Madison County native Sarah Scully got her degree in journalism at UNC Asheville before enlisting in the Army after September 11. She spent five years as a print journalist and public affairs officer in places like Korea, Thailand, Japan, Kuwait and Iraq. A survivor of military sexual trauma, Scully returned to Marshall to focus on therapy for her PTSD.
“I kind of lost my voice. I didn't write for a very, very long time,” said Scully.
Then Helene hit, submerging downtown Marshall as the French Broad crested at historic levels.
“It was just completely… gone. Absolute devastation,” said Scully.
Scully and her son got to work helping muck out the small businesses, but they were concerned there weren’t enough volunteers to tackle the enormous work ahead. Word was spreading that the mud—a foot deep in many places—was toxic.
“I looked around, and there was a medic tent, and there was an ER doctor. I knew what to do. I knew the job. I knew I was capable,” said Scully.
Scully pulled out her phone camera, pressed record and interviewed Dr. Sam Wiest on how to stay safe while volunteering. It would be the first of hundreds of interviews Scully produced helping connect the community to resources and document how they responded.
“People started watching, and I had no idea they were watching until a month later when I finally came up for air and went to our grocery store and this lady just starts crying and hugging me,” said Scully. “It's a little strange. I'm kind of like the WLOS of Madison County at this point.”
Over the last year, Scully has continued to cover Madison county as an independent (and volunteer) journalist. She highlights arts and culture, nonprofits, community events, local businesses and lots and lots of local sports, including a very popular “Athlete of the Week” segment. She’s also filling a gap in covering local government.
“I was reluctant to get into politics,” said Scully. “Madison County is infamous for its politics. You've got an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the Pondercrats... There was real intimidation tactics here and there's still this undercurrent of tension.”
Scully feels the tension but has been forging ahead, trying to answer questions the community has about local government. Last summer Scully followed a tip about the Madison County Commission attempting to take over the county Board of Health without any public discussion. Commissioners eventually held a public hearing and voted not to move forward. She’s looked at the local proposal to reduce early voting sites, who's on the ballot for 2026 and introduced the community to new town officials. And since last Fall, she’s been digging into questions about school district funding after the County Commission approved a budget increase of about $100,000
out of more than $800,000 requested from the school board.
“If you don't have press to show up for government meetings, the government can kind of just do whatever it wants, because there's no eyes on them. Most people are not going to take an hour or two out of their day after a long day at work, and go to one of these… and I'll say it, incredibly boring meetings,” said Scully.
Scully kept attending meetings, interviewed a few officials and received some budget documents. But these documents are incredibly confusing to make sense of so she asked for an interview with Madison County School’s CFO.
“Suddenly everything shut down. It was strange,” said Scully. “So I submitted a public records request and after that is when things got weird. Everywhere I went, people were like, ‘I can't believe you're this brave. I hope you don't get run off the road.’”
Scully consulted a media lawyer and filed more records requests trying to answer questions about school district spending and where any cuts would impact kids and programs (in addition to finding out why the nutrition director was recently fired and if the person who replaced them is qualified). She’s still waiting for the records.
“If this is happening in Madison County, what's happening in all of the other small counties?” said Scully. “The danger of not having press is real. People are hungry for news in their local community, they want to see the stuff that was in the newspaper 25 years ago. But it doesn't exist anymore. There needs to be some sort of journalism that can fill the gap for these local counties, especially the government agencies, especially when they have county taxpayer money, and they have a lot of power and they affect our lives on a regular basis.”
And just like after Helene, Scully is getting a boost of encouragement from strangers reminding her to keep digging and keep going.
“Yesterday, I was at the Exxon filling up my gas, and this lady goes, 'Are you the local reporter, Sarah?' I'm like, yes, I am. She goes ‘I love what you're doing with the school board! I'm so glad somebody's asking! Nobody ever asked the questions.’”
Scully will continue to seek answers to the community’s questions and is considering a lawsuit if the District continues stalling on her records request. But she did share one recent win for transparency: the school board will begin live streaming meetings on YouTube this month.
Follow all of Sarah's reporting on her Facebook page.
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