Ray K. Erku/The Aspen Times
When I was a sophomore at Aspen High School, my guidance counselor put me in Sarah Ward’s Introduction to Journalism class. I wasn’t thrilled.
I had tried to leave Art 1 and get a free period, but somehow I seemed to have more work in that journalism class. But by the end of the first quarter, I was hooked. In the second semester, I took the AHS Skier Scribbler. Admittedly, I wrote all my articles at home and preferred playing video games in the corner of the classroom, but I enjoyed writing once I decided to focus on it. In the third year, however, I found my rhythm – and that’s where the fascination began.
Fast forward to the end of my senior year of high school. I had transferred to Colorado Rocky Mountain School (CRMS) and needed to find a senior project. All seniors at CRMS have a three-week block where they have to move out of their dorms and apartments and volunteer for a person or organization. I’m going to Colorado College to study journalism and knew my senior project would be a good place to start.
My hopes of volunteering at the New York Times were dashed by the cost, so I stuck with my backup job: the Aspen Times. At least, that was my attitude at the time.
My first contact was with Ray Erku, the editor, who asked me after my interview in February if I could start writing right away. I decided to focus on school until my internship officially began in May. As my disappointment at not working for The New York Times quickly faded, I realized what I was really getting myself into. Before that, I had worked as a waitress, janitor, and retail clerk—typical teenage jobs. Becoming a reporter was not only my chosen career path, but also an opportunity to do a job with real responsibility that carried weight when I told people, “I’m a reporter at the Aspen Times.”
On my first day in the office, I was given a key to the building and within 30 minutes I was given a press release and a camera and told to get to work. Ray, my editor, clearly had high expectations of my abilities. I hadn’t written a news article since the beginning of my penultimate year of college.
But on my second day on the job, I was handed a newspaper with two names and a photo on it. By the end of my first week, I had photos and stories printed on the cover of the Aspen Times. That was a formative week for me. Although I had enjoyed all of my previous jobs, the monotony of those jobs began to wear on my active spirit toward the end of the summer. I am happiest when I am out in the mountains, and working at the Aspen Times gave me the opportunity to do that at work. You don’t find a job like that just anywhere.
During the third week of the internship, I was offered the opportunity to work for the entire summer. The benefits of the job were obvious, but the drawbacks were less obvious. The hours I spent making phone calls and leaving messages and emails, only to give up on the story, were sometimes disheartening. The ageism pressures, however, were much more noticeable.
One of the biggest consequences of this job is the inherently unreliable attitude people have towards the press. This has been exacerbated by my age. People seem to be unable to believe that I am a reporter and that I am not trying to pull their leg. I have been confronted with the same statements several times:
“How old are you? On the phone I thought you were older.”
“How did you get this job again?”
“Is there any way you can prove to me that you are actually a reporter?”
It’s hard to get people to talk to the press. Many conversations ended quickly after I told them I worked for a newspaper. It was sad to see that people still turn away from the press in this politically and environmentally divided era in the US.
I still believe that the press is a key driver of global change and one of the best channels for advocacy. As my CRMS history teacher Beth Krasemann taught me, all change starts locally.
