Note: This story was take from the Mitchell Republic Web site. Editor Korrie Wenzel wrote it for the March 13, 2008 paper.
To this day, i still get called by my old last name :)
(Again, story can be found at the
Daily Republic Web site)
Wendy Owen wasn’t a native South Dakotan, but quickly learned to love Mitchell.
Owen moved to town to take a job with The Daily Republic in 1993 and covered city and county issues, spending her time away from the office with her husband Lee, bicycling and hanging with Ben, a dog adopted from the local shelter. Lee, a native Oregonian, occasionally fly-fished from a float tube in Lake Mitchell.
“I miss everything that makes Mitchell special — the rural landscape, the quiet, the independent folks,” she said this week.
But when a school district in Bakersfield, Calif., hired her husband, Owen left Mitchell after about three years. After working at the Bakersfield newspaper for a few years, Owen moved on to the Portland Oregonian, a 330,000-circulation daily, where she covers the education beat.
Owen is one of many former reporters from The Daily Republic’s newsroom who have used the experiences gained here in Mitchell as a stepping stone for bigger beats, interesting life changes or worldwide travel. Although the late Jim Wilson — a former sports editor in Mitchell who became an Associated Press executive — is probably the most noted of all Daily Republic alumni, many reporters from the past decade or two are on their way up as well.
Among the issues Owen followed in Mitchell was the debate about whether to construct a new Davison County jail.
“I specifically remember the jail controversy as dividing the city council and county commission, including a big blow-up at a city council meeting when some county employees showed up,” she said.
Like Owen, Josh Hoffner, too, is enjoying a faster pace these days.
Hoffner wasn’t a full-timer at The Daily Republic, but spent the summer of 1997 in Mitchell as a newsroom intern, working on the summer Progress Edition as well as enterprise stories for the daily edition.
These days, he’s a news editor for The Associated Press New York City bureau, supervising a staff of about 30 and coordinating AP’s New York metro coverage.
“I have fond memories of my time in Mitchell — it was truly one of the most rewarding jobs I’ve had in journalism and I’m not joking about that,” Hoffner, a Yankton native and South Dakota State graduate, said this week. “I was just starting in journalism and it was my first extended gig at a daily newspaper. … It was also a fun staff, and we had good editors who gave you a lot of latitude to pursue cool stories. It’s also cool to be able to tell New Yorkers who are perplexed about what the Corn Palace is all about that I used to work a couple blocks away.”
Matt Bunk’s name still comes up. A North Dakotan, Bunk was a weekly newspaper reporter and bartender when he learned The Daily Republic was seeking a sports reporter. He drove overnight after a bar shift for a Sunday morning interview, and stopped at a local gas station, asking the attendant for help with tying his necktie.
Oddly enough, his name almost perfectly matches that of a current sports reporter, Matt Bunke (pronounced Bunk-ee), which causes confusion among those who remember Bunk.
Bunk told me once he wanted to leave sports and get into news. I advised against it, telling him he was nuts. He was a darn good sportswriter, but hard news, Montana’s tall, snowy mountains and snowboarding beckoned.
After two years here, he left to work at a paper in Libby, Mont., then Kalispell, Mont. After 18 months, he moved to Lake Havasu City, Ariz., then to Fairfield, Calif., and finally to the Oakland Tribune, where he was a business reporter.
Today, he’s managing editor of the Arizona Capitol Times, a weekly that focuses on Arizona political news.
Another former sports reporter, Brandon Finsterwalder, also is in Arizona.
Brandon approached me one night and told me he was leaving to write a book about rookie life in the NFL. He planned to use his buddy from the University of Wisconsin, Al Johnson, as the basis. He felt bad, and gave me something like three months’ notice.
The two lived together in Dallas, but Johnson was injured early in training camp, dashing Finsterwalder’s book idea.
“Interestingly, we had another rookie roommate who I became pretty good friends with, and he would have had no problem with me using him as the basis for a book. However, he was an undrafted free agent signee, and it seemed a longshot that he’d even make the team for more than a year,” Finsterwalder told me this week. “I didn’t want to put in the significant effort to try and write something when a publisher wouldn’t want to look at it anyway.”
Ah, but that undrafted rookie was quarterback Tony Romo, who is the talk of Texas these days after leading the Cowboys into the playoffs and jetting around the world with his new girlfriend, Jessica Simpson, a favorite of the tabloids and gossip magazines.
“The dollar signs just flash in front of my eyes,” Finsterwalder says when thinking about an all-access book about Romo’s rookie season.
Finsterwalder, who worked at The Daily Republic for about two years, eventually went to a chain of weekly newspapers near Milwaukee, Wis. Romo is from that area and called the editor, asking him to take a look at the young writer. That’s quite a reference.
He got the job as sports editor and stayed until 2006, when he entered law school. He’s in his fourth semester of six at Arizona State and wants to be a public defender.
Knowing Brandon, I assume he’ll be a good one.
Among other newsroom alumni from the past couple of decades: Dana Gross-Rhode was an intern here in 2003, went to USA Today and is now senior media relations coordinator for the LPGA. Her travels take her around the globe. … Andy Rennecke is sports editor of the Marshall, Minn., Independent. … Two recent writers — Joel Reinesch and Kim Kolden — left to become police officers. … Becky Hanselman, who started work in the sports department while still in high school, resigned last year to get married. She lives in Sturgis and is a freelance photographer. … Former regional reporter Susan Lunneborg is assistant editor of the West Central Tribune in Willmar, Minn., and is married to former city and county reporter Chuck Blomberg, who is in public relations for the Schwan Food Corporation. …
Former reporter Erik Kaufman is an award-winning editor of the Hutchinson Herald in Menno. ... Former sports reporter Terry Janssen is editor of newspapers in Emery and Alexandria. ... Former city reporter David Lias is editor of the Vermillion Plain Talk. ... Former Sports Editor John Papendick is managing news-sports editor at the American News in Aberdeen. ... Former city reporter Brenda Kleinjan is director of communications for the South Dakota Rural Electric Association. ... Longtime photographer Dave Sietsema has his own studio in Mitchell.
