Sometimes you just have to ask the right person to get it done…
As you no doubt surmised from the column on page 5 of last week’s Faribault County Register, our writer/reporter Fiona Green has decided to leave the Register and go back to work in the Fairmont School System.
To say we will (and already are) going to miss her is an understatement.
Fiona was a really great writer who became an excellent reporter. She also had become great at doing page layout on Thursdays, coming up with story ideas each week, and was very pleasant to have around.
But, to be honest it was not totally shocking when she let us know she was going to leave us.
One thing I learned a long time ago, things are going to change. Nothing ever stays the same. People come into your life and people go. Well, that’s sort of true anyway.
Being a newspaper reporter is not exactly a normal job. But then, maybe most jobs are not really “normal.”
For instance, you are probably going to work around 40 hours a week, but it sure is not a typical 9 to 5 job. That is because we work some hours in the evening covering meetings and events, and then there is weekend work to be done.
But, that does not mean it is not enjoyable. Meeting and talking to all kinds of people, writing stories many people are going to read and having that satisfaction that you helped put out an award-winning newspaper are all important items too.
Maybe this kind of work is not for everyone, I suppose. After all, we have had a few reporters here over the years. In fact, in my 17 years of being at the Register, there have been 14 different reporters here working with me.
Not quite an average of one per year. As someone told me the other day after they heard Fiona was leaving us, “Chuck, maybe you should not be so mean to the reporters!”
I never thought of myself as being a real mean, tough editor, like J. Jonah Jameson in the Spiderman comic books, who would always tell poor Peter Parker that his photo offerings were bad. “This is crap, crap I say. Bring me something I can print!”
Many of the reporters who have left us had tears in their eyes when they told publisher Lori Nauman and myself that they were going to tender their resignations.
They left because they were moving away, or getting married, or having kids, or because they found a different job somewhere, maybe in the news biz or sometimes not.
So who were these 14 people who were Register reporters over the last 17 years? In no particular random order, they are Lacey Hanson, Katie Mullaly, Tony Acosta, Cody Benjamin, Robert Brewer, Brock Buesing, Regan Carstensen, Paula Lamar Gibbons, Sam Jefson, Rose Lacher Hall, Jill Roesler, Judy Sabin, Fiona Edberg Green and Kevin Mertens.
To be honest, I might have missed one or two. And, of course, there were quite a few other reporters working at the Faribault County Register and the Blue Earth Post long before I ever got here. We have, after all, been in business for 155 years now.
So here is the deal. To do what we do each week, like publish a newspaper, do lots of magazines, cover meetings, sports and events, we need to have a full staff in our newsroom. And actually, we need a full staff in the whole office to get everything done that we do, like graphic design, ad sales, circulation and bookkeeping, among many other things.
So the point is this. Maybe you know someone who has an interest in being a reporter on an award-winning newspaper in a very lovely small city in Southern Minnesota.
Or maybe it is just a person who loves to write, has some pretty good English skills, loves to take photos, enjoys visiting with people and is looking for a job or maybe a career change.
Send them to us. Our contact information is in the masthead on the bottom of the page.
Now I can’t guarantee that we would automatically hire the first person who walks in the door. But then again, you never know.
Kevin Mertens is one darn good newspaper reporter and photographer, and he pretty much just walked in the door.
Hopefully there is someone else out there who has a little bit of talent for writing and taking photos and they will come work at the Faribault County Register.
Until then, we will continue to bring you the best darn newspaper that we can.
Thanks for reading us.