News / Clark County News

From the Newsroom: Why I’m celebrating summer

By Craig Brown, Columbian Editor

Published: July 9, 2022, 6:01am

(The Columbian)

I’ve been waiting months for summer. No, I am not going on a cruise to Alaska, nor visiting all the major league ballparks.

I am excited because this summer we are welcoming a bunch of people to The Columbian’s reporting ranks:

Summer intern Anna Mattson started with us on June 20. Mattson is a recent graduate of the University of Oregon and a participant in its Charles Snowden endowed summer internship program. As of midweek, she already had eight Columbian stories published, ranging from archaeology to youth activities. I think my favorite so far was last Sunday’s piece on how the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling regarding climate change regulation might affect Washington’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

She has an interest in covering these important environmental and climate change stories, and plans to pursue a master’s degree in environmental journalism after she leaves us at the end of the summer.

Our other summer intern, Zoë Buhrmaster, started on Tuesday and has already had two stories published. She’s a recent graduate of Clark College and our fourth participant in the Clark College Foundation’s Dee Anne Finken endowed summer internship program. After her internship ends in September, she will attend Portland State University to study anthropology, and plans to keep her hands in student journalism.

I am a fan of this internship program, because it creates opportunities for local students to explore a journalism career while they are still in college. Some may decide it’s not for them, but I hope we’ll create some journalists along the way, too.

Next week, we welcome the return of business reporter Sarah Wolf, who has been on leave since April. Although relatively new to us — she joined The Columbian in November — Wolf is one of our more experienced reporters, and also one of our busiest. With Wolf out, we’ve left the business beat mostly to the editors to cover, primarily Will Campbell.
Next week we also welcome our first of three new Community Funded Journalism reporters. William Seekamp is a Vancouver native and a recent journalism graduate of the University of Portland. His work during a prolonged campuswide power outage recently won him a national Mark of Excellence award from the Society of Professional Journalists. (Because he had electricity, he basically took over the student newspaper and website and kept everyone informed during the emergency, even though he was the sports editor at the time.)

Seekamp will cover topics related to transportation, including the Interstate 5 Bridge replacement. This project is ripe for digging into as plans are beginning to fall into place. Having someone who can devote a lot of time and attention to the story and ask pointed questions will be a huge bonus.

We have also hired two community-funded reporters to write about homelessness and affordable housing, and really dive into all of the complicated layers of this problem. Thanks to our donors, we’ll empower them to find and report on solutions that are working both here and elsewhere, and to talk about the barriers that prevent people from being able to find a decent place to live.

I will share more about these reporters next month, when they start their new jobs. Meanwhile, if you want to learn more about how The Columbian’s Community Funded Journalism initiative works, visit https://www.columbian.com/cfj. If you are lucky enough to work in a community like this one, programs like this are a boon.

It seems like newspapers have been downsizing and cutting back forever, so it’s particularly gratifying to be adding to staff at such a key moment for Clark County and our readers. I think you’ll see the results in more quality journalism in the coming weeks and months.

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