If you asked me when I rushed off to university if I thought I would be co-editor of a campus publication, I honestly don’t know what I would have told you. Now, four years on, I find myself in a position that would have seemed far-fetched for the awkward freshman that I was all those years ago.

My father was always insistent on listening to NPR. Saturday mornings, Car rides to town, working in the shop – NPR was a constant companion. I would have preferred rock and roll, but the summer of 2020 drove home the importance of good reporting. Since then, it’s become a staple of my routine. The opportunity to provide coverage to a place that I call home is one that is both exciting and important.

The Black Hills have been home for a little less than 9 years now. At the moment, it’s the longest that I’ve lived anywhere, trumping the 7 years that my family was stationed in southern Germany with the army. In 9 years, I’ve graduated from Lead-Deadwood High School and watched both my parents walk at graduations for bachelor’s degrees at Black Hills State University. After a brief detour to St. Cloud State University, I enrolled at BHSU and got on track to graduate with a bachelor’s in multimedia journalism.

At the end of last semester, Nathan Feller, the previous editor of Jacket Journal and now the editor of Ponder Magazine, approached me asking how the co-editor position sounded. I was nervous at first, since I had only written a few articles, but given this is a letter from an editor, I’m sure you can gather what my answer was. I’m sure that taking a back seat in your award-winning publication is stressful, Nathan, now imagine having to take the reins! In all seriousness, I’m jazzed to take this on.

I’m glad to know the people that I’m working with here at the Journal. My peers are all excellent writers, photographers, and designers. Their work is ultimately what makes the newsroom tick. I’m thankful for the opportunity to work more closely with them.

The issue that this letter is published in will be my first with a different job title. Here’s hoping it’s not the last.