Anne Medley - intrepid freelancer

Intrepid - adj. - characterized by resolute fearlessness, fortitude, and endurance. From the Latin trepidus, which should remind one of the word trepidation, as in fear and uncertainty. Adding the prefix in- gives us something like "immune to fear and uncertainty."

Anne Medley is not quite immune to fear and uncertainty, but she is definitely intrepid. How else could she be planning a trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo - a country where an estimated 45,ooo people die from disease and famine every month?

The fragility of the government headed by Joseph Kabila and the ongoing violence in the Kivu region along the DRC's eastern border mean that, in all likelihood, nothing will change for the better between now and when Medley plans to travel there in November.

There are enough African nations involved in the conflict and so many different militia and rebel groups that it must be impossible to know how many sides there are, not to mention who is on whose team.

And this is a war where sexual violence against women is a weapon used to gain and keep control over communities. In 2007 the Washington Post quoted U.N. official John Holmes saying "The intensity and frequency [of rape] is worse than anywhere else in the world."

When I talk to Medley about these reasons not to go, she admits that she'd rather know less than know more about the risks. "I don't want to go in ignorant," she says, "but I don't want to read too much either, because then I'll get freaked out and not go."

If she goes, she would be working at a university in the DRC's Kivu province, the site of the ongoing conflict. She'd be charged with teaching journalism to Congolese students. For her, to pass on this opportunity out of fear would be a shame. She'd miss the experience of the place and the people, as well as the chance to show students how to tell their own stories of life in a country torn apart by civil war.

"I'm just really interested in life," Medley says. "I'm interested in those stories."

To be fair, she understands the risks better than most, having previously lived in Africa. And she's realistic about the extent to which she could travel inside of the country. "I don't expect to do anything huge," she says. "I might only meet 20 people."

Still, this would be living. She'd be pursuing stories no one else could get and sharing her knowledge with a group of future leaders.

"I might as well live a little." she says. And after a slight pause she adds, "or maybe die a little."

Medley cut her teeth working on multimedia projects at the University of Montana and New West, a Missoula-based new media outlet, and also produced a multimedia piece for her master's project about HIV/AIDS in Montana.

Her experience has led her to teaching positions at the American Indian Journalism Institute and the Diversity Institute in Nashville, a group affiliated with the Freedom Forum. She's also working with the National Coalition Building Institute, a Missoula-based organization, to teach kids to use multimedia to combat school bullying and other social ills touching their lives.

These short-term teaching gigs have become her schtick, and she finds them rewarding because her students pick up the technology quickly.

She's also working on her own projects, specifically a documentary/public service piece on sexual health for Salish-Kootenai College.

"I feel enormously fortunate for all the opportunities that I've been given," says Medley. She sees those opportunities as the result of hard work on her part, coupled with the productivity of her social network. She notes that each of her journalism gigs have been the product of knowing someone who connected her.

"Everybody is hurting," she says, "and like them, I'm just trying to piece it together."


Here's the video that launched Medley's career. It's about urban chickens.

This is the organization that is sponsoring her trip to the DRC, despite the fact that she's not a practicing Christian.

Jonathan Stumpf - bacon jam promoter

Jonathan Stumpf is a born salesman. As soon as I ask about the new product he's marketing, something dubbed "bacon jam," he launches into the pitch. "America's fascination with bacon is going ballistic," he says. "It's this retro appeal." He lists some foods I could spread bacon jam on to make them more bacony, and when I suggest others, he senses I'm on the hook.

"The question you should be asking me, Brett, is 'What can I not put bacon jam on?,'" Stumpf says. It's that downfield juke that all good salespeople can pull off. "Umm.. bacon?," I lamely offer, completely losing control of the interview.

Bacon jam is 70 percent bacon, cooked and "rendered down" over four hours. The resulting product is spreadable bacon. "It has the consistency of chutney," Stumpf tells me.

Before finding this calling, Stumpf was working towards a career in online media. After he got his master's in journalism from the University of Montana, he landed in Seattle with his girlfriend and started sending out applications. "Inititally I was hanging all my hopes on these applications," Stumpf says. Those applications just didn't generate interest.

