From the Newsroom: The Columbian’s reporters don’t miss a beat

To me, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. I don’t know how to write about a “trending,” but I do know an interesting and important county government story when I read it. If the story is good enough, it will “trend.”

So our beats have remained relatively traditional. We have reporters who cover county government, City Hall, courts, health, education, business, social services, small cities and environment/transportation. A few of the less time-consuming beats such as state and federal government are split among reporters, and we have several reporters who combine to cover politics. Two of our reporters cover features and general assignments.

Maybe the largest change to our beat structure has been in coverage of breaking news, such as crime and fires. When I first started at The Columbian, back before the era of news on the internet, we had just one police reporter, the legendary John Branton. With a manner akin to Peter Falk as “Columbo,” Branton would ask a lot of deceivingly simple questions, eat a malodorous and messy dinner at his cluttered desk, and get you everything you needed shortly (sometimes very shortly) before deadline.

That’s not enough these days when stories go live all day long, so we have a morning breaking news reporter, Jerzy Shedlock, and an evening breaking news reporter, Andy Matarrese. At least one of them is on duty from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. most days of the week, covering news first for online and second for print. The third member of this breaking news team is Jessica Prokop, who primarily covers courts but also lends a hand on breaking news.

More about reporters

Despite their stereotype, reporters are enjoyable to be around. They have a good energy, and are intelligent and dedicated to their jobs. Most of our reporters are members of the millennial generation. Having grown up with the internet constantly in their hands, they offer a new perspective to more — ahem — experienced people like myself.

Now at this point you might think, “Hey, you hired most of these people, so no wonder you think they’re good. But I need to know more about them before I can make up my mind.”

Fair enough. There’s no magic recipe for being a good reporter, but there are ingredients.

We want reporters who have been to college, and everyone in this group has a bachelor’s degree. Three have earned master’s degrees.

I prefer to hire folks from the Northwest. Eight of the reporters grew up and went to school in Washington or Oregon, and that increases to 11 of 13 if you throw in Idaho, Montana and Alaska.

I really like it when we hire people from our community. Three of our reporters graduated from high school right here in Clark County. Two others have lived in Clark County for more than 20 years, so I count them as locals, too.

Although I lived in Eastern Washington until I was well into my 20s, I’d like to count myself as a local, too. Come October, I will have lived in Clark County for 30 years. It’s been a great place to work and raise a family, and I’m looking forward to living here for many more years.