On Friday, I did what I'm calling a journalism good deed. 

I've been working with the journalism club at a local college and one of the students reached out to me a few weeks ago for help on a story she was interested in. 

She'd done some reporting for a class and she was looking for a place to get it published in Montana. 

I came up with the genius idea to pitch the story to my editor as well as having the student work on the story with one of our seasoned reporters. That way we know we have a solid story and she gets experience and a byline.

To me, it's an opportunity for mentorship. It's a chance for her to test out journalism in real life, develop solid reporting skills and have a newsroom full of support as she works on her story. Thankfully, my boss went for it and I'm looking forward to watching her learn and develop as a journalist.

To me, this is missing from so many collegiate journalism programs and professional newsrooms. One of the new kids at a competing station asked me the other day how I find stories. That makes my head hurt on so many levels. First, even those most kind hearted journalists don't tell their competition how they do their job. Second, if they aren't learning how to get stories in journalism school, WHAT ARE THEY LEARNING? 


Side note, I do not have a journalism degree. I learned most everything I know about reporting from my mentors, internships and actual experience. Someone once told me to get a degree in whatever you want to write about, and that proved to be practical advice. I got my bachelors in political science and am working on my masters in international relations, with a focus on national security.


Technology and social media and digital platforms are all great. They all enhance news reporting. But I don't think there will ever come a day that any of that will replace good ole fashioned reporting, critical thinking, the ability to gather information and distill it down to the most important facts, while also providing context so the reader has the slightest idea why they should care. 

When I was in college, I reached out to local journalists and so many of them took the time to let me shadow them, ask questions and the ability to learn in a real newsroom. They played a huge part in making me the journalist I am today, so whenever a student asks for my help, I'm more than happy to give advice or become a mentor. 

I hear so often from working professionals that they don't have time to mentor. We're all busy. None of us are so busy that we can't help grow the next crop of worker bees who will be working with us or for us in the future. I'd rather spend a few hours working with a student journalist now than spend far more time dealing with an untrained reporter on the payroll in my newsroom.

If I'm being totally honest, I probably wouldn't go out on a limb for every single student journalist who asked for my help, but in this particular student, I see so much of myself. Everything she's putting into her campus newspaper, her studies, traveling, her initiative in asking me for help. So many of the things I see in her are the things people saw in me as a student journalist.

Most of my experience is in a newsroom, but mentorship applies in all professions. I was lucky enough to have great mentors throughout my early years in journalism and I call many of them colleagues now. 

Here's the thing, we can all do some serious good in this world by mentoring. 

There's a good chance all of us are in a position to mentor from time to time and if you ever had a great mentor or wish you had one, then please, please, please be that person for some up and coming rockstar in your profession. The world will thank you.

I am not a perfect journalist, or professional, my any means. But I am the product of a lot of really good journalists who took the time to teach me and instill in me a deeply held belief that being good at my job was about more than me. People reading the news counted on me to be more than good at my job. It's up to me to pass on that knowledge and that understanding of what it means to be a journalist.

A few tips on choosing a mentor:

+ Look for someone you admire. I once read an article in the paper where I interned in college about my governor's press secretary. She was a former reporter and I seriously wanted to be her. So I emailed her. She went on to work in Congress and I met her for tea once, in the office of the Speaker of the House. I still bounce ideas off her or ask for advice on how to be a big girl in a crazy world. I hit the mentor jackpot with her. All of that happened because I asked. 

+ Find someone good at whatever it is you want to do. As an intern, I looked for the reporters everyone seemed to respect, then I followed them around. I asked editors to edit me and tell me how to do it better. When I figured out I wanted to write about the military, I followed all of the best on Twitter, read their work, interacted with them. Seek out those who have mastered your craft, learn from them.

+ Ask someone willing to invest time in you. Sometimes, the person you think it the bees knees at their job just isn't going to make a great mentor. They're either too busy, too focused on their own work or just not a good personality match. It happens. Don't waste your energy trying to get them to care about you. Move on to someone else who's just as qualified and also willing to spend some time with you. 

A few tips on being a mentor:

+ Look for someone you think has a chance at being awesome. If someone asks you to be their mentor but clearly isn't willing to put in the time or effort to learn, don't waste your time. Look for someone with drive, energy, excitement, passion and who shows you some initiative.

