Chris FrazierAt approximately 4:30 a.m. on a late September morning in Western North Carolina, Moss Brennan was responding to a reported sinking vehicle where an individual was trapped.
Hurricane Helene, a category four storm, has gained national attention for its strong winds and power disruptions. Moss, a volunteer EMT, firefighter and technical rescuer for the Deep Gap Volunteer Fire Department and Watauga County Rescue Squad, was already witnessing the heavy rain and flooding.
“We already had prepared for what was going to happen, but that already set off a little bit of alarms,” he said. “We haven’t had a sinking vehicle in our district before.”
After the successful rescue, at approximately 5:30 a.m., Moss switched his EMT helmet for his editorial cap and began taking photos and videos of the disaster. Outside of his volunteer work, he is also an executive editor at the Mountain Times Publications and the editor of the Watauga Democrat.
His journey for the remainder of the storm, as well as some additional dialogue on local news, typified the stories shared at the N.C. News and Information Summit which took place at N.C. Central University’s New Student Center on March 12.
Presented by N.C. Local and the Sunshine Center of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition, the fourth annual summit aimed to raise awareness about statewide issues and opportunities in the local news sector.
N.C. Local is a non-profit, news organization that increases access to stakeholders and journalists throughout the state, according to the newsroom’s website.
Shannan Bowen, N.C. Local’s founder and CEO, said the summit was like a homecoming for journalists.
“These connections wouldn’t happen without this place of convening,” she said. “We don’t know a summit like this in any other state.”
Bowen added that the summit included a “great slate of different ideas” to appeal to the more than 290 registered attendees.
Paying homage to North Carolina’s regional diversity, the summit renamed rooms in the student center. Aspiring reporters, journalists and experts entered rooms with halls titled “Long Leaf,” “Cardinal,” “Piedmont” and “Lighthouse.”
The 2025 Sunshine Awards winners were acknowledged at the summit’s luncheon. Awardees included WRAL5 On Your Side Team’s and Emily Vespa’s coverage of the presence of carcinogenic PCBs in building materials at N.C. State University’s Poe Hall.
Attendees spent the remainder of their time at presentations that range from fundraising, newsroom building and artificial intelligence. Analysis into investigations, such as Baltimore’s opioid crisis and the Mark Robinson scandal, were also open to curious minds.
The summit’s keynote presentation, “A lifeline for Western North Carolina: The essential role of local news and transparency during Hurricane Helene,” started the day.
Five journalists from the affected region filled the stage, and Dean Baquet was the moderator. The conversation included first-hand accounts from journalists who covered the region during the hurricane.
One panelist was Jacob Biba, an Ashville resident who had been a Citizen Times reporter for just three weeks when Helene hit. He said balancing parenthood and reporting during the storm was tough.
“I trust my wife, I trust my neighbors,” said Biba, who added that he feared for his family’s safety while at work. “If something had happened, someone would’ve come and got me.”
Biba also said that his wife initially hesitated to evacuate, only doing so at the behest of a council member and family friend. He admitted that while he was unable to say goodbye, the change of plans made his job easier.
Biba added that his newsroom of about 12 people came together while reporting on Helene.
“It made me feel like I’ve been there for years,” he said.
Travis Long, a photojournalist with more than 20 years of experience at The News Observer in Raleigh, was another panelist. The night before the rain started pouring, he was at his second home in Western North Carolina.
He said he remembered waking to a dead phone, which he had forgotten to charge, and a home without power. There was this “incredible noise” he didn’t recognize.
“When I walked outside, this creek I had known my entire life, I didn’t recognize it,” Long said. “And the sound that I heard were boulders, the size of Volkswagens, rolling down the creek.”
Assuming anyone south of the creek might be in danger, Long got into his car and headed downhill. In his experience, no power meant no cell service. Realizing he would be in the dark for a while, Long started taking pictures.
Moss, the editor and volunteer who rescued the resident from the sinking vehicle, said that he, like Long, had concluded that he would have to navigate his duties without power.
“Later that evening, I was able to work from a McDonald’s parking lot,” he said, “ because they were the only ones who had a Wi-Fi signal in town…”
However, two problems remained for Moss. The first was his continued inability to contact his staff. As he worked in both journalism and emergency modes, he was concerned for his team’s well-being. Specifically, three days would pass before he could contact his reporters in Avery County, all of whom were safe.
The second involved his coverage of the disaster. While working in emergency services, he established personal guardrails that contained what he would cover. While “routine stories” like fires, searches and crashes fell within his guardrails, stories with fatalities hit too close to home.
While Moss tried to stay clear of those assignments, the stories created by Helene’s devastation potentially placed him beyond those boundaries.
“At that point, I was trying to balance how I’m covering the storm as well as helping my departments save lives,” Moss said.
Moss and other journalists worked to get the news out as the storm continued northward. Partnering with N.C. Local, Moss said that the group printed more than a thousand news stories about Helene.
On one early trip to a nearby fire department, he said that when he dropped a paper off, the firefighter told them that it was the first news they got since before the storm.
“They had no idea what was happening because they had no signal,” Moss said. “They had no power so that print paper was their first news.”
More than four months after the disaster, Moss said that many stories were missed because of the limited number of journalists.
“If I could go back, I’ll try to do that a little bit better,” he said. “[But] with no communication, no signal, it’s hard to do.”
