Erika Siebring has been interested in journalism since her sophomore year of high school. In Parker, a town close to Aurora, Siebring took an introduction to journalism class at Chaparral High School. From there, she worked for “The Crier,” the school’s monthly newspaper. It was fully staffed with editors and reporters and overlooked by a teacher acting as an adviser. She typically wrote for the arts section and had her own column reviewing books.
“It’s fascinating to be able to talk to other people and just figure out where they come from, what stories they have to tell, what their perspective is like,” Siebring said. “It’s a lot of fun.”
Now, going into her senior year at the University of Northern Colorado, she will be the new editor-in-chief of “The Mirror.”
Siebring has been on the staff of “The Mirror” since August 2016. She started as a reporter for the arts and culture section of the paper, then was promoted to editor of arts and culture after one semester. She remained in that position for a year. This semester, she has served as the newspaper’s managing editor. On the side Siebring has worked an internship at the Johnstown Breeze and will be interning at Denver Life Magazine in Englewood over the summer.
Siebring, a journalism major in the news and multimedia emphasis, graduates in May 2019. She is also minoring in computer science, providing for a practical, but distinctive skill set that makes her stand out from the rest. However, Siebring said she has always been interested in nonfiction as well as creative writing, as she is writing her own creative nonfiction memoir.
Siebring is an active member of the UNC community, serving as an editor and secretary for “The Crucible,” UNC’s literary magazine. She is also president for Write for Market, a writing club that hosts workshops and meet and greets with published authors, in order to help members exercise their creative writing skills and get their works published.
Matt Lubich, the general manager of “The Mirror,” highly recommended her in being selected for the position.
“It’s been my pleasure to work with Erika the past several years and I’m looking forward to the fall with her being editor-in-chief,” Lubich said. “I think she and her staff are going to do great things.”
Will Costello, who has served as the editor-in-chief for several years now, supported Lubich in recommending Siebring. This is primarily because she has experienced the challenging transitional period of “The Mirror’ becoming more oriented to publishing online stories and more in-depth stories in its monthly print issues.
“She’s been right there on the front lines,” Costello said. “And she saw the way we used to do things, and she’s seen the way we do things now. So that gives her a lot of insight, I think, on what has worked and what has not worked and what is the best way to handle this new beast that we’ve decided to create.”
Costello began the year with a letter, which was the newspaper’s first post on its new website, marking the beginning of a new journey for the student newspaper as its focus turned toward the internet.
“I’ve worked at the Mirror since my first year at UNC, and as I start my last, my hope is that I’m able to leave the Mirror on strong footing,” Costello said in the letter. “I desperately want it to succeed, but if it does, it will be because people like you went to our site, clicked on our Facebook posts or picked up our paper. I hope we can make something worthy of your attention.”
Siebring says she respects Costello for the time he has been editor-in-chief, and has some preliminary small-scale changes in mind for the paper.
“I am really excited to take on that role,” Siebring said. “While I’m not exactly sure what sort of big and huge picture changes I want to make, or if I want to make huge, big-picture changes, I am really excited to see what happens, what gets thrown at me.”