When he started at UM in 2006, Stumpf immediately gravitated toward all things online. He hoped to find a niche there and avoid the troubled waters of the print world. It was an informed move, and he'd be laughing all the way to bank if publications could figure out how to make online advertising generate enough revenue.

As it is, Stumpf is hedging the bacon jam business with an unpaid internship at the Cascade Land Conservancy. He's their new web/marketing guy. Though he likes living in Seattle, and thinks that the Land Conservancy is doing good work, he's frustrated. "I couldn't have set up a worse disaster for myself," says Stumpf.

He seems too quick to take the blame for being underemployed in this tough climate. While in school, he interned with New West, a Missoula-based new media outlet, took MBA-level classes in marketing and entrepreneurship, and finished a multimedia project centered on the Arctic grayling and the controversy over listing it as a protected species.

But until he makes something else happen, he's giving the bacon jam all he's got. Stumpf is working with Skillet Street Food, the makers of bacon jam, to find a USDA-approved kitchen that will mass produce it.

"It'll be interesting when we get to the nutritional facts stage," he says. Then again, everybody loves bacon, and what could you not spread it on?

You can order bacon jam here.

Natalie Mourton - substitute teacher

Since September she's been living in a cramped studio apartment inside a horse barn in Lolo, Mont. "I never thought I would still be here," says Natalie Mourton, 28.

After graduating from the University of Montana with her journalism/photojournalism degree, she thought the barn would suffice for a few weeks until she found a job.

It's now March, and she's at a bit of a loss. "I'm at the point of trying to figure out if I change directions and go back to school again," Mourton says. It might be a pragmatic decision, but it would be a bitter pill, especially since she originally thought about photojournalism as a way to expand upon her undergraduate degree in environmental studies. She reasoned that a journalism background would open doors that had remained closed for her with just her bachelor's. But in the ten months since she got her master's, those doors have remained shut.

To make ends meet she substitute teaches whenever she gets the call, cleans the horse pens at the equestrian center where she lives, and scouts for freelance work. She doesn't mind the teaching, and the stablehand work means reduced rent.

It's a bit different from the work she was doing to get her degree, and to anyone with a taste for adventure, a lot less exciting than her master's project. For that, she traveled to Chile to document the plight of a small community facing the loss of the cyprus trees that were its lifeblood. For nearly a month she recorded interviews and shot photos that illustrated the community's connection to a resource that was nearly exhausted. Mourton edited and packaged it as a multimedia project, but is unsure about marketing it because she gave a copy to an organization that subsidized her travel expenses. It was also a joint project with an environmental studies grad student who is still working on her portion.

And so another effort that was supposed to open doors is somewhat in limbo. "I don't know that anything came of it," Mourton says of the product she gave to the sponsoring organization.
Though she thinks she could've done more to market herself and her project, she wishes that her UM education would have focused more on those skills. "We should have had more information and preparation for other areas than newspapers," she says.

She also feels disconnected from the university now that she has her diploma. "Once I was done with [the project], that was it." says Mourton. "I basically felt I had no help with that part of it."
Until she makes a decision to move or go back to school, Mourton sees herself in limbo. Going back to school for a health care career "sounds crazy, but if I can't get a job, what else can I do?"

Natalie Mourton's photo portfolio can be viewed here.

Kristine Paulsen - freelance photographer

The first classmate to return my call, Kristine Paulsen, is a photographer who is working part-time at the Montana Food Bank Network. She makes sure they have an accurate count of the number of people making withdrawals.

She's glad she has a job that benefits people who need help, but continues to look for a way to make photography pay the bills. She's got a few freelance gigs coming up, and hopes they'll beget more.

It's no stretch to say that Paulsen's after-graduation prospects were good. After finishing her master's thesis, a multimedia project on the human toll of the W.R. Grace vermiculite mine in Libby, Mont. (viewable here), she headed to an intership at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Her second intership, it was a big step up to a large paper.

