responds to critics

Reporter Hilde Kate Lysiak got the tip early Saturday afternoon that there was heavy police activity on Ninth Street. She hustled over with her pen and camera, as any good reporter would, and soon she posted something short online, beating all her competitors. Then, working the neighbors and the cops, she nailed down her scoop with a full-length story and this headline:

“EXCLUSIVE: MURDER ON NINTH STREET!”

Hilde Kate Lysiak, 9, of Selinsgrove, Pa., publishes both a print and online version of the Orange Street News, and she scooped her adult competition Saturday with news of a homicide.

“I just like letting people know all the information,” Hilde said Monday.

It’s also what she sees as her career, no matter what stupid adults might say about the future of journalism. “It’s just what I really want to do. And crime is definitely my favorite.” She said she learned of the murder story because “I got a good tip from a source and I was able to confirm it.”

But her reporting did not impress some of the good people of Selinsgrove, and they let Hilde have it on Facebook Saturday night. “I think this is appalling that u would do a story like this when all the facts are not in yet,” wrote one commenter. Her parents were attacked too: “does no one realize that this is a 9 year old reporting this type of graphic information!” wrote a Facebook poster. “I mean, what parents are encouraging this type of behavior!”

Hilde was unfazed. Sunday morning, she gathered many of the comments she’d received online, summoned her older sister and her video camera, and read the comments aloud. Then she took on her critics directly: “If you want me to stop covering news, then you get off your computers and do something about the news. There, is that cute enough for you?”

Her sister edited it and posted it on YouTube. And of course on the Orange Street News home page.

Matthew Lysiak was a reporter for the Daily News who’d covered both New York and national breaking news stories when he moved his family to his native Pennsylvania about three years ago. Hilde launched the Orange Street News in 2014, when she was 7, leading with the exclusive information on the birth of her new baby sister. By the time she was 8, she was attending borough council meetings, interviewing business owners and tracking whatever crime she could find, which wasn’t much. “VANDALISM ON YOUR BLOCK? THE OSN WILL INVESTIGATE!” her website declares.