When Mary Ramsey arrived at the University of South Carolina, she was already certain of two things: she wanted to be a Gamecock, and she wanted to be a journalist.
“I have been a Gamecock my whole life,” she says, adding that her father, Jasper Ramsey, graduated from USC in 1981. “I grew up going to football games and going to basketball games. But my parents did not push me in any way to go to USC. The joke was I was allowed to go to any school but one.”
Her decision to attend USC was as practical as it was personal. “Obviously the ability to pay in-state tuition never hurts,” says Ramsey, who graduated magna cum laude in 2019 with a degree in journalism. It was the strength of that program that really sealed the deal for Ramsey to come to USC.
“I loved that it had a really great balance of practical classes and things that were a little more theory based,” she says. “I felt some schools were one way or the other, but USC's program had a really good mix. You were doing hands-on stuff very early on, like freshman, sophomore year. But you were also getting to do more seminar classes and talk big picture.”
She also had her eye on The Daily Gamecock, USC’s student newspaper where Ramsey worked, eventually becoming editor-in-chief and gaining the newsroom experience she would carry into her career.
From the start, she immersed herself in the campus community, joining the service sorority Epsilon Sigma Alpha and participating in Dance Marathon. She notes that during her tenure at Carolina, Dance Marathon raised more than $1 million for the first time. She also reveled in USC’s athletics success during her years at USC and still has the special editions of The Daily Gamecock from the men’s and women’s 2017 Final Four runs during her sophomore year.
Inside the classroom, she found professors who shaped her skills and outlook. She remembers Kevin Hull’s positivity and ability to connect professional experience with practical teaching. Former professor Michelle LaRoche, who had been an editor at the Wall Street Journal, urged Ramsey to apply for the Dow Jones News Fund internship. “That really sort of laid my path from how I’ve gone from graduation to where I am today professionally,” Ramsey says.
And then there was senior semester, under the guidance of veteran newspaper reporter and professor Carolyn Click, who remembers Ramsey as “delightful, but tenacious” and “an intense personality. When she gets hold of something she wants to do, she does it.”
During that semester, two residents at a public housing project in Columbia were found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Residents were evacuated and other long-term problems at the project known as Allen Benedict Court surfaced. It was a major story for Columbia news organizations.
Many student journalists might have been intimidated to pursue such a difficult, sensitive story, Click says. But Ramsey and a classmate didn’t hesitate. “They were willing to take that on,” Click says. “You don’t often find that where students are willing to go out into this strange part of town and start interviewing people.”
Click says Ramsey’s drive was matched by her quiet leadership style. “Mary was a quiet person, but she was a strong leader and kind of raised the expertise in the room,” she says. And, importantly for a young journalist, she “knew the ethics of journalism, the boundaries, how to do the work.”
Ramsey appreciated how the program encouraged students to stretch beyond their comfort zones. “Because I came in so focused, professors tried to gently nudge me to try more outside that, just so I didn’t inadvertently miss out on anything,” she says.
A Maymester study abroad trip to Cuba, which included meeting with U.S. officials, local artists and Cuban state media journalists, became one of her favorite USC memories. “It just seemed really intriguing to me and I had a wonderful experience,” she says.
After graduating, Ramsey’s path followed the foundation USC had helped her build. The Dow Jones internship placed her at the Arizona Republic as a digital producer. She then joined the Louisville Courier Journal, first in production, then as a breaking news reporter. There, she was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for coverage of a Kentucky pardon scandal. The following year, the staff was a finalist for its coverage of the Breonna Taylor protests.
In 2022, she returned to her Carolina roots, joining The Charlotte Observer. She began on the service journalism desk — “a relatively new venture,” she says. “We have a lot of room to try new things and explore different topics and story styles.” From there, she moved to the local government and politics beat, where she earned her own byline in a Pulitzer finalist package on Hurricane Helene’s devastation in Western North Carolina.
“I suspect her editors say she’s a self-starter and someone you don’t have to hold their hand,” Click says. “She just has that ‘it girl’ kind of feel to her.”
Looking back, Ramsey sees the through-lines from her time at USC to her success today. She points to the early hands-on opportunities, the mentorship from professors who combined newsroom experience with teaching and the leadership roles she took in student media. She also credits the collaborative, high-energy environment of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
Ramsey still leans on advice she first heard in a USC classroom: “Some days you’re the bear and some days the bear eats you.” It’s a reminder, she says, to keep perspective when things don’t go as planned — something “a perfectionist like myself needs sometimes.”