Meet the editor in Olympia and learn what’s ahead for our newsroom
I walked into The Olympian’s bureau at the state Capitol Campus in January 2012 on the first day of my internship.
My job was to work with veteran reporters Brad Shannon and Jordan Schrader and a team of editors to cover the legislative session.
Things in the news business move at lightning speed. I’m not sure I even sat down at my desk before they sent me on my first assignment that day. Gov. Christine Gregoire was about to announce her support for same-sex marriage, and they wanted me to go to the news conference. I still have the paper.
Day one and my heart was set on local news. I learned from the best, and I never left.
In the nearly 14 years since, I’ve worked as the night reporter for our sister paper, The News Tribune. I covered courts and was the interim state government reporter during part of the pandemic. Then I started editing News Tribune reporters in suburban and rural Pierce County.
As of earlier this month, I’m editing the reporters at The Olympian. The rumors are reaching me already. Is The Olympian going away? No. We’re here and we’re working hard.
Ty Vinson just wrote about plans for a new Olympia park. Rolf Boone told us about problems with water meters in Lacey that are impacting residents’ bills. Simone Carter has been working exhaustively, even ahead of the legislative session, to bring you statehouse news. Martín Bilbao has been reporting the latest updates about the charges against the suspects in a drive-by shooting that killed two teenagers in Lacey.
That was week one.
We’re here, we’re working hard, and we honor the history of this newsroom and this city.
Visual journalist Steve Bloom and I got to talking the other day, and I asked him if he was at the first U.S. Women’s Olympic Marathon trials in 1984, to see Joan Benoit Samuelson cross the finish line in Olympia and make history.
He told me about covering the trials, and I fangirled, hard. I told him how excited I was to hear her speak in Olympia last year to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the trials, and how I signed up for next year’s Capital City Marathon.
The next thing I knew, Steve was handing me a copy of The Olympian from 1984, with that iconic front-page photo and headline: Benoit Breaks Away.
I’m framing it immediately. He doesn’t know how much it means to me.
The lead that day said “she had something to prove — mostly to herself, but also to the doubters.”
We’re here and we’re working hard. Let us show you what we can do.
We can’t do it without you.
