1. Where did you do your internship while in MRU Journalism?
The Melfort Journal

2. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you have liked to give yourself as you started your internship?
That local stories matter to local people. You don’t have to scoop a national story to have impact. I wrote a story on wakeboarding while I was in Melfort and the article and photos had the entire town talking. More youth began to take up wakeboarding in the small town and it gave them something to do in the summers.

3. What is something that really stands out when you think about your time at MRU Journalism?
I loved Mount Royal so much because it wasn’t so much a place to come and learn, but more of an environment to share ideas with your peers. My best teachers didn’t really teach me anything, but they instead prompted me to think outside my little box of a head, to challenge everything I ever heard and to always be curious.

4. How transferrable were the skills you acquired in your education?
Very transferable. The reason I got my first real job outside of school was because of my photo skills, which I learned from Paul Coates.

5. In your career, what type of work has most excited you, and why?
Big human interest stories. Stories that matter to people. Doesn’t always have to be a big story, but anything that means something special to someone. An obituary, an athlete reaching his or her goals, and human rights violations are the stories that get me up in the morning.

6. What is the most important but unwritten rule that you’ve learned on the job?
If it bleeds it no longer necessarily leads.

7. Who has most inspired you along the way, and why?
My mentor and crime reporter extraordinaire, Gary Dimmock from the Ottawa Citizen. Gary is the most fearless reporter I’ve ever met and does stories that nobody else does. Dimmock can develop a source like nobody else in the game and his crime writing is absolutely stellar. Gary always has time for me when I’m working on a big story.

8. Is there anything else you would like to share about your experience in MRU Journalism?
I would just tell young budding journalism students that if they’ve got a nose for news and are curious, they’ll have great careers telling stories. You don’t have to be a fantastic writer or photographer. Those things you can learn. What you can’t learn is the drive to understand the world around you and the passion you need for telling stories in a compelling way.