+ When someone with all those traits you're looking for materializes and says 'hey, can you help me out?" Take that opportunity. Reward the whippersnappers with all those go-getter skills we always say we wish more people had. Those kids that sit around waiting for a Pulitzer to just arrive at their doorstep, no, they do not get a cookie.

+ Pick someone you believe in. We are all busy. We're all doing more with less. We're all tired and stressed. Don't commit to every single kid who happens to be in the same room as you. But when that one kid catches your attention and makes you think there's still hope for your profession, go all in. Believe it that person, be their cheering section, their teacher, their sounding board. Help them become that person you want to work with. 

Did you have great mentors? Do you try to be a mentor whenever you have a chance?

A year ago, I met this little girl when I traveled with an Honor Flight group from Montana to D.C. She was 4 and a half at the time and walked up to every World War II veteran getting off that plane to shake their hands. 

Her grandparents told me they try to greet as many Honor Flights and that she thanks all of them for their service. 

She may not fully understand the greatness of her actions, but most of us who saw her greet those veterans were moved. 

When I was an intern in Fredericksburg, Virginia, I covered a Memorial Day ceremony in blazing heat. Standing next to me was a young Marine, in his full dress uniform. I knew that if I was hot, he was sweltering. During that ceremony, he stood so still and so quiet, but I saw tears run down his cheek. 

Afterward, I talked to him for a few minutes. He told me that his high school friend had been killed in combat the year before and he was there to honor him. He told me he was planning to get out of the military that summer and possibly become a cop. He was about my age.

My story that day was about that young Marine. I was later called a racist by the African American reverend who gave the invocation because I hadn't included his remarks in my story. I was too young and inexperienced to simply say "today wasn't about you." I saw no race, or religion or gender that day, I only saw a Marine grieving his fallen friend.

The next year, that Marine was killed in combat. He had reenlisted while deployed. He left behind a young wife. 

Today is about him. 

I knew him only for a few minutes, but he made a lasting impression. 

In my years as a reporter, I've met young men who were later killed. I've sat in the living rooms of grieving mothers telling me about their sons. I've sat in the back of a church covering the funeral of a soldier killed in action who left behind a wife and young sons. I've had to call a man I'd only met once to talk about his son who had been killed in battle. 

Today is for them. 

Today is for those men and women I never knew and those I did know briefly. It's for the families they left behind. 

Maybe it's because I've talked to people who experienced such loss, maybe it's because at any given time, it could have been one of mine. 

It could have been my grandfathers, my uncles, my aunt, my parents, my cousin, my hometown friends, my boyfriend. All of them have served and all of them have come home. But the story could have been much different and perhaps that's why I cry during every single Memorial Day and Veterans Day concert on PBS and when I'm reporting, I struggle to keep it together and then go home and cry. 

Today is for them. 

So on this Memorial Day, let's commit to be better. 

Let's engage in our communities. Let's participate in our government. Let's learn about those who came before us and respect what they did. Let's take a break from The Bachelor and the Kardashians and Bieber fever and consider who the real celebrities are. They were at the Ardennes and D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge and Iwo Jima and the Frozen Chosin and Khe Sahn and Fallujah, among many others. 

Let's take a break from our #firstworldproblems and remember that we're allowed to have the lives we have because of these men and women.

Today is for them. 

Let's do more than say thank you for their service, let's show them that they fought for a nation worth defending. Let's support the organizations that help them in meaningful ways, let's work to make our communities, our country, better instead of casting blame or throwing up our hands in frustration or avoiding the conversation all together. War is terrible and the politics are awful, but when their nation has asked, Americans have risen to the occasion. 

Let's commit to being better and doing better, because when we have asked them for more, they gave their all. 

Today is for them. 

Some recommended reading for this Memorial Day:

Don't Thank Me For My Service from a leader at Team Rubicon. Those guys do great work. 

Kim Dozier's Breathing the Fire on surviving a car bombing in Iraq, where she was reporting for CBS, on Memorial Day 2006. Her colleagues, translator and the soldier they were filming were all killed. Proceeds of Kim's book go to organizations like Fischer House. 

A special report on Arlington Cemetery's 150th anniversary by my friend and former colleague. 

