It was mid-2018, four years after I’d graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Southern Mississippi.
I was making money doing occasional photography jobs while working catering events for weddings, proms and other social events at a venue in downtown Hattiesburg.
I’d largely given up on pursuing a career in the news business after realizing how hard it would be to find a job doing the kind of journalism I believed in.
A journalism instructor had suggested that I work with a national outlet like The Huffington Post. But that wasn’t the style of journalism I wanted to pursue, and besides, I wanted to do journalism here in Mississippi.
Much of the local print business seemed to be crumbling, though, bought out by soulless, far-away conglomerates that swooped in to buy these institutions that had once been pillars of the community, only to hollow them out to turn a quick buck by selling the parts for money.
And in much of the media that remained, there was an old rule written by (mostly) white men who had powerful white men for friends: a story isn’t fair (and isn’t journalism) unless it treats every story as a two-sided affair and presents both sides with equal weight for balance. This usually amounts to filtering stories and issues through the prism of America’s two-party political system.
Well, I didn’t want to play by that rule. I’ve always been far more interested in unvarnished truth-telling, the kind practiced by journalists of the past like Ida B. Wells and Hazel Brannon Smith—both crusaders for truth. And I had no interest in having to supplement every fact I reported with some D.C.-brained “alternative fact” from a Democrat or Republican.
I also wasn’t interested in working for a newsroom where I had to keep certain truths quiet to avoid upsetting the remaining advertisers.
So after several attempts to try to make the world around me conform to the kind of work I wanted to do (independent writing, freelancing, a few months working at a magazine that quickly folded), I was ready to surrender: I’d settle for a career I wasn’t passionate about, but that I could at least hope to make enough to be able to save for retirement.
So, I signed up to return to USM that fall for a computer science degree.
Don’t get me wrong; I think coding is fun. I love computers. I even have a collection of vintage Macs from the early 2000s because I love the cool designs of that era. But it wasn’t the field I was burning to work in.
As fate would have it, Robbie Ward, a Mississippi journalist I’d done a little work with covering the rather traumatic 2014 U.S. Senate primaries, reached out to me before I could even start my first (and only) semester of computer science classes.
He told me the Jackson Free Press needed someone who could travel to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to cover a campaign watch party. I agreed, thinking it would be just another one of the many odd jobs I was doing at the time as I prepared to return to USM.
That one freelance job, which introduced me to JFP Editor Donna Ladd, turned into a second. And a third. And by the time I started classes, I was reporting several stories a week for JFP, covering the 2018 U.S. Senate special election and the candidates: Mike Espy, Cindy Hyde-Smith and Chris McDaniel.
Still, I resisted the idea that journalism could be my career path. The semester began and I started classes, but my return to academia was soon overwhelmed as I found myself writing breaking news stories instead of attending lectures; using weekends to chase candidates on the campaign trail instead of studying; and spending evenings perusing old newspapers and historic documents, pulling strands of history to make sense of an unwieldy present.
It turned out that Donna was not only a great mentor, but that she and I gelled well in our vision of what journalism should and shouldn’t be. It seemed I’d found the place where I could do the work I believed in after all.
I failed my classes that semester, but I took a full-time job at JFP with encouragement from my husband, Liam, who has always backed me in doing what I love.
After two years at JFP, I took the position as the Mississippi Free Press’ first reporter after Donna and Kimberly Griffin founded and launched it in March 2020—just in time for COVID, the national eruption of Black Lives Matter protests, the changing of the state flag and the chaotic 2020 election.
MFP grew fast, thanks to readers and supporters like you, and we worked hard to report vital stories in a fast-changing world. Today, nearly six years later (and following Donna’s sustained efforts to convince me I could be a newsroom leader, too), I’m the news editor of a continually-growing team of reporters.
What I love about MFP is that none of us are here because we want the kind of riches or glory that elite, coastal media often promises (even if it doesn’t always deliver). We’re here because we’re passionate about providing a public service to the people of Mississippi—because we want to make this place better through journalism that matters.
You can help us do that work in even bigger ways than before by donating to our nonprofit newsroom. Right now, all gifts are matched. Your support helps us grow journalism by people who are hungry in our desire to make a difference in Mississippi and in our country.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources for fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.