I’ve been thinking a lot about community these past weeks.

Part of that was because an interview I did with Iowa Public Television for a piece coming in 2025 and the question that was asked was “why do you think it’s important for people to see themselves in the newspaper?”

My answer started with “I get the opportunity every week to see my own name in this newspaper on countless stories.” As a journalist, I try to minimize my appearance in said news stories, but you can never fully remove yourself from said stories. There is always going to be a hint of your views and what you think was important from a meeting in your reporting. The goal is to minimize that as much as possible.

But for other people in a community, their stories or times they appear in a newspaper might be smaller, finite. It’s exciting to be at an event and know you might be one of the people who shows up in the pages or has a story to tell.

The other question that got asked in that interview that I don’t know I gave a robust answer to was “Why do you still love doing this job and in these communities?”

So here is a fuller answer than the 15 to 20 second answer I gave.

I love this job and always have because of the variety of  things I get to cover or experience. Even on weeks with a returning festival, no one week is ever the same in what you might encounter in news.

But mostly, that answer keeps returning to something that comes up a lot about these communities in editorials and columns of the past – I love living in the communities I cover. You become a richer reporter because of those connections.

People always joke with me that I’m everywhere, when do I sleep? There is always something to do in these two communities.

The truth of the matter is my apartment is quiet. It’s an area of solitude after a long working day, filled with a movie or show I’ll be streaming, sure, but quiet. As an introvert, I need that solitude to recharge.

But as a journalist in these communities, being where the people and stories are is just where I’m most at home.

Sure, festivals and crowds seem like an anathema to an introvert, but they’re the events my towns are hosting, and if it’s important to them, it’s important to me.