Why I Report for ELi

I’ve grappled with the question of why I write for ELi not only for the purposes of writing this but also because it turns out to be a worthwhile professional exercise to interrogate one’s own reasons for doing any job.

As I pondered the complex and various reasons as to why I do what I do here, it all clicked: It’s the people at the root of it all.

Be it my colleagues, the exceptional residents of East Lansing, or my own family, it’s the people who make this job so meaningful to me.

I’d be a fool to say there aren’t times when I come to loggerheads over some edits or some other issue. But for every editorial fracas, there are the dozens of times I am made better (and saved from my own comically stupid errors on occasion) by the people I work with. 

Plus, there are the countless jokes, GIFs, and times we help each other out with whatever it might be that we need. As our General Manager Jodi Spicer says, “Team work makes the dream work.” 

Also, as it turns out, the real bulk of my job as a reporter is listening to people talk, then discerning what’s important or “news” out of what was said, and then disseminating that information. 

I am fortunate in East Lansing to cover, meet, and learn from a City full of smart, thoughtful, and engaged citizens. It’s exceptional to leave a public meeting or interview having not learned something, frankly. 

Some people I’ve known prior to working at ELi, too — an inevitability given that my dad has been living in mid-Michigan his whole life, outside of four years in Ann Arbor. And as he remained in mid-Michigan, so had his parents, Ed and Leah Graham. Ann Nichols, ELi’s Public Editor, is my aunt (dad’s sister). Despite my dad, aunt, siblings, and I all attending Okemos Public Schools, East Lansing is ostensibly home. 

Having been here for most of my 23-plus years, save for four in central New York, it’s a privilege (and a bit surreal) to get to do what I do. A recent story I did on flooding helped reinforce what this all means.

It was this feature on five families and homeowners whose basements flooded on Aug. 12, and live on the edge of East Lansing at the border with Meridian Township. 

The only reason I knew this story was there to be reported was because I knew one of the families. And the only reason I knew them is because they were neighbors of my late-grandparents. I still knew them, and by virtue of getting to tell this story, I know all five families on that block. Along with being entrusted with their flooding stories, I learned about them and their lives. 

Another good group of people in a City with plenty more to spare. 

So why do I write for ELi? It’s the people.

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