I'm not sure how many readers know this, but this is not the first time I've worked at the Herald. I was an intern right after I graduated high school. How did that happen? Let me set the scene.
The year was 2009. Many countries were experiencing an economic recession, Barack Obama still had dark hair, and America just couldn't get enough of the Black Eyed Peas *Gag*. At that point, I was just wrapping up three years on my high school's student paper, The Paw, my senior year of which I had spent as one of two editors-in-chief. One day, my teacher Steve Gibbs (who has been a columnist with the Herald for more than 30 years) told me there was an intern position available at the local paper where I would be able to write stories. I told him I was interested, and he placed a call to then-editor Marc Ethier. Marc's response? "Send him over when he's ready. I'd like to meet with him."
I went over to the paper's office with a portfolio of my strongest Paw articles to meet with Marc and the paper's then-assistant editor, Christi Chidester. We talked for a bit, and a few days later I got a call from Christi telling me that I had gotten the job. I was very excited to get my foot in the door at my local paper.
The job was pretty straightforward. I wasn't paid, and I came in on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays while the other intern hired for that summer, Macy Williams- who I had worked with on The Paw the previous year- would come in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (Macy now writes for the entertainment site PopSugar, by the way). I basically wrote stories that were assigned to me, which turned out to be good practice for the real world. On The Paw, I would write about whatever I felt like, and only a handful of my articles had t do with Benicia.
The paper did not have a website at that point (They would finally establish one about six months after I left), so this is the first time the stories I wrote that summer will be appearing on the web. I've scanned all the articles that I had saved (There was one big one that I had only saved half of, and it was a big one. It was an interview with then-school board trustee Dana Dean, who was about to run for re-election. Maybe there's another copy of that paper lying around the office) and plan on posting them here. I'll be updating on Saturdays and Mondays (AKA, the days when the Herald doesn't publish) and posting attachments of my articles as well as brief preambles on the stories behind the articles, if I can remember them. I didn't save the dates in my clippings, so I can't remember exactly when these articles ran, but I have a good idea of when I was working on them.
It's important to note that I was 19 years old at that time and had not started college yet. Therefore, my writing was not quite as strong back then as it is now, but that's to be expected. I still find this stuff fun to read, and if you were living in Benicia in the summer of '09, perhaps you will too.
It's important to note that I was 19 years old at that time and had not started college yet. Therefore, my writing was not quite as strong back then as it is now, but that's to be expected. I still find this stuff fun to read, and if you were living in Benicia in the summer of '09, perhaps you will too.
Enough rambling though. Let's get started.
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