For most of my adult life, my main task has been telling the stories of athletes — most of them school-age athletes.
The Newton Daily News is now giving me the opportunity to tell everyone else’s story.
As a career sports reporter, covering mostly high schools, I’ve missed out on a lot of important discussions and events along the way. As thrilling as it’s been to see young people leaving it all on the court, field, track or course, I knew I was sacrificing my time by choosing to be in one place instead of another.
Growing up near Washington, D.C., I probably took my surroundings for granted. Not only were there famous incidents happening on streets familiar to me, but there was also so much history. We took a tour of sites related to the Lincoln presidency as part of routine field trip, and used all of D.C.’s major monuments as landmarks in giving directions to visitors.
After covering sports in different parts of southern California, New Mexico and Nebraska, I’ll now get the chance to see more of what I’ve been missing. As a general assignment reporter for the Daily News, I’m looking forward to learning more about parts of life like agriculture and the many non-athletic activities at Newton High School.
As a city boy, I never really thought about where corn and soybeans came from. Like many other Americans, I guess I just thought of most food as something you buy at a grocery store because you need to eat, and the cost of it always seems to go up.
Fortunately, Nebraska taught me not only differences in appearance between sweet corn and other varieties, but more importantly, the importance of farming to life in the Midwest. I feel like I not only have an appreciation for how much work it is to produce one modern plate of food, but also what a riddle it creates for farming communities if large numbers of children grow up wanting to head to a large city and/or never do any farming.
I look forward to meeting people in many roles of the farming and ranching industries, as they work to come up with solutions to complex 21st-century food and economic challenges.
Covering sports in all types of communities, I’ve been able to see some of the championships and other amazing accomplishments that can be grated by motivated young people who have the right leaders for their situations.
There were many fine arts events I wanted to see in the past, but there always seemed to be a sporting event to cover. I’ve heard positive things about the fine arts programs at Newton High School, and since schools will be a major part of my assignments, I look forward to hopefully seeing performances that eluded me before.
It’s not like sports will be far away from me. Not only are athletics as much a part of school activities here as anywhere else, but it will be nice to live in an area where a state’s only two major Division I colleges are close to each other (New Mexico’s two D1 schools are far apart; Maryland and California have too many colleges to count).
I know I was fortunate to see so many young people learning valuable life lessons by competing in sports. In May, I was able to see a Nebraska athlete win two individual state track medals and run a medal-winning anchor leg of the 4x400 meter relay in front of his mother, whose cancer finally claimed her life in early August.
Not everyone’s story is so dramatic. But I look forward to telling all kinds of stories — the lighthearted ones and the serious type — as I help the Daily News staff communicate to readers what goes on in Jasper County.
Contact Jason W. Brooks at
641-792-3121 ext. 6532 or
jbrooks@newtondailynews.com