Life lessons from the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. 

European landscapes a century after WW1. 

I could go on, but I'll leave you with one of my favorite bands and one of their most powerful songs. 

Last w eek, I was in a rink meeting and someone mentioned someone a person in town who had done something very nice for the rink and donated money. 

The name was one I recognized, as a rather unpleasant person, so I was surprised and thought maybe I'd been completely wrong about the person. 

When I told a co-worker about the nice gesture, he said "surely it couldn't have been her." 

Turns out there's a bunch of people with the same name, that I had considered sort of uncommon, but apparently not. 

It was decided that this particular person was not the person who had done the nice thing.

I walked away from that conversation thinking, I hope I don't ever become a person that someone would ever say "surely it wasn't Jenn who did this nice thing."

There are plenty of people don't like me. Part of that comes with being a reporter, part of that is probably just my personality. I'm a red-headed Leo with an almost unshakable belief that I can do it all (even though I know deep down that I can't), more than my fair share of stubbornness and refuse to give up. All of that make me good at some things and a giant pain for other things, like when M tried to show me how to chop vegetables. 

A big part of me really doesn't care what people think of me, but I truly hope the first thing that comes to mind about me is never that I couldn't have done some nice thing. 

There have been plenty of times in the last year that I've been stressed, overwhelmed, exhausted and so frustrated that I get cranky, snappy and not my cheery self. Finding that balance between managing those frustrations, trying to improve the things that are causing them and not turn into a bundle of hostility can be challenging. 

But last week gave me that little insight into life that I needed to keep in mind even when I'm stressed. That reminder tells me that no matter how run down, beat up and crushed I'm feeling on the inside, it will pass. How I treat other people will always be remembered. Friends, co-workers, those around us who know us will often give a pass for our crankiness for a bad day. 

In high school, I would pick a happy adjective and say that every time someone asked how I was. Or I would just say that I was great, even when I wasn't. It was a mental trick that always worked to boost my mood. I'm not very good at hiding my displeasure with people who frustrate me, but sometimes I frustrate myself with how much those things get to me. 

It's one of those things that requires constant effort, but the thought of someone saying "surely it wasn't Jenn" who did some nice thing was enough to stir my mental pot and recommit to my outward actions. I won't call it a new goal, I'll call it a return to an old one, a concept inspired by Alicia last week.

What do you want to be known for? How do you balance your internal stresses/emotions with your outward actions?

Over the last week, I've misplaced my keys at least a dozen times. I had a panic attack or two that I'd locked them in the car (which I've done a few times in my life), but after more digging, found them at the bottom of my purse. 

Part of the problem is probably that my purse is so big. That's because I carry a planner, a small idea notebook, two or three other notebooks, reporters notebooks, papers, pens, sunglasses, glasses, water bottles, my wallet (that M calls "the brick") and whatever other randomness gets shoved in there.  Sometimes there's a book, sometimes magazines, sometimes a scarf or sweater. 

Grover wanted to point out that the purse is bigger than his head. 

In a way, the giant purse keeps me sane because I can shove anything in there that I need, even my laptop when I travel.

But really, when I keep losing my keys, something isn't working quite right. 

I'd like to blame it all on my super creative, multitasking mind, but part of it is more likely that I'm just scattered.

Our house is still pretty much a construction zone and will be for some time, but, I still use a few tricks to find the important things.

+ Have a consistent spot for things like keys, important mail/bills, the jewelry you wear regularly, the book your reading, etc. It's easier to keep track of things when they don't constantly grow legs.

+ Clear the clutter. I read The Happiness Project a few years ago and the part about a cluttered space, cluttered mind, stuck with me. Here's a few of Gretchen Rubin's myths about decluttering. Plus some other tips from Real Simple on clearing the clutter. 

+ Hang up your clothes. The other day I was going to be early. Then I couldn't find the shirt I wanted. The other one I grabbed in exchange was wrinkled. I ended up 20 minutes behind. Weekend project, putting my clothes away. And more work on Operation Closet Purge: update on that mission coming soon.

When in doubt, learn from the very wise Alicia at Jaybird. I regularly refer back to her Old School Productivity tips and Banish Overwhelm.

How often do you misplace your keys? What are your tricks for keeping track of the important items in your life?

