Paige Mueller for the Williams Lake Tribune

On October 12th, 2017 I drove along a winding highway that delivered me into Williams Lake, a small town in the Cariboo-Chilcotin region of British Columbia. I’d just been hired on for a six-week contract with the local newspaper, the Williams Lake Tribune.

Strangely enough, I’d read about the Trib years before when my aunt handed me a copy of Never Shoot a Stampeded Queen, a humorous biography written by a reporter who took his first “real” job at the very same newspaper I was on my way to. The one lesson I took away from reading that book in my freshman year of journalism school? That working for a small paper will give you a huge variety of writing experience in a short period of time.

In my six short weeks at the Tribune, I covered every type of story you could imagine. From being a part of breaking provincial news, to covering local community conferences and sports games to a heartwarming tale of a young girl being reunited with her pet cat. I did photo galleries and video projects, driving my beat-up Rav4 across town multiple times a day to collect stories and interview community members. I stood outside Save-On-Foods in sub-zero temperatures, trying to convince shoppers to comment on the topic of the week.

I wrote 58 stories for the Tribune in the fall of 2017 and learned at least that many lessons on life, journalism and small-towns along the way.

*Click the header at the top of this page to read the stories I wrote for the Williams Lake Tribune.