Journalism pipeline from GHS has served us well

We’re over the moon with excitement about the addition of Avery Howe, our new staff reporter here at the Standard. She writes about her journalism background and her family’s ties to our newspaper in her column.

Avery is the latest product of Lynn Forcella’s journalism factory at Greybull High School.  More times than not, Lynn and her staff of talented writers, photographers and designers have returned from their state convention with the prestigious Golden Pony, awarded to the best yearbook among schools. 

Your community newspaper has benefited greatly over the years from its close ties to the high school program, hiring those students as stringers, interns, part timers, and now in Avery’s case, as a full timer. 

What they all have in common is that they come to us with an advanced understanding of journalism for kids their age -- they know about ledes, what cutlines are, the importance of deadlines, photoshopping and design.  

Avery was among the best of these products, and with her experience, she’ll be a real asset not just to the Standard, but also to the Basin Republican-Rustler and the Lovell Chronicle, our sister publications.  She’ll be a roving reporter, covering stories and events on both ends of the county.    

• On the same subject of journalism, one of the big changes over the past decade or two has been the growing level of cooperation among the newspapers of the Big Horn Basin.

It was accelerated with the establishment of the Wyoming News Exchange by our former press association director, the late Jim Angell and his wife Mary.  Through the WNE, the state’s newspapers essentially share content. At a time of reduced staffs, it’s been a win-win for everyone.

We’ve taken it to another level in the Big Horn Basin.  In addition to what we have in Big Horn County, where David Peck owns all three papers, we have a long relationship with the Powell Tribune. Our paper is printed there every Wednesday. The design teams of our papers and their paper worked together more now than ever.  And on the news side, we’ve collaborated with C.J. Baker and Zac Taylor, most recently on legislative topics where there’s commonality with legislators Dalton Banks and Dan Laursen.

Karla Pomeroy, the editor of the Worland paper, got her start in the business in Lovell, learning from David, and spent several years as the editor of the Basin paper before moving onto what was then the Daily News. Same deal there in terms of legislative story swapping with the Rustler.

And now we have a link to the Cody paper as well.  Victoria O’Brien, who did a wonderful job writing for us, left us about 6 weeks ago to take a job with a nonprofit in Maine.  After a few weeks, she found the job wasn’t to her liking. (We think it’s because the Pennsylvania native who spent time in California really just missed the Cowboy State.) At any rate, she came back to our part of the world and is now writing for the Cody Enterprise. She made it back just in time to write about Al Simpson.

The point is, there’s more of an all of us in this thing together type of a mindset than ever before.  We think it’s a positive thing for newspaper  readers in all our communities.

• We haven’t fielded any questions about it yet, but for those of you who haven’t noticed, we have begun sprinkling in an occasional cartoon from Greg Kearney.

For years, we’ve heard complaints from our left-leaning readers about the conversative cartoons of Wayne Stroot, who lives just over the border in Nebraska.  His cartoons appear in many Wyoming papers, not just ours.

Our response to those complaints has been, we prefer a cartoonist who is going to weigh in on Wyoming issues, more so than national issues. Those are dime a dozen. And for years, Stroot was the only game in town who checked those boxes.

But not anymore. Kearney approached Wyoming newspapers recently, offering up his creations. He sees the world a little differently than Stroot, but that’s OK.  A newspaper’s opinion page should offer a wide range of views.  Not just the prevailing opinion.

So for those of you who enjoy the cartoon, rest assured we won’t be all Stroot or all Kearney, but there will be a mix moving forward.