This has been one of those weeks where some things in this town have make me bonkers. But, there's plenty of things to love about Great Falls, Montana. It's not D.C., but there's pros and cons to that.

First off, that photo above. Guys, that's the Northern Lights. Taken from our back deck. They've been visible a few times over the last few months and I'm hoping to capture more photos. This particular view was in October. I was driving home after a particularly miserable city meeting and thought something strange was happening (the thought process from a girl who's never seen the Northern Lights and had a bad night was comical). 

When I need to blow of steam from those crazy meetings or otherwise stressful days at work, I can go for a run along the Missouri River. A trail runs along the river through town and beyond and you can pick it up all through town and go for a jog with a friend, with the pups or fly solo for some quiet time. I usually prefer the less popular areas since I tend to have conversations with myself and occasionally flail my arms during said conversations. If anyone sees me, they probably think I'm nuts. 

We don't have a Gap, or Loft, or Chipotle, or Trader Joe's, or Panera or a lot of places I used to go in D.C. or at home, or even in 'bama, though we didn't have Chipotle or Trader Joe's in that town either. But, in Great Falls, we have great antique and second hand shops, my favorite is The Barn. There's also interesting, locally owned shops downtown that I wander through from time to time. Generally, I order new clothes online these days, but the lack of stores is certainly better for my bank account. 

The lack of shopping leaves more time for other projects, and the lack of traffic has added hours back to my life. In D.C., I spent two to four hours commuting to work every day. One job was 20-something miles away and it could take hours to get there and back, depending on traffic and weather. The other job was 10-miles and I could probably run there faster than drive some days. In Great Falls, unless something extraordinary is happening, you can get from one side of town to the other in 20 minutes or less. I'm still late all the time, but it's nice to spend more time doing and less time driving. When people talk about rush hour and traffic jams, I just have to laugh. M and I call it the rush 15. 

With all that extra time, I can meet more people in my day. Through work, I've been exposed to some of the nuttier residents, but generally, people are friendly, willing to help you out and much more easy going than the East Coast crowd. Sometimes it drives me nuts, since I still have that East Coast rush coursing through my veins, but it does teach you a level of patience (that I have not yet mastered). But what I have seen is a community that supports its members when called upon. They also show a tremendous level of support for their veterans and that's something I respect. It's not quite that town where everyone knows your name, though many seem to recognize my byline (pros and cons again), but it's small enough that what affects part of town will eventually affect the whole and they support each other when it counts. 

What do you love about your town? What about it drives you bonkers?

You've seen Alicia here before, but you really can't ever get enough of this girl. And if you haven't fallen in love with her blog yet, head on over to Jaybird.

She's been steadily moving west since high school and now blogs from Chicago, where she loves to read, try as many coffee shops as possible and write about pursuing happiness in her new home. On Jaybird, you'll find stories of trying to overcome challenges and navigate adulthood--always with an honest, positive perspective. Hopefully you will find support + inspiration to live your own best life, too.

If you're ever in Chicago, you need to meet Alicia for some delicious Thai, tacos or a coffee date full of blogging and life chats. It's seriously a great time. Until then, you need to read Dirty Words + Radical Acts and one of my favorite Jaybird posts, Banish Overwhelm and Just Get Through This. And if you're a blogger, you definitely need to read So You Want to be a Blogger. 

When she breaks free from the abominably flat Illinois, she'll lace up the hiking boots and backpack, which will come in handy when she gets to visit Montana someday! I'll also be sure to have some tomatoes, cucumbers, mint and basil growing when she gets to visit since that's what she'd plant if she had a real garden. Until then, she's got a potted spider plant that just started reproducing and she's embarrassingly excited about (and I think it's awesome).

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About a month ago, I was on my way home from Chicago after running an 8K with Alicia and Eileen. 

Typically, I don't like to buy books or sit down to eat in airports because it's more expensive than it should be. But, I had a long layover and had already finished the murder mystery I'd lugged from the library on the way out. 

I wandered back and forth between a few book shops on my concourse, annoying one book seller because I kept coming back and not buying anything. 

When I'd just about given up finding anything I'd want to read that wasn't stupid expensive and/or hardback, I found The Dirty Life, by Kristin Kimball. 

