A Life in News: Making the Complex Clear

Aubree Eliza Weaver’s passion for journalism took root early. When Weaver was a child, she and her grandfather watched the news together nearly every day; then they debated it. Not surprisingly, when Weaver arrived at Le Moyne in the fall of 2009, one of her first stops was the office of the student newspaper, The Dolphin. She let then-news editor Aidan Cleghorn ’10 know that she was eager to write, and was working on her first article for the weekly publication before she even began her classes. (Incidentally, it landed on the front page.) Weaver’s love of storytelling and current events grew over the course of her time on the Heights, where she majored in communications and rose through the ranks of The Dolphin to become editor-in-chief during her senior year.

Today, Weaver is the legislative services editor at Politico, a digital publication based outside of Washington, D.C., that covers national and international politics and policy. The Le Moyne alumna’s responsibilities include leading a team of reporters in writing a daily newsletter about the congressional agenda, editing in-depth analyses of various pieces of legislation, and imagining new offerings for Politico’s premium-level subscribers. For someone who was once voted “least likely to ever leave D.C.” during a summer internship program in the nation’s capital, it is a dream job. No two days are the same. Within a span of 24 hours she may go from editing a piece on energy and sustainability measures moving through Congress to reading a lengthy appropriations bill and digesting how much money the Pentagon is likely to receive.

Weaver began her work at Politico as a producer in August of 2013, shortly after her graduation from Le Moyne. Since then, she has continued to take on new challenges and accept greater levels of responsibility at the news outlet, including serving as deputy production editor, interim editorial director and, most recently, senior editor, premium. (She says that one of the greatest pieces of advice she’s ever received was simply to “try anything once.”) Each of these roles has helped her to grow as a writer, critical-thinker and leader. They have also strengthened her conviction that journalism is more than a job or even a vocation. It is a public service. Through her work, Weaver has the opportunity to provide valuable information to people who might not otherwise have access to it, so that they can make the best decisions possible for themselves and their families.

As Weaver sees it, a big part of her day-to-day job is simply “taking complicated things and making them a little less complicated.” She and her team did just that recently when they distilled for their readers the details of a continuing resolution that allowed the government to avert a shutdown. She noted that, in the days before the potential crisis was averted, even some of her family and friends called her to ask what she thought was going to happen. She was glad to be able to share what she knew with them – and with the readers of Politico. And in a world where the news seems to be coming at all of us faster and faster, Weaver is buoyed by the fact that in recent years she has seen in journalism a renewed commitment to truth-telling and transparency. She is eager to see what the future will bring to her field.

“I think we can expect a lot of great investigations and a lot of great story telling,” she says.