in Bugle in high school I was more interested in, like, entertainment journalism, but now that I’ve been doing journalism in college, I’m more interested in the politics side, things like that.”

McKinney’s preferred area of journalism before entering college was entertainment journalism, but since starting her journalism major and following the Black Lives Matter movement, she has found herself more geared toward politics. After graduation, she plans on going to law school and using her degrees to become a local correspondent.

“The classes wanted more serious articles and stories, so not the fluff pieces or any type of entertainment, they wanted more hard-hitting journalism, so I just started to write more political stories. Also following summer of 2020 with the Black Lives Matter movement, that also made me very interested in politics, and I wanted to start covering that side of the news cycle.” explained McKinney.

Overall, McKinney’s experience on the Bugle prepared her for running her own publication, as well as her future career in journalism. Seeing a need in her community, she decided to use her skills in journalism to fill it, and deliver much-needed information and stories to her school and beyond.

“I feel like everyone has a story, you just have to ask the right questions to get it out of them. And celebrate them as well, that’s the best part.”