Orange Street News, “the only newspaper devoted to Selinsgrove”, is effectively run by one person. Reporter Hilde Kate Lysiak covers all the local news in this town in Pennysylvania, USA. She writes the articles and she shoots videos wherever possible. OSN also has a print edition, which Lysiak publishes once a month. Media doesn’t get much more independent than this.

Last Saturday, Lysiak and OSN had their moment in the spotlight when Lysiak followed up on a tip-off she received at the police station and broke the news of a murder long before the biggest local newspaper in the area was even able to send a reporter to the crime scene.

Did we mention Lysiak is nine years old?

Her most recent scoop has made Lysiak notorious, with some cheering for her and others criticising her parents for exposing such a young child to crime scenes. One commenter said, “I’m disgusted that this cute little girl thinks she’s a real journalist. What happened to tea parties?” Another opined that “nine-year-old girls should be playing with dolls”.

Lysiak’s response to the critics was priceless.

“Because of my work, I was able to inform the people that there was a terrible murder hours before my competition even got to the scene,” Lysiak says in the video. “In fact, some of these adult-run newspapers were reporting the wrong news or no news at all.” Take that, adults. She goes on to say, “If you want me to stop covering news, then you get off your computer and do something about the news. There. Is that cute enough for you?”

Lysiak’s father, Matthew, is an author and journalist himself and we wouldn’t be surprised if he helped Lysiak with her script. Lysiak has said that he helps edit her stories and print them out.

However, none of that takes any credit away from Lysiak herself, who started OSN when she was seven and has dedicatedly been covering local news. “Because she’s the only doing community news, she’s developed sources who trust her to cover the news,” her father told The Washington Post.

Lysiak was able to find out about the murder that’s made her a star because she was following up her story on a vandal who was damaging plants in Selinsgrove. A policeman at the station told her he had to go because there was “a big story”. Like any good reporter, Lysiak followed up on this and got an exclusive of a woman who was murdered, possibly by her retired school teacher husband.

Last month, OSN had record views following Lysiak’s investigation into drug use in Selinsgrove Middle School. In 2015, Columbia Journalism Review did a profile of Lysiak and OSN in which it observed, “Hilde isn’t just another precocious kid with a hobby. She attends town meetings. She covers crime without the police department’s cooperation. She shows up at the scenes of breaking news events. Sure, Hilde’s far from being a pro, but she still provides a public service in a town without a dedicated local news outlet.”

We’d just like to remind you once again that Lysiak is nine.