Journalistic work
If there’s one thing copywriters love, it’s talking about how they burned out of journalism. Me too!
I went to school to be a journalist. It clearly didn’t pan out, but I’m grateful for my newsroom experience. Intensive classes at a top journalism school — along with tenures at a nationally recognized collegiate paper and a small business publication — rebuilt my view of writing for the better.
You’ll find some of my favorite features below.
Leigh Lockhart sits at Main Squeeze’s bar, where employees make the restaurant’s juices and smoothies. Over time, Lockhart said her juice menu has expanded as employees have experimented with different ingredients.
Photo: Ethan Brown/Missouri Business Alert
Columbia restaurateur builds business around focus on service, plant-based diet
Leigh Lockhart said she never lets a piece of meat touch her restaurant’s grill.
When she opened her Columbia vegetarian restaurant, Main Squeeze, in 1997, the average American ate nearly 205 pounds of poultry and red meat, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Lockhart, however, wanted to stick with her values, despite knowing she was outside the norm.
Originally written for Missouri Business Alert.
Read the article here.
In coming back to school, Jeffrey Ford sees a second chance
The contents of Jeffrey Ford’s room in Galena Hall represent a balancing act most first-year students don’t need to perform.
A uniform from the 307th Engineer Battalion hangs alongside the button-up shirts Ford wears to Missouri Students Association Senate sessions.
His testimonies to Congress, along with the New York Times article he was quoted in, are nowhere to be seen. Instead, a computer gaming system, an acoustic guitar and a bass occupy whatever space Ford has in his room.
Ford also said his mother keeps telling him to register as a member of the AARP, but he just wants to focus on college.
Because, at 55 years old, he gave school another try.
Originally written for The Maneater. Read the article here.
Jeffrey Ford sits in his University of Missouri dorm room, holding a photo album from his service time in the Middle East. Ford, 55, is part of a growing trend over the last decade: nontraditional students attending college.
Photo: Ethan Brown/The Maneater
Columbia College professor invests in students
This profile was originally written Nov. 29, 2018, for an honors news writing course at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism.
Becky Bocklage got into entrepreneurship for the challenges.
Her first challenge came at age 15 in the form of her family’s craft store in Jefferson City, which Bocklage’s parents let her run during the summer.
She took it as another challenge when the Great Recession caused her to close the business she owned for almost 20 years.
Bocklage now instills this ambition as director of Columbia College’s Fishman Center for Entrepreneurship, a position she took over in August 2017. She coaches entrepreneurs enrolled at the school — her latest challenge — during a time when small businesses are rising again.
Read the rest of the article.
Community holds up local bookstore in the age of Amazon
This article was originally written July 14, 2018, on deadline during a journalism convention at the University of Minnesota.
170,000 books lie waiting to be purchased in an old Chevy dealership.
Beth Rusk climbs a flight of stairs to an office that once held the dealership’s owners. She glances over the sea of paperbacks and hardcovers before sitting down.
Rusk works as a manager at Magers & Quinn, an independent bookstore in Uptown Minneapolis that represents a small business success in an industry recently fraught with failures.