By Wyatt Crosher, Communications Coordinator for Student Affairs
While Patty Cox has only been at UNC Charlotte as an assistant director for Student Niner Media since January, her efforts before arriving at the University have earned national recognition.
Cox, who came to Charlotte after a decade working at the Weather Channel, earned awards for three stories she helped produce as editor in chief. The videos all focus on climate change and the impact it is having around the world. It is an issue that Cox said is more prominent now than people may think.
"There is no climate change debate. It's a contentious topic, but there should be no debate,” Cox said. “Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that it's here, it's happening and that, unfortunately, we are the ones that cause it. Communities all over are feeling its impact; It's no longer a thing that's in the future.”
The first of the award-winning videos is “Disaster Road,” which focuses on a stretch of highway in the south that has dealt with multiple natural disasters, at least in part due to climate change. It won first place in the online video 10 to 30 minutes category for the National Headliner Awards.
“We had covered the series of storms as they were happening, as well as the Texas freeze,” Cox said. “While you can't say that this particular hurricane is caused by climate change, we know that climate change is leading to more extreme weather, and that's what we were seeing with these events and that's what we wanted to spell out in that series."
Next, “Parched and in Peril” is about the California drought, which led to numerous fires across the state. Cox said the idea was to “pull the issue together into one digestible series of stories.” The efforts were noticed, with the video winning a Covering Climate Now Award for a short feature video.
Finally, “Climate Change 101” is as the title states: an information guide for all the important ideas on climate change. This video won a Sigma Delta Chi Award, given out by the Society of Professional Journalists, for best video from a specialized journalism site.
"We were aware that people were searching for credible, simple information on climate change, so we put that together,” Cox said. “It's not aimed at teachers necessarily, but we thought it would give teachers a good primer on the issue."
An Impressive Path to Charlotte
These honors signified a strong ending to nearly a decade of Cox’s efforts at the Weather Channel, where she started as a content manager before moving up to executive editor and, eventually, editor in chief.
Before the Weather Channel, Cox worked at the Tampa Bay Times for more than two decades, ultimately becoming managing editor while leading a major redesign of the newspaper, as well as the publication’s website.
Cox left her position at the Weather Channel in January, coming to the University with nearly 40 total years of experience in the news industry. She did so both because of a change in location and a change in heart.
"My husband's career led us to Charlotte, but I was running my team remotely because of the pandemic, and I was going to commute to Atlanta where the Weather Channel is based,” Cox said. “I started working remotely, got the team moved to work remotely, and I thought I could do it, but I really missed interacting with people. I also wanted to get to a point where I was contributing to the future in some way, and I saw this role as an opportunity to do that.”
In her first six months at Charlotte, Cox said she has really enjoyed seeing the student journalists in Student Niner Media develop their writing and editing abilities.
"It really is a great student-run organization. It's been a thrill seeing light bulbs go off when you coach them,” Cox said. “It's student run and student done, but there are three advisors who will offer advice, coach through issues and then critique afterward. It's a great organization with a lot of good resources."
Cox worked her way up through the world of journalism, earning awards for her efforts along the way. Now, she is at Charlotte, ready to help the next generation of journalists. Her advice for anyone interested in joining the field starts with a few simple tips.
"Read, read, read and have an insatiable curiosity,” Cox said. “That's the best advice I have."
Learn more about Student Niner Media here.