This week has brought many exciting changes. While I have been working on the changeover from managing multiple different roles at the paper, I have been training with people that are taking on some of my responsibilities, to help lighten the workload.
Working with Christian Vanek has been incredible so far. We are so blessed to have him as Publisher. He’s already shared incredible ideas, has so many awesome directions we are going to go and this week has a staff bio inside on page 8. Check out some of his hopes for the newspaper there!
Long-time staff designer Cynthia Davis has come on as a full-time employee. Cynthia is the person that hired me at the paper, oh so many years ago. She’s been on staff off and on for the last 16 years. It’s incredible to step back from the design and watch it unfold with new vigor each week. Her creativity and vision far outweighs all I learned in my design time. Cynthia also works on our podcast as co-producer.
Joining us as full-time journalists are Omayra Acevedo and Christopher Kelley. Both have also been at the paper for quite some time. Omayra will be focusing on the north and south Peak to Peak region for features, Discover Colorado, content organization and more. She will have a special focus on Gilpin County as well. Christopher will be focusing on Nederland government, business, features and investigative news. Both will have weekly contributions to our content.
Sara Sandstrom is continuing her role as primary copy editor, reporter, photographer and intern manager. Lynn Hirshman is also continuing as our second copy editor. We also have Dango Rose joining us as our podcast producer (check out his bio on page 8 as well). Terri Vernon has joined us in circulation and has been an incredible help in getting papers back and forth, labeled and delivered for the last few months.
None of our regular long-time staff have gone away. You’ll see lots of amazing work by all of them and we’re working to put our complete staff box in print soon.
We have Aloric Davis on podcast editing and Jamie Lammers on podcast, music and business stories. Dave Gibson will still be covering some school sports, feature events, Around the World stories and more.
Mindy Leary covers Timberline Fire and is taking on Central City government. Eliza Dubose is still covering the Gilpin Board of Education. Curt Halsted covers events at the Gilpin School (and beyond) and Patrice LeBlanc is covering features.
Anne Scarffe takes photos for stories with her husband for government and features. John Scarffe covers Gilpin government, Black Hawk City Council and features.
Dr. Charles Smith, Kirsten Springer, Kirk C. Watkins, write features, business stories and cover community focused news in their regions of Gilpin, Coal Creek Canyon and northwest Boulder County.
Doug Armitage writes music and humor, Mark Cohen writes Diversions, Karen Anderson submits Astrology each month, Denise Boehler sends in our Pet of the Week promotion, Frank Sanders writes the Nederland Night Skies column and Amy Skinner provides For Your Health column.
James DeWalt provides a weekly nature column, Jack Gaffney writes about music each month, Alexander Joseph provides our weekly poem, John MacKay writes Mountain Folk Tales and his wife Lorena DeSanta takes photos, John McGinley still sends in our monthly weather column.
Sal and Karen DeVincenzo provide stories and photos from Jamestown and northwest Boulder County (and FDGD).
Derek Ridgley writes the Extrospectives column and Bruna Villalon submits occasional local stories about fire departments and living in the mountains. Brian Alers is writing our Legacy of Mining articles.
Rick Rudstrom shows up dang near every week to volunteer to label papers and sometimes, when we’re lucky, Pat Rudstrom shows up and helps with that too.
And don’t forget our amazing interns. Abigail Smith, Ande Hammers and Noah Turner are our senior interns, writing stories of life in their schools and working during their final high school year towards scholarships with us. Hayden Hardt-Zeman writes, takes photos and works on circulation. Annika Marschke covers life in Coal Creek and Cameron Thomason covers Gilpin school. Since our intern program began, I have had the pleasure of working with over a dozen students. Interns are high school to college level students that work for the paper for a semester or more. They cover anything from school news to community news, features, government and events.
I’d like to recognize a few of our longtime staff members that are gone now. I had the amazing privilege of working with Barbara Lawlor for over a decade. Barbara was my inspiration, my mentor and my friend. I lived close to her and rode the school bus with her kids and went to school with some of them. This week I spent a bit of time working in the archive and you can’t open any papers before late 2018, without running across her beautiful writing.
And, I was lucky enough to work with Clyde Burnett. Clyde showed up at one of my community chats and sat and enchanted me for almost two hours. You wouldn’t think Climate Change would be enchanting, but it was. Clyde took a very complicated subject and he broke it down into information I could digest. Clyde wrote for the paper for less than a decade, but he shared three quarters of a century of knowledge in that short time. I ran across one of his books on my shelf this week and I’m having a fascinating journey reading it (I have all of Clyde’s books).
I have had the pleasure of working with some of the most talented people on the planet, right here in the Peak to Peak region. I’ll keep sharing the many people that have made the paper what it is, each week through January.
My constant awe at being part of this amazing process is never ending. Here I am, the luckiest woman around, because I am working the job of my dreams and now sharing that dream with a whole team of incredible people!
The Mountain-Ear is YOUR community newspaper, covering the news you love since 1977. Need to reach us? We are always available by phone at 303-810-5409, by email at info@themountainear.com or in person in our Black Hawk or Nederland office.
