Meet Erron Thomas, a Fall 2020 Lede New Orleans Fellow
Erron Thomas will be doing community reporting work in New Orleans this fall as part of the Lede New Orleans fellowship program.
By Jennifer Larino
Erron Thomas, a sophomore at the University of New Orleans, wants to leave his mark on the world. As a child growing up in Algiers, he was fascinated with the idea of becoming a gray-haired philosopher surrounded by books. Today, his interests are in law and writing. Thomas, 21, is interested in profiling civic leaders in New Orleans.
What does community mean to you?
Community to me means a place where it allows for any — and I mean any — walk of life to do whatever they feel comfortable doing.
If you got to design your own community reporting beat, what would it be?
It would definitely be profile oriented. Deep-dive interviews with a person… People who make things run. CEOs, teachers.
Tell us about a project that meant a lot to you.
There was this project that I did sophomore year in high school for my history class at the time. It was a research paper. We had to figure out a topic and a time period to write about in history. We also had to have some sort of visual aspect to it. I chose the Scottsboro Trial and wrote about that. I felt like it was just really relevant.
What is your goal for this fellowship?
I want to work on focusing on the little things and on seeing the importance in that. Like scheduling. Like pre-work… To not be so eager to just get going on something, but to also get eager about the process needed to get going.