"It was a great internship," she says. "That's why I'm so heartbroken about what's happening to them." She's referring to the imminent end of the PI's print edition. She feels for the paper's staffers, who have all been told their jobs will end soon, except for a skeleton crew of 10 to keep the online edition alive.

After that the job search began in earnest. The internship lasted through the summer of 2008, and because she was at the PI, she couldn't apply for the jobs that she saw advertised. But after the internship was over, she just wasn't seeing the same number of photographer jobs. And despite having contacts, few leads have turned up.

The past few months have been especially bad. Paulsen is a member of the National Press Photographer's Association, and says that there haven't been any openings advertised through them for two months. "Photo jobs are non-existent," she says.

With a number of newspapers failing and others freezing hiring, her struggle is not surprising. In fact, Paulsen was aware of trouble in the industry when she started her master's at UM in 2006. "I knew it was rough," she said. "I had [a friend] telling me that. But I didn't think it would completely implode."

The upcoming freelancing gigs give her hope, and renewed interest in her master's project due to the W.R. Grace trial helps to maintain confidence in her abilities "People at the PI said I was one of the best interns," she says. "It's just not the right time."

You can see Kristine's photos at www.kristinepaulsenphotography.com.

Newspapers are dying. Time for plan B for me and my classmates?

The litany of names includes big papers, small papers, medium papers and wire services. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the San Diego Tribune and even the New York Times are sick, and we don't know how to save them. Reams have been written about the troubles of the newspaper industry, so I shouldn't have to include the standard phrases about ad revenue moving online or declines in readership. This won't be a story about which company will be next or a story that offers ideas about how to generate revenue.

This will be a story about former University of Montana journalism graduate students - my classmates - and what their lives are like after graduating at possibly the worst time for the newspaper industry and the U.S. economy as a whole.

I know some of my friends did get jobs in the industry while others did not. What did the gainfully employed do right? What did the jobless do wrong, if anything?

In the coming weeks I will profile as many of my classmates as will talk to me for this story. They'll all be people who graduated recently from UM with a master's in journalism - either photojournalists who might write, or writers who may take a photo now and again.

Projection

Our chess club meets in a large hospital cafeteria. It's a great venue: bright, never crowded, with an especially quiet corner perfect for us.

Polished to a high gloss, a chestnut-colored grand piano sits in the opposite corner, surveying the institutional tables and chairs and silently asserting its superiority.

Most nights it is silent, or if it gets played, it's by a kid who has escaped his parents and is pounding out "Mary Had A Little Lamb" or "Chopsticks."

But last night as I sat in our corner, huddled over the chessboard, the strains of Liszt's "Liebestraum" gently diverted my mind from the game. I immediately recognized the piece, and though it was not the most complicated arrangement, it was nonetheless played with skill.

I looked aside to see who was playing, but my vision was blocked. I went back to my chess game, and as it progressed, I heard other, less weighty pieces - Joplin's "Entertainer," the Peanuts theme, and one or two others.

Soon the chess game simplified into an easy win, but since my opponent didn't resign, the game continued. My mind wandered back to the music, and to the player. I found myself inventing a persona for this man or woman. Passionate yet kind, methodical yet inventive, hardworking yet relaxed.

Before I knew it I had projected an image of an impossibly perfect personality, all because this person could play beautiful music.

I saw who was playing when the music stopped and a Latino man wearing scrubs walked into view. One of the cafeteria workers chided him for stopping, and he said he'd love to keep playing but he had to get back to work.

A part of me was disappointed that the player wasn't a eligible and attractive young lady. Perhaps because he wasn't, I was left to realize what I'd just done.

It happens all the time. We see an attractive person and give them all kinds of good qualities - maybe kindness or generosity, but above all, a depth and complexity that we deny to plain folk.

In this case the bias was similar. I assumed that someone who produced beautiful music had a beautiful soul.

I'd like to believe that he does. I want to believe that everyone who makes something beautiful has something beautiful in them. I'd like to believe that the beauty of Bobby Fischer's chess redeems him somehow. I want to believe that every brilliant artist or powerful genius has a great soul.

And I'm afraid it isn't always so.