Diversity Is An Old, Old Wooden Ship

P.S.: I just felt like naming this post after Anchorman.

Until this summer, I was strictly about sports, as far as my writing career was concerned. In fact, in my time at The Collegian up until now, I have had two news-related bylines. One was about the laptop center at SDSU and it was the first story I ever had published. (I like to joke with Emma DeJong about my first story and how I quickly moved to sports to never look back.) Right before I left, I penned (I guess we don't pen anything anymore) a story about the reworked parking situation at SDSU for the upcoming year for our summer orientation issue.

And that was it.

I had a great time covering the ins and outs of basketball and soccer and whatever other sports were on my plate. I knew, however, that my summer internship with the The Daily Republic in Mitchell would be different. My focus would be on news. That didn't and doesn't scare me but was rather empowering, to trust a person with little news experience to be part of the team.

I've been lucky this summer to tell great stories, which is the best part of journalism, some of which include.

• The story of Island Park, a historic, left for dead piece of land, being brought back to life by volunteers. Happy I've been able to write two about this.
• Profiles of courageous cancer survivors and fighters honored by a local cancer walk. Unfortunately, one of the people I wrote about died about a week after my story about him, making the story much more emotional. 
• The fight over trees at Lake Mitchell and the name of Northridge Park.  
• South Dakota's wind industry hopes in the hands of Washington politicians.
• Poverty in the state, tornado sirens, stolen corn, housing scams, the Corn Palace, Chinese farm delegates, the graves of World War II soldiers and I could keep going.

I'm not done. I have a few weeks before I pack up and move out of my temporary residence in Mitchell but I can say it's been worth it. I've talked to people who are happy to talk and those who would rather have not answered the phone. I've also been able to fool the folks at the paper into thinking I'm a good photographer. I'm thankful my editors and bosses have let me diversify my profile and allow me to stretch beyond sports as a writer.

Or diversify, if you will, Ron Burgundy.

A little sappy but I wanted to give a little rundown of my time in Mitchell. I'll have more in the coming weeks.