During my years at The Denver Post, I’ve been a breaking news and general assignment reporter, an education writer and a guinea pig. As a breaking reporter, I covered hard-hitting stories statewide in three consecutive ways: posting engaging and accurate tweets from the scene, following up with a quick and efficient online story that I updated as news developed and finishing by authoring a thoughtful, informative print piece well before deadline demanded. My byline is adhered to everything from mass shootings like the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood attack to a story on Lake Titicaca frogs that gained international attention. In my education reporting, I focused on amplifying the voices of underrepresented students and educators across Colorado. My story on college women who use sugar daddies to help pay their tuition went national, and my coverage of a Denver Chicano school made my community aware of the struggles of minority students from a fresh perspective. As a guinea pig, I was entrusted by Post editor-in-chief Lee Ann Colacioppo to roll out a new style of beat reporting. This role allowed me to leave the bureaucracy of education reporting behind, instead handpicking interesting, important stories I knew would catch readers’ eyes online and in print and keep them hooked until the last graf. My narrative, conversational tone attracted a younger audience, and my thorough reporting kept our traditional readers gripped. I used Twitter and a professional Facebook page to create a dialogue with my community and examine what issues were on their minds, as well. News is important on its own, but breathing humanity and compassion into a story is what drives me. I covet finding the right words to bring another person’s story to life. I take pleasure in being playful when a story demands it, poignant when it applies and straightforward when it matters.