PD reporter Andrew Graham: My search for purpose and a need for a craft led me to a newsroom

“Behind the Byline” introduces you to those who write stories, snap photos, design pages and edit the content we deliver in our print editions and on pressdemocrat.com. We’re more than journalists. As you’ll see, we’re also your neighbors with unique backgrounds and experiences who proudly call Sonoma County home.

Today, we introduce you to Andrew Graham, our Santa Rosa government reporter.

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My sophomore year of college, my grades were in the toilet.

Undaunted, I wrote an eloquent letter to my parents proclaiming I had settled upon my calling. I was destined to become a doctor.

Breathlessly, I outlined how from that point on, uncertainty would evaporate and I would diligently apply myself to the study and practice of medicine. I was now, finally, on my way.

Alas, my noble drive to MD-ship did not survive a single semester of biology.

And any chance I had fooled my parents likely died an even quicker death.

Only career uncertainty proved to have any staying power — it would take nearly a decade to sort that out.

Today, I am the city government reporter at The Press Democrat.

Nominally, that means I cover City Hall and happenings around Santa Rosa. But, with an aptitude for complex stories involving power, politics and government, I have also covered pressing county law enforcement issues, the Dominic Foppoli scandal in Windsor and most recently, helped investigate a whistleblower lawsuit involving high-profile developer Bill Gallaher.

The path that led this East Coaster to a writing position at a regional newspaper in Northern California is in no way a short one. A failed (faked?) bid into medicine is only the tip of the iceberg.

I grew up comfortable, on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. Mine was the kind of community whose progeny have a leg up when it comes to pursuing the careers they want.

That privilege was lost on me, though. For years, I couldn’t pick any path at all.

After college, my “career track” was whatever jobs let me ski in the winter and hike all summer.

I ran ski lifts in Colorado and built hiking trails in Vermont. I moved to Chile to teach English and spent glorious weeks backpacking in Patagonia, testing myself on lonely mountain passes and crossing snowmelt-swollen streams.

From there I went to Costa Rica, where I went to work for a travel company. Almost two years passed in a swirl of monsoonal rains, tropical heat and surf.

Those times were filled with immeasurable wonder and fun, and I was learning valuable lessons about myself, the world and its disparate cultures.

But, at some point, I realized I wasn’t just exploring. I was also running away — running from really engaging with the world and from finding work I could sink my teeth into.

I needed a craft.

I chose journalism using a ranking system — what did I feel apt for versus what kind of work would sustain my restless nature?

Reflecting on the process, it now feels like a thoughtless way to enter into a profession that means the world to me today. But, it has panned out.

In September 2016 in Wyoming, I took my first staff writer job. Two months later, when Donald Trump won the presidency, I was in a bar full of cheering coal miners collecting their reactions to his victory.

Fast forward to July 2019, and I was consumed in coverage of the bankruptcy of a coal mining company.

Blackjewel, a sprawling corporation with facilities in Appalachia and Wyoming, went down in spectacular flames, throwing 600 Wyoming miners out of work in a single afternoon.

It was quickly clear something had gone terribly wrong with the company, and a lot of fingers were pointed at the CEO.

During one of several trips to Gillette, the town in the eye of the storm, I found myself crisscrossing the area in pursuit of the Golay family.

A friendly miner told me the couple’s mom-and-pop cleaning company had been wrecked — well before his business went bankrupt — by the coal company owner’s indifference to paying his bills.

Somewhere around the fourth or fifth address I tried, I found them.

And, when Tana Golay disappeared into her basement and came up clutching a letter she had written the coal company CEO the previous year, accusing him of ruining her and her husband’s business by refusing to pay his bills, I knew I had a story.

With Blackjewel in the national news, the story got an underwhelming reception. But it mattered to the Golays.

And, on a personal note, something about telling the story, not the shoe leather hunt for it, but the narrative itself — a small business decimated by the apparent capriciousness of a mining mogul — made me realize I was engaged in good work that mattered.

I was 30 at the time. If I age well, I suppose it’ll only have taken me a third of my life to find something to do with it.

I still don’t have the answer for much at all, but I do know one thing for sure: When asked that age-old bummer of a question, “What do you do?” I can say with certainty that I am a news reporter.

Each time I run into a story similar to that of the Golays, I am reminded not just of journalism’s intrinsic value, but also of my attachment to the work.

At a recent family gathering, my father disclosed, much to my horror, that he’d tucked that sophomoric letter of mine away somewhere. He told me he intends to read it at my wedding.

For now, the joke remains on him.

Still, I do hope to read it again one day. When I do, I pray that somewhere under all that horse manure I was shoveling at the time, I find at least a kernel of conviction — some nugget invoking my belief in craft, profession and public service.

If not, at least I know I have it now.

You can reach Staff Writer Andrew Graham at 707-526-8667 or andrew.graham@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @AndrewGraham88