About Me
That’s me, behind all those Very New Computers, busily writing or designing newspaper pages, or from the looks of it, going on about something, circa 1996.
And at right is me today. Sadly, I no longer have access to those great computers, but I’m sure as you read this, I’m hard at work on something, and if you ask me about it, I bet I’ll go on about it at length.
Like many kids, I discovered pretty early on that I enjoyed writing and had a real talent for it. I was fortunate enough to have some teachers who saw potential in me and knew — because they were full-grown adults — that there were only a few industries where talented writers could actually earn a living, and one of those was journalism.
My eighth-grade teacher was the first to introduce me to the notion of working for a newspaper, and after a couple of semesters on my high school paper, I knew there was no other place for me. I spent four years on the high school paper and three after that on the staff of my college newspaper.
I don’t remember my first professionally published byline, but I do remember the first event I had to cover as a young reporter — a county council meeting where the main agenda item was whether the clerk’s office should buy a new printer. (They did.)
I’ve been an executive editor, a reporter, a photographer, a page designer, a graphic designer, a manager, a copy editor, a programmer and, I’m sure, tons of jobs that while I may not remember the actual circumstances, you can bet I retain the muscle memory.