Bergey joins SI editorial team

Coming in at 5-foot, 3-inches, most people look at her and think “has she even graduated high school?” The answer is yes, she has, and unfortunately, she is 24 turning 80.

And if you missed the headline, we’re talking about Alyssa Bergey, the newest reporter at The Sampson Independent, a 24-year-old northern Michigan native who quit her job working in a television news station to try her luck doing something new in North Carolina. After sending in applications for every job under the sun across the state of North Carolina, she said she was able to find it here in Clinton.

Now this is the part of the story where most people are asking “why did she move to North Carolina?” And the long answer is that she wanted to find a new place to live where she could stretch her wings and figure out who she wanted to be before she reached her thirties and realized she hated her life.

The medium answer: she needed a change in scenery to find her passion for journalism again.

The short answer: her mom lives here and was offering cheap rent and the ability to cuddle with two dogs.

And this leads to the part of the story where everyone still reading wants to know who Alyssa Bergey is so they can start forming their opinions about her. Luckily for all of the readers out there, she’ll introduce herself. Unluckily for Alyssa, she’s not very good at doing that.

But what she is good at is making lists. So, she took her cue from dating sites she never uses and listed everything that makes Alyssa, well, Alyssa.

So here we go, introducing Alyssa Bergey in the only way that she knows how (by making it not about her at all).

The basics go like this: Alyssa is a middle child with an older sister, an older brother and two younger brothers. She has two nieces and a nephew that she adores, and four dogs that she would do anything for. Her father lives in Michigan with his wife, Erica, and her mother lives in Onslow County with her husband, Stan. She has spent most of her life living in Michigan, and even went to college in a town with a population less than 1,000 when the college was closed for the summer.

Olivet College, now formally known as the University of Olivet, is where Alyssa found her love for journalism and learning everything she could. She spent four years living on the campus, making somewhat lasting friendships and diving into every project that came her way. She worked on the college’s newspaper from freshman to junior year, worked in the radio station for three years where she created two different shows with two of her friends, filmed a few events, photographed even more and never stopped learning.

And then in 2021, she graduated Summa Cum Laude with a degree in Journalism and Mass Communications., a degree that would give her a chance to work as a digital content producer at a northern Michigan news station before bringing her to Sampson County to become a newspaper reporter.

But her degree and her former jobs aren’t what is important. What is important is learning more about Alyssa as a person, and we’ll start with her hobbies, which, she acknowledges, aren’t a lot. Being outside of work means she is doing one of three things: watching TV, reading or sleeping.

But what is she watching? What is she reading?

If the television is on then that means she’s either watching a show in English like Psych, which she’s finished three times now, anything and everything Scooby Doo, which has been her obsession since she could remember, or something that isn’t in English. These shows could be something like anime, where her current favorites are Jujutsu Kaisen, One Piece and Mr. Villain’s Day Off, Korean Dramas, where she’s never stopped re-watching Goblin or What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim, or any other foreign drama with characters that make her fall in love with them.

But if she’s reading, well books just don’t cut it anymore. Sure, she has her favorites like Pride and Prejudice, Cemetery Boys or All the Bright Places, but she has fallen in love with comics and manga.

The manga that she’s reading usually overlaps with the anime she’s watching, like Jujutsu Kaisen and One Piece, but she also has a love for romance stories like Fruit’s Basket, Given, or Whisper Me a Love Song.

Comics wise though, she’s only reading from one publisher and that’s DC Comics. With a collection of almost 300 comics and a to-be-read section that’s over half of that, Alyssa fell in love with comics in 2022 and hasn’t looked back. And honestly, this whole introduction could just become a literary analysis of multiple characters, storylines and comics, but that’s not what this is for. So, for now, we’ll just say if you want to learn more about Alyssa’s favorite characters or comics, feel free to ask and be ready for a full three-minute rant.

And now comes the point in the story where we wrap it up. There’s so much more that could be said. So many stories that she could share, but that can be saved until later. There’s always more time to get to know Alyssa, especially since she’s hoping to stay here for a while.