By Grace Yurko ’25
During morning assembly, otherwise known as Prayers by St. Paul’s School for Girls students, on February 21st Marta Karpovich (‘25), a writer on The Voice, introduced her father Todd Karpovich to speak to SPSG faculty and staff about his job as a writer and editor for the Baltimore Sun. He started his speech discussing how he had always wanted to be a journalist and loved to read and write. Karpovich began his writing career by writing for his school newspaper at Calvert Hall College High School. This is where he displayed his love for sports through writing. After high school, Karpovich went to Randolph-Macon College, where he majored in English. He indicated that “learning how to write news and understand intricacies of reporting while [he] was still in school laid the foundation for the rest of [his] career, because [he] was free to discover [his] passions, make mistakes, and learn hard lessons.”
While working for the Baltimore Sun, he covered high school sports including football, soccer, and tennis and eventually progressed to college football and basketball for the Associated Press. He was assigned 300-word stories that had to be sent to the editor quickly. This took a lot of adjusting to, but his writing improved because he listened to the criticism and learned from his mistakes. Any criticism that he received, he would save and use it before writing each story. He stated that he “had to remember to separate [himself] from [his] work because criticism isn’t a reflection on [someone’s] personality; it’s a critique on whatever you are working on so that you can make it better.”
Later on, Karpovich was given the chance to cover the Baltimore Ravens and the Baltimore Orioles. While writing these articles he had to make sure he was a fair outsider, although he was a big fan of his home teams. He had to ask himself: “What do the readers really want to know about this game? What is most important to them?.” Working with professional sports, Karpovich had to work swiftly with a lot of information. Therefore, there was a lot of room for mistakes. He had to “listen to [his] superiors and take their comments seriously so that [he] could move forward.”
Karpovich currently works in the news division for the Baltimore Sun. Some of the largest stories he has gotten to cover include the Luigi Mangione hearings, the plane crashes in DC, the Justin Tucker lawsuits, and the various crimes around Baltimore. Over his years of journalism, he has learned “that the harder you work, the luckier you will get.” Karpovich believes that covering sports is different than covering news because it is harder to get information about stories. Because of this, he needed to establish a sense of trust with the people he talked to about the news.
Karpovich loves being a journalist because he gets to be part of some big events. He states that “it is a really great feeling to contribute to something larger than [himself] and know that [his] work will make an impact of people.” He also loves that he can find stories that interest him. Feeling a connection to his work makes him excited to start each workday.
Karpovich stated that journalism “is vital to our health as a society that we can rely on the news to keep us informed.” He also believes that “without journalists, so much would go unnoticed and unchecked – journalists keep people accountable and guide people through events as they unfold.” To finish off his speech Karpovich encouraged everyone to follow their passions and pursue what they love. He also left SPSG students with this important lesson: “Criticism often makes you better at your job and you can’t take it personally, especially when it comes from someone with more experience.”
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