By GEORGE CUSTER/Editor/The Herald — Summer is always booming in our area. Between events, projects and the ever-present flood of visitors, our otherwise sleepy towns are transformed into a summertime mecca of outdoor activities.
The Herald has welcomed Chaela Carlson, a Future Journalists of America reporter intern who recently graduated from Oakridge High School. She was the class of 2024 valedictorian and plans to attend Lane Community College and major in English. Her placement with The Herald is courtesy of, and supported by, the Fund for Oregon Rural Journalism or FORJournalism, a statewide nonprofit founded in 2021 to help stabilize, sustain and grow rural news publications. The Future Journalists of America program embeds youth in local newsrooms to learn news literacy, hands-on journalism and business sustainability. FORJournalism’s financial support of the internship provides a workforce training opportunity in journalism for high school age students and helps fulfill a need for small publications – more reporting staff to write stories. The end goal of FJA is that youth who intern at their hometown publications will return there to work. No one understands a community better than the people who live and play in the community. To prepare for the summer internship, Carlson took a certified course on basic journalism. She comes to The Herald with skills in interviewing, Associated Press style, covering a meeting, news writing and journalism ethics.
The Herald is also happy to welcome Andrew Griffin, a recent graduate of the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. Andrew has been covering Oakridge City meetings for a while now but will be joining The Herald as a full-time Assistant to the Editor. Andrew brings a myriad of tools, resources, and up to date knowledge recently acquired at the university. Andrew also has previous field experience acquired while working for other newsrooms during his years at the U of O. We are certain that his skillset will help to make The Herald an even better platform for all your news and information.
Adding youth and experience to our team should be a win-win for all of us. Expect to see both of these newshounds out and about our communities in search of a good story. Welcome aboard Chaela and Andrew!
George Custer lives in Oakridge with his wife Sayre. George is a former smokejumper from his hometown of Cave Junction, a former captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. and ran a construction company in Southern California. George assumed the volunteer duties as the Editor of the Highway 58 Herald in 2022. He loves riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, building all things wood, and playing drums on the weekends in his office.
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