My friends are in the newsroom

People & Places 

Oh, I get by “With a Little Help From My Friends.” While the song predates me, it’s been a semi-regular feature in my life. 

Growing up in a household full of music, heavily featuring the epic rock of the ʼ60s and ʼ70s, The Beatles were a big part of my formative years. 

A tune about love and friendship and support, I’m not going to tell you it’s been my lifelong anthem, my north star and guiding principle. Most people who know me know I’m rather people adverse. 

For someone who’s whole job revolves around dealing with people, I’m not really a people person. I’ve always taken the approach that it’s a better plan to do something yourself rather than rely on someone else to get it done. 

It’s been pointed out that those tendencies can be unhealthy and if I had a therapist I’m sure they’d agree. I can’t say I disagree.  

Mild control issues aside, the “I’ll-handle-it-myself” way of doing things has served me fairly well. Until it didn’t. 

Reporters are a strange breed. We know a little bit about a lot of things, sometimes getting the opportunity to take deep dives into specific topics and issues and becoming well versed, but for the most part we’re kind of Swiss army knives, especially when it comes to “community journalists” like we are here at the News-Bulletin. 

We are government reporters, planning and zoning reporters, health and science reporters, arts, education, environmental, business reporters and more. We learn how to wrangle public records, sit through endless public meetings and figure out what’s newsworthy, how to talk to people of all walks of life when they are at their best and worst. 

The longer I’m in this business, the older I get and the younger the new reporters get. Weird how that works. 

As I became less the new guy and more the somehow seasoned reporter, I started to view new reporters as … well as not knowing anything, to be perfectly honest. How could they? They were kids, right? I mean, what do people in their 20s actually know? 

I remember me in my 20s. Hindsight tells me I was an idiot. But, living through your 20s two-plus decades ago is not the same as living through your 20s now, that’s for damned sure. So, as these new journalists entered the newsroom, I knew I had to take a step back and see what they could do. 

One of the first “newbies” I got to work with was Anna Padilla. A film student originally, who was somehow wrangled into print journalism, Anna was sarcastic and smart, slinging just the right amount of barbs to keep you on your toes without crossing over into a human resource violation.  

I nicknamed her “Film Girl” and that’s how she’s remained in my contacts ever since. Like any small newsroom, we wanted to find a way to use her skill set to bring a new dynamic to our coverage. As many of you probably remember, Anna adopted a dog from the Valencia County Animal Shelter. Leaning into the animal lover in her, we eventually hatched the idea for a series of articles about the shelter and its struggles — its eternal struggles — with overcrowding.  

I would focus on the words and she would do the visual, “film girl” parts. The project was weeks of planning, interviews, video editing and writing. The result was a collaborative project unlike anything I’d done.  

Sure, I’d shared bylines with other reporters, either by accident or in a planned way, but this was different. I got to watch another reporter work in a completely different medium, tell a story in a way that I wasn’t familiar with and see how that complimented the work I did. 

Not that it was all about me, but I had honestly been rather dismissive of video. Mostly because it wasn’t something I could do, so how valuable could it be, right? 

Since Anna, I’ve gotten the privilege to work with several other “young” journalists and learn from them as well. We currently have two reporters in the VCNB newsroom who are at the beginnings of what I hope is a long, healthy career in the news.  

In October, we as a staff, worked on one of our biggest yearly special sections, Locals. This year, we tackled water. It’s a big, far-reaching topic that required a lot of research and interviews, learning new terms and concepts. 

It was so heartening to listen to Jesse Jones and Felina Martinez talk things through, share information they found with all of us, ask questions and find answers. We were all part of the project but the cooperation and sharing they brought to it was rather inspiring. 

I get too stuck in my own head, my own ideas and belief that I know what I’m doing. I mean, I do know what I’m doing, but it’s always good to have others bring new perspectives and ideas.  

So, as I said, I get by with a little help from my friends — and fellow reporters.