You’ll always remember your first job after college.
For me, that low-paying, less-than-honorable position as the News Clerk for the Moscow-Pullman Daily News felt pretty masterful.
What came next was a lot of proof-reading obituaries and adding events to a daily calendar, and generally just spending many months trying to climb the small ladder that was journalism in a small Idaho university town. A few months into the gig, I was offered the opportunity to take over the “Sidewalk Series:” a weekly, human-interest, feature series. Think “HONY” without the NY.
Every week, I would try my best to find the next most important person in my community, hope they answered the phone/door/email, and find out what made them special. I present the Daily News weekly front-page “Sidewalk Series.”
Picked up by Associated Press
The year before I moved from a small Idaho town to New York, a music professor made the exact opposite switch. I interviewed and featured Christopher Pfund, a University of Idaho professor of music. He and his wife moved their family from NYC to my small college town. UI has an impressive music program, and he was ready to take on life outside of the city.
Associated Press picked up this article, making it a widely available feature story, nation-wide.