Hilde Lysiak, the 11-year-old reporter uncovering corruption in her neighborhood, might be the coolest journalist around
We all have our favorite reporters, and now a new one has made our list. Hilde Lysiak, the 11-year-old reporter who started a newspaper for her neighborhood, might be the coolest journalist around. You may remember The New York Times doing a story on her back in October, highlighting a series of books that she works on with her father, Matthew Lysiak. There are six books in the crime reporter’s series, Hilde Cracks the Case. They’re inspired by Hilde’s experiences reporting news for her own publication, Orange Street News, in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania.
Though talk of the young journalist has been flooding Twitter this weekend, we first learned Hilde Lysiak’s name back in April 2016 when her reporting experiences went viral. Hint: She’d broken a story on a local homicide. Yup, a pretty heavy subject matter, but one which she handled like the pro that she is, interviewing neighbors at the scene of the crime. In fact, her story was online before other news outlets had even reported it. Mic drop! We are super impressed. “I think a lot of adults tell their kids they can do anything, but at the end of the day don’t actually let them do anything,” she told the NYT. Big props to her for making her dreams come true, right?
Now Hilde Lysiak is going viral again after an interview with her made the rounds on Twitter.
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The whole thing is worth reading — and you can find it online from the Society of Professional Journalists — but we love this quote particularly.
"Because of my age, I can’t always report on the stories I want to report on. Sometimes the magistrate will refuse to give me the criminal complaints, or my parents won’t let me go to some places. But sometimes I can catch people off guard and they reveal more than they mean to," Hilde said. "People often talk down to me, or underestimate me. I say, let them. It gives me an advantage."
We also love learning more about the story she’s most proud of writing where she overcame several serious obstacles to get the news.
"The story I’m most proud of is the investigation on my local fire station. After that story ran, officials sent me messages threatening to have my paper taken away if I kept writing about it. But I didn’t let them scare me. Eventually, the truth about the corruption at the fire station came out, but it took a lot of hard work and digging. (Also, the firefighters had their meetings at a bar, so I wasn’t allowed to go because of my age.)"
She definitely has a lot of fans, and we’re not the least bit surprised.
We need more people in the world like her
— M. Emerson (@TranscendantM) November 17, 2017
I look forward to this girl being my boss in 10 years
— Jeremy B. White (@JeremyBWhite) November 17, 2017
Somebody offer this girl a journalism scholarship, because one day they will want to say that she went to their school.
— William Wu (@workwilliam) November 17, 2017
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When will they air this as a TV-series? I would binge watch it!
— Hasampouli (@Hasampouli) November 17, 2017
To add even more icing to Lysiak’s cake, her story has been optioned by Paramount TV and Anonymous Content for a TV series. One thing’s for sure: We’d definitely watch, and we’re sure many others would, too. Meanwhile, we’re going to check out Lysiak’s books… And, of course, read every story Hilde’s every written — especially the one about the scandal at the fire station.