Essay
My first break
Most journalists get into this line of work with dreams of breaking big political scandals, covering high-profile court cases or interviewing a star athlete after a championship game.
But jobs covering those major stories are hard to come by.
There are only so many positions available in big cities and the competition for those jobs can be fierce. So, many reporters start out working for local papers in small towns.
That was the case for me. As a 20-something, I was looking for any opportunity to get my foot in the door.
One day, I came across an ad for The Golden Star. The paper wanted a reporter to cover news, sports and entertainment in the Rocky Mountain town of Golden. It sounded perfect.
But in a town of only 4,000, the stories that qualify as news, sports and entertainment weren’t what I had in mind when I decided to become a journalist.
Don’t get me wrong, I did get assigned some truly exciting stories from time to time: I wrote articles about dramatic avalanche rescues and up-and-coming bands who eventually went on to play in big arenas across North America.
On the other hand, covering “news” also meant attending a grandmother’s 90th birthday party, “sports” was often taking photos of children’s soccer games and “entertainment” might be a profile story on the high school jazz band.
Basically, in a town that small, just about anything can be worthy of a story in the local paper.
Still, I learned a lot in my three years in Golden and I enjoyed every moment.
From a journalism point of view, the experience was invaluable — the Star had a newsroom of two people, so in an average week I got a chance to hone my writing, editing, photography, social media and even page layout skills.
Even more so, living in a small town and becoming part of a community was incredible after spending my whole life in big cities, where you often didn’t even know the names of your neighbors.
It got to the point where I couldn’t take a trip to the grocery store without bumping into a friend or someone I had recently interviewed for a story.
At the end of my tenure, I was definitely ready to move on to bigger stories in a larger city. After all, that is the goal of most people who choose to make journalism their career. But there’s no doubt I still miss the charm of community reporting.
By writing about regular, everyday people living out their lives in a charming mountain town – rather than powerful politicians or star athletes – I also learned that everyone has an interesting story to tell if you ask the right questions. Especially 90-year-old grandmothers. (Joel Tansey)
