Young Reporter Has News, Civic Engagement in Her Blood

Renée Morin sports an old-fashioned press hat, a gift from co-workers at the Sanford Springvale News.

Photo: Gail Burnett

By Gail Burnett

Renée Morin understands why many people – including most people of her generation – don’t follow the news, or don’t trust what mainstream news outlets tell them. But she’s OK with being an exception.

Morin, 19, of Sanford, says the stakes are just too high in this election year for citizens to ignore what’s going on with their government, politics and environment.

“I really believe that if people understand what they’re voting for, they will tend to vote in the country’s best interest,” she said.

Her focus on the news – she follows several news outlets online, including CNN, MSNBC and the Wall Street Journal – earned her a reputation as the person who knew things at The New School in Kennebunk, where she graduated on June 15.

“Most of my friends don’t watch the news or anything like that,” she said, and have told her they depend on her to keep them informed. “It’s really flattering to be trusted so much, but it’s a lot of responsibility.”

The New School requires seniors to spend 200 hours doing something they believe in. Morin’s project was to volunteer as a reporter with the Sanford Springvale News, a job that has involved watching hours of City Council meetings, reporting on public hearings and on election results. She attends biweekly remote meetings of the SSN staff – meetings at which she is the youngest person present by at least a couple of decades.

She plans to continue with the newspaper this summer, working around her job at Jetpack Comics & Games in Rochester, NH, and then see how things look when she starts attending York County Community College in the fall. Her long-term plan is to attend law school and then work in immigration law. In both these endeavors she’ll be following the example of her father, Brad Morin, who worked at two newspapers before deciding to study law. He is now a partner at Bourque, Clegg, Causey and Morin in Sanford, where her mother, Stacey Morin, is a paralegal.

Even if school pulls her away from the SSN in the fall, Morin says she fully intends to return to reporting when she has the time. “That’s the best thing you can do for the community – to have an informed community,” she said. “I kind of want to be a part of that.”