Despite it occurring 14 years ago, Brittany Norvell Priest remembers her first introduction to BLANK Newspaper fondly. She was introduced to owner/publisher Rusty Odom over drinks at Preservation Pub and has been writing for the outlet ever since.
With an art degree from UT and writing experience from Waster, a pop-culture digital publication based in New Jersey, Priest’s reputation preceded her, and Odom started out by assigning her album reviews.
Beyond her professional experience, Priest was well-equipped for a career in the arts by her family, which nurtured in her a love of writing at an early age.
“I was very lucky that I had a creative family that were not only gifted themselves but also understood the importance of art, making, writing and expressing yourself,” Priest says.
Her love for writing blossomed in a journalism literature class she took while attending the University of Tennessee. She says that her professor, Dr. Paul Ashdown, and the book “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote helped give her an appreciation for the process of taking a true story and transforming it into something fun to read.
Priest says that she mostly wrote mostly fictional stories growing up and was not interested in the idea of newswriting at first.
“I wanted to write about characters and not necessarily about what is really happening and the day-to-day world,” she explains.
BLANK gave her the freedom to delve into people’s stories through interviews and feature articles in a way that helped her find her niche and keep the complex storytelling that she loved to write intact.
From her first review of a Tame Impala album to her recent piece on “Moulin Rouge” to personal features, like last issue’s look at BLANK editor Matt Rankin, that feel more like short-form biographies thanks to her individualized storytelling, Priest’s distinctive eye for human interest is apparent in her writing.
Priest says that writing for BLANK has also challenged her at times and helped her grow as a writer through experience, like when she covered the American Olympic team’s last practice before the 2012 games in London.
“I felt a different level of importance [with the Olympic piece] from other pieces that I’d written. … I hadn’t been involved in a lot of those experiences prior to that because this wasn’t something I studied, and I’m in there with a press pool for the local journalists, international outlets and national outlets. It was a very surreal moment, and it was just unique,” Priest says.
From interviewing Olympic medalists to covering local hotspots, Priest appreciates the sense of community that writing for BLANK helps her curate. She says that the level of trust the staff shares is something unique to the publication and has kept her involved all these years. She has loved seeing the newspaper become an “established institution” in Knoxville and grow its readership, and she appreciates that it has provided her with a platform to grow her own skills as a journalist.
“[BLANK] literally incorporated itself into my life here in Knoxville and beyond,” Priest says. “I wouldn’t have made some connections otherwise, and I am very thankful to have something that’s so much bigger than myself that I can be a part of in such a personal way.”
henson@blanknews.com
