Margo Reed is a multimedia storyteller who got her start at The Philadelphia Inquirer. In 2018, she started producing oral history videos as part of a historical documentation of Oley Valley, which is the first Pennsylvania township in its entirety in protected by the National Record of Historic Places. Margo takes particular interest in oral history documentaries and stories about older adults, but also works by commission on documentary and commercial videos.
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Our Lost Creek
The first European settlers called the bowl-shaped valley "Oley" after the Lenni Lenape name for the region, "Olink," meaning kettle or hole. English Quakers, French Huguenots, and especially German immigrants were attracted to the valley's fertile farmland, abundant springs and flowing streams. These fertile fields and water sources still provide for family farms 300 years later. One of those family farms, "R Lost Creek Dairy Farm", has been run by the Schlegel family since 1935.
After the creek dried up in the 1970s, the farm was part of a pioneering effort to put Oley township on the National Register of Historic places, which protects it from development that would further change the landscape of the valley.
Produced, Filmed, Edited by: Margo Reed
Historical research and text: Tom Stokes and Kelly Spatz
What the future would hold
In 1979, a group of recently-graduated journalism students embarked in an inaugural Dow Jones News Fund residency that aimed to help diversify newsrooms. The program invited nine students with diverse, minority backgrounds to Bethlehem Pennsylvania, where they took journalism classes from leaders in the industry before heading off to their internships for the summer, and then to their fruitful careers.
All of the students in the group went on to work in journalism. They did anything from editing to reporting to masthead-level positions at some of the largest newsrooms in the country.
In 2023, the group reunited in person for the first time in 44 years, this time alongside another pioneering group-- the Dow Jones News Fund inaugural group of audience engagement interns. Together, the group grew together from recounting past experiences, and discussions about the future of newsrooms in America.