The back cover told me that Kristin was a big city writer before meeting a farmer, who's from a town near my grandparents in New York, and moving to the country to start their own farm in northern New York. 

New book in hand, I wandered again for food that would fill me and not bankrupt me. I settled on the Rock Bottom Brewery with an appetizer and beer as my dinner while I dove into the book. 

Just a few pages in, I read this: "There are still moments when I feel like I'm an actor in a play. The real me stays out until four, wears heels and carries a handbag, but this character I'm playing gets up at four, wears Carhartts, and carries a Leatherman, and the other day, doing laundry, a pair of .22 long shells fell out of her pocket and she was supposed to act like she wasn't surprised. Instead of the lights and sounds of the city, I'm surrounded by 500 acres that are blanketed tonight in mist and clouds, and this farm is a whole world darker and quieter, more beautiful and more brutal than I could have imagined the country to be."

I don't carry a Leatherman, but we have one, and I don't wear Carhartts year, but M does and there's a good chance I will soon. We don't have 500 acres, but we have 26, and there's nothing around us, but a wildlife refuge, state land, unoccupied private hillside and more farms. It's a world away from my previous life in D.C. and still hard for me to wrap my head around some days. Though there's still some city in me. Just the other day, I interviewed a general, wrote about nuclear weapons and defense budgets, then came home to water the chickens and work on our planting plans as it's warming up. I've talked about this life change before, but the shift is worth further discussion.

Last week, we made salad with greens we grew and fed the rest to the chickens, then dumped the remnants on the compost pile. We're finishing up the temporary outdoor chicken coop to get those birds outside and I've got trays of vegetables starting in all the windows. I went a bit overboard with the seeds, we might have a ton of tomatoes and peppers if they all make it and my pack of broccoli, kale, cucumber, cauliflower, lettuce and more tomatoes arrived in the mail the other day. 

We've still got quite a ways to go and plenty of projects for the summer that exhaust me just listing them out, but the idea of making dinner with ingredients pulled from my land, breakfast with eggs from chickens that I raised and creating a little country oasis is exhilarating. 

For me, it's a constant mental shift since I write about nuclear weapons and mission changes from fighter jets to cargo planes and city government by day, then come home and want to work on my blog, rink events or other projects, but I've also got to feed/water the chickens, tend to the plants, renovate a house, turn the compost and think about the garden layout, the kinds of trees I eventually want to plant, where to put bushes and sunflowers and how to protect the pretty flowers I want from wind and deer. 

It's a cross between big ideas and big dreams with things like growing my own food and the simple life. My brain is almost always tired and I think this is why. We no longer have cable, we don't have central air, we use a pellet stove to heat the house in winter. We're close enough to town to get everything we need, but it's still a far cry from my D.C. life when I could walk 10 minutes to the metro, have cupcakes delivered to my office, get stuck behind a presidential motorcade and spend afternoons shopping my favorite outlets or eclectic boutiques few blocks off the Potomac River.

Kristin's story is different than mine and she and her now husband built a farm from nothing that now feeds their entire community, but there is so much in her story that resonates with me. 

Only a few more pages in was this: "As much as you transform the land by farming, farming transforms you...Your acres become a world. And maybe you realize that it is beyond those acres or in your distant past, back in the realm of TiVo and cubicles, of take-out food and central heat and air, in the county where discomfort has nearly disappeared, that you were deprived. Deprived of the pleasure of desire, of effort and difficulty and meaningful accomplishment. A farm asks, and if you don't give enough, the primordial forces of death and wildness will overrun you. So naturally you give, and then you give some more, and then you give to the point of breaking, and then and only then it gives back, so bountifully it overfills not only your root cellar but also that parched and weedy little patch we call the soul."

I'm still only about a third of the way through the book, but picked it up again this week. It's good reading as we're prepping for the growing season.

Other good reads on food, land and agriculture:

Five links to read before heading to the farmer's market. 

I already planned to create my own apple orchard, perhaps we'll have apples for cider-making since there's a shortage.

We're still thinking of having bees and this one's for Courtney. A look at life without honey bees. 

Looking forward to watching this documentary about young farmers. I might be turning into my sister, who was very aware of these issues years ago. 

Why Alicia started blogging, it involves lots of cooking and interesting recipes.

