My name is Jeremy Walsh and I”m the Record-Bee”s new reporter.
For my first column, I thought it”d be best to introduce myself, rather than get into my one of my soon-to-be weekly rants.
I moved to Lake County about 11 days ago and have been with the Record-Bee for almost a month.
I”m a lifelong northern California resident, born in Vallejo and raised in Benicia.
I went to school back East, earning a BA in communication: journalism from American University in Washington D.C. I also completed minors in mathematics and literature: cinema studies.
If you”re not familiar with American, that”s no surprise. It”s a small school in a city filled with well-known, old and expensive colleges.
Academically, it”s a well-regarded institution, primarily in the fields of international service, communication, public affairs and business.
Socially, it”s best known for two things: being voted annually as one of the most politically active schools in the country and having a men”s basketball team that made the NCAA tournament two years in a row in 2007-08 and 2008-09.
Those two characteristics about my alma mater are important to analyze in relation to me. First, I did a surprisingly good job at remaining politically inactive at American (and really my entire adult life). The reason being, my chosen profession.
I know how important objectivity and ethics are to journalism and I”ve remained committed to that. I”m not a registered member of any political party, for example.
Secondly, and less seriously, I”m a huge sports guy. I follow Bay Area sports very intently and am pretty knowledgeable about most professional sports. So don”t be surprised if some of my columns end up being about sports.
In fact, most of my hobbies are sports-related. I grew up collecting sports cards (not too smart an investment in hindsight) and try to get out on the field/court/course whenever I can. I grew up playing soccer, baseball and golf, played tennis in high school and try to golf, shoot hoops or bowl in my downtime these days.
Most of my work experience dates back to my time in Washington. I spent two years as a Resident Assistant (RA) in the dorms back there (not going to lie, mostly because of the free housing) and wrote articles for several on-campus news outlets.
My most applicable reporting experience was the half-year I worked as the Washington correspondent for The Durango Herald, a daily newspaper based in the rural Colorado city of Durango.
For The Herald, almost all of my work was done on Capitol Hill, where I had daily access to all of the offices and buildings of the U.S. Capitol, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
I covered national issues through a localized lens, reporting on legislation introduced by the two Colorado senators (Democrats Michael Bennet and Mark Udall) and Durango”s U.S. representative, Democrat John Salazar.
I also got to shadow Bennet and Salazar each for a day and write a profile piece on each man, which was pretty cool.
After graduating college and finishing my job with The Herald, I returned home and began looking for jobs west of the Rockies.
And my job search ultimately brought me to the Lake County Record-Bee.
I”d been to the lake before, spending most of my time at resorts in the northeast, and felt that covering all sorts of things for you, the residents of Lake County would be the ideal opportunity for me. Luckily, my new boss thought I fit the bill too.
Now I”m here, somewhat settled in and looking forward to writing this weekly column. Glad to be here, just sayin”.
Jeremy Walsh is a staff reporter for Lake County Publishing. He can be reached at 263-5636 ext.37 or jwalsh@record-bee.com.
