Friday was the last day of work for Ellie Graham, the La Grande Observer’s summer 2024 intern from the Charles Snowden Program for Excellence in Journalism.
Technically, Ellie was assigned to La Grande, but during the 10 weeks of her internship, I had her work on stories that were important to Wallowa County as well. So I wanted to spend a moment to offer a few words about her.
Ellie’s headed back for a couple of terms at the University of Oregon, where the Snowden program is based, and then — who knows? But based on the work she did for us this summer, her future in journalism is bright.
The EO Media Group has been a partner with the Snowden program for years. This summer, seven of the 20 interns worked for one of EO Media’s news operations. (The students aren’t just from the University of Oregon; the Snowden program takes students from throughout Oregon, including Oregon State University, the University of Portland and Linfield University.)
In many cases, internships like those offered by the Snowden program offer students their first deep dive into the daily life of journalism — and I use the phrase “deep dive” deliberately: It’s a longstanding tradition in newsrooms to throw an intern into the deep part of the pool on their first day to see how they tread water.
(Our intern onboarding process is a little more humane than that these days, but it wouldn’t be unusual at all for an intern to go out on a news story on their first day — with guidance from a supervising editor.)
Ellie turned out be a strong swimmer from that first day, and it wasn’t long before I was handing her big stories on complicated projects. You likely saw some of her work during the summer:
• A story about what we know — and what we don’t know — about the long-term health effects of wildfire smoke.
• An in-depth story about this summer’s Cycle Oregon rally through the Wallowa Mountains — and why it was important both for Union County and Cycle Oregon.
• A story exploring the ramifications of a new deal between Eastern Oregon University and the state’s other regional universities with a university in Taiwan.
As the 10-week internships wrapped up, the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication held a reception for the interns Friday, Sept. 13 in Portland. Even the grizzled news veterans at the reception were struck by the energy and enthusiasm each of these interns displayed during their summer experiences. As you know, these are challenging times for journalism, but I left the reception thinking that these students were up to the challenge.
If you missed any of Ellie’s stories, you can find many of them on the Chieftain’s website, wallowa.com, and the Observer’s website, lagrandeobserver.com. (That includes a wrap-up story about the Cycle Oregon rally that hasn’t yet appeared in print.)
And that’s a good reminder that not every story we write makes it into the print edition of the Chieftain. With five other newsrooms working to generate content, there’s just not enough room for everything in the print edition of the East Oregonian.
But everything we produce gets posted on our website at wallowa.com, including this story about the discoveries an archaeological team made this summer at Maxville and this story about the Enterprise teacher who’s been honored as one of Oregon’s top teachers.
Sometimes, the website offers an extended version of a story that has appeared in print. A good example is my story (finally finished) about why Wallowa County is not setting up a so-called drug “deflection” program intended to move drug defendants out of the court system and into treatment. Wallowa County will offer some drug defendants a treatment option at the time of arraignment; read more here.
This is all part of our efforts to offer the fullest coverage we can of Wallowa County. If you have story ideas, comments or questions about the Chieftain’s content, email me at mmcinally@wallowa.com. I may take a few days to answer, but I do try to reply to every one of your emails.
Remember that, as a subscriber to the Chieftain, you also can access — at no additional charge — the websites at the EO Media Group’s other Eastern Oregon news operations, including the La Grande Observer, the East Oregonian, the Hermiston Herald, the Baker City Herald and the Blue Mountain Eagle in Grant County.
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Mike McInally is editor of the Wallowa County Chieftain and associate editor of the La Grande Observer.
The photo above shows five of the EO Media Group’s Snowden summer interns talking with Capital Press publisher Joe Beach at a reception held Sept. 13, 2024 in Portland. From left, Evan Reynolds, Beach, Hannah Lull, Katelyn Livermore, Ellie Graham and Tori Schuller. EO Media interns Alexander Banks and Audrey Saiz were unable to attend the reception.