After months of work craziness, with no end in sight, I popped in the first disc of The Newsroom. Again. 

It's fiction, yes, but in that fictional journalism fantasy world lives a journalist who through some major blunders starts speaking truth to power and to stupid. 

This is one of my favorite quotes from the show:  “I’m too old to be governed by fear of dumb people,” said Charlie Skinner, president of the fictional news division. 

Some things have been weighing on my lately and honestly, truthfully, making me rageful. 

I'm a reporter. Nothing I write will make everyone happy. That's not my job. My job is to gather facts and put them in context to help people make sense of their world, vote, etc. 

In my work, I've conditioned myself to use as few adjectives as possible. It's not my place to insert my opinions, my thoughts, my perspectives and biases into news stories. These are the kinds of things I worry about constantly. It's why I struggle so much with writing about what I really think about a lot of things here on the blog. It's like a tectonic shift has to happen in my brain. 

It's not just a job, it's a duty and a responsibility to readers to give them information they need and write as close a version to the truth as I possibly can. There's no doubt that my industry is struggling and some reporters don't hold themselves to same high standards, but here's the thing. People write insanely awful comments on news stories. About reporters. About news organizations. About people in the stories. 

As Americans, they're entitled to their opinions and have the right to voice them, but I would ask that you, the news consumer, try a little harder. I'm a journalist. That comes with being hung up on, yelled at, called a racist, liberal, commie, idiot who can't spell and worse. Is it awful that people treat other people like that? Yes. Did I know that's what I was signing up for? Mostly. And you learn to deal with it. You focus on the calls, letters and comments from older ladies in the community who thank you for telling them about events they can no longer get to. From the families who thank you for how you handled stories about their service member killed in combat. From the woman active in many community groups who thanks you for making sense of some complicated issues. Those calls are few and far between, but those are the people I work for and try to keep in mind when I'm losing my mind in the weeds of the nonsense. 

You kids out there in blogger land tend to be more thoughtful commenters and a more pleasant lot, but for the sake of educating the masses, let's review. 

+ Read the story before demanding information on a news organizations Facebook page. Not just the headline. Really, reading is the key here folks. We work hard to get the information for you, but we put it in the newspaper. Journalists are not your personal Magic 8 Ball. 

+ Before chewing out a news reporter for not writing about something, do just a cursory search of the site to ensure they haven't already written about it 16 times in the last month. If we consistently fail to report things, go ahead, chew us out. 

+ Please, for the love of all things, learn the very basics of government. I'm not saying you need to understand federal, state and local budgets and all the complicated systems involved, because it really can be hard, but if you think a president can overturn a Supreme Court decision, we have a problem. 

+ Read stories from multiple news organizations. Develop some media literacy. That requires not accepting everything a single news source tells you is absolute. Read them all, learn to spot stories that include inflammatory quotes from people who aren't credible. Read a lot.  And read critically. I don't mean reading and then sending a nasty-gram to a reporter. I mean reading and actually thinking about what you're reading. 

+ If you have a question, ask it. By all means, if something in my story didn't make sense to you, call me to talk about it. But don't yell. Don't call me names. I am perfectly happy to have a civil conversation with you about the information I have gathered and if I've missed something, I'll certainly look into it. 

+ Stop saying the media has gone to hell and can't do news when all you read are awful crime stories and celebrity gossip. We know what you're reading. We know what you click on. You, media consumer, looked for entertainment and got it. Demand high quality news and when we give it to you, read it. 

Again, I watched the entire first season of The Newsroom in about three days and have made long speeches to M about the state of the media and our society that seems to have become okay with not being informed. As a journalist, I want to demand more of us, I do. Trust me, I am tougher on my industry than most non-journalists could be. And I actively work to improve it. I'm on boards and work with student journalists to help those coming after me to be better. But I need help from news users. 

It stresses me out in ways I cannot even put into words that so many media consumers are so entrenched in their political cocoons and apparently too good to actually read the news before harassing us with the same questions about the same restaurant that we told you was coming to town, we're sorry it's not built yet, we're not in construction. 

Have your political opinions, but can we please, please, please raise the level of informed debate? Can we have adult conversations about things affecting our communities, our nation, the world? 

How do you consume news? Do you think quality news is still valuable today?