Hi, everyone. If you don’t know me — and I’d be very surprised if you did — my name is Charissa Graves. I’m a 22-year-old California transplant and the newest addition to the Tribune’s staff.
I come from a city called Galt, just south of Sacramento. If you haven’t heard of it, don’t worry; no one else has either.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been passionate about telling stories. After some experimenting, I discovered at around the age of 10 that the way I was best able to tell those stories was through photography.
Throughout all of middle and high school, I took pictures like a madwoman. I then started my first year at California Baptist University in the middle of a pandemic, and realized just how vital information is, especially in smaller communities.
After a year, I was finally able to go to school in-person, where I accidentally-but-not-really joined the campus newspaper staff, and I was all in. I learned from the most devoted people, and they taught me how to fall in love with every step of the process, even if they don’t always come the most naturally to me.
By the beginning of the next year, I had already experienced some of the most amazing opportunities. However, I had also contracted an illness that has left me disabled to this day, but I didn’t know that immediately. I knew that I had been sick and that it was a bad time, but had absolutely no idea of the effects it would have in the long run.
So, I tried to power through the next two years, pushing myself to the absolute limit while my body gave out on me at every opportunity, and my grades started slipping because of it. I took a medical leave of absence, hoping that I could get my health under control and finish my degree.
Then, as they usually do, things didn’t go exactly according to plan. Things got better, then worse, and then better again. The whole time I’d been out of school had been spent looking for any work I could find, with little to no luck.
My hometown paper, where I had interned and been mentored by more incredible people, befell a similar fate to the Hutchinson News. What had been owned by a prominent, involved member of its own community was bought by a larger regional publishing group with over 30 publications and no sense of the people that made its papers great in the first place.
So, I pivoted. I’m one who is usually done well by a change in scenery, and I just so happen to have family in Newton that I don’t know nearly as well as I’d like to. In a continued effort to make myself a productive member of society, I started calling up newspapers out of the blue. I think I talked to every editor within an hour’s drive of Newton, possibly even some farther out than that.
I wasn’t looking for much, just some freelance gigs so that I could get on my feet. Eventually, in the middle of all these calls, I got in contact with Adam Strunk over at Harvey County Now. Initially, he had said that he’d be willing to talk with me after I made the move, but my chances looked good. A day or so later, though, I got a call saying basically, “I know we only talked about freelance, but how would you feel about full-time? We’ve got a brand new paper in Hutch that we’re trying to staff.”
Yes was the only possible answer, and I knew it.
Jackson and I talked, and before I could even process what was happening, I was agreeing to come out more than two weeks earlier than originally planned. In less than a week, basically my whole life was packed in my car, and I was saying my goodbyes and driving halfway across the country.
It was all worth it for the opportunity to tell stories, but now, I’d like to say some hellos.