When I first started my reporting job at the Houlton Pioneer Times, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
I had recently finished my master’s degree in journalism from Boston University, and was looking to enter the world of reporting as a full-time job. But I wasn’t having much luck in applying around the big metro cities, and when I did manage to get an interview I was told that despite my degree and freelance work, I still didn’t have enough experience. So I decided to change my focus and send out resumes to more local positions around the New England area, when I stumbled upon the Houlton Pioneer Times.
I had never been to Maine, much less Aroostook County. But something about the location was interesting to me, and I was impressed with the editors and staff from BDN, The Pioneer Times’ parent company, who I spoke to during the interview process. When they called offering a job, I decided to accept. It wasn’t exactly how I had imagined my career starting, but I was grateful for the opportunity.
I had known of the coronavirus since January, shortly after the breakout had happened in the Chinese city of Wuhan. I heard about it from several Chinese friends I met while at BU, and I remember that many of them, even those who normally defend the Chinese government, were expressing a lot of anger and criticism on how the outbreak could have happened. But I wasn’t very concerned, it was something occurring on the other side of the world, and I was more focused on starting my new job.
Those very first two weeks I worked at the job are something I still recall vividly. I remember quickly falling into a routine with the small team in Houlton, coming in the office, churning out stories, then going home. I remember seeing all the people out on snowmobiles and the people visiting small shops along Houlton’s downtown Market Square. I remember sitting behind my small desk in the Pioneer Times’ office, thinking to myself, “Oh my God, I’m actually doing it. I’m actually a professional reporter now!”
The first weekend I had in Houlton, I took a day trip across the border to Fredericton, New Brunswick. On my way back into the U.S., the border guard asked me the usual questions for people entering, but then suddenly added, as if it was a trivial but obligatory matter he had forgotten to bring up, “have you been to China recently?”
While it piqued my interest, I still only thought of it as a small change in policy that might make for an interesting story to share with readers. Little did I know this was the first sign of the hardships and consequences that COVID-19 would bring.
More things soon began to happen. Houlton Middle/High School announced it was canceling a class trip to Spain. Then schools announced they were switching to remote learning. The NBA and MLB seasons were being postponed. On March 21, the entire border between the U.S. and Canada was closed, and the unsettling reality of the pandemic had affected seemingly every facet of daily life.
Just two weeks into my full-time reporting career, the work routine I had already gotten used to had fallen into chaos. Public events I had planned to cover were getting canceled left and right. My parents could no longer come up to bring the rest of the furniture for my apartment, and with retail stores shutting down in the area, I was stuck with nothing but a mattress and folding table for several months.
The economy was in a tailspin, and other papers across the country were having to resort to layoffs and buyouts. In those early months, when everything was so full of uncertainty, I kept wondering if I would be next. It was stressful, and it didn’t seem fair. I had worked hard all throughout school to get to this point, and now I feared it might get taken away because of something that was outside of my (or anyone’s for that matter) control.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen.
Being a reporter in Houlton, a remote rural area which until the late fall of 2020 did not experience any major number of COVID-19 cases (save for a small outbreak of nine cases in June), also had its advantages. It allowed me to operate with some degree of normality during the summer months, and Maine Gov. Janet Mills allowed the area to open back up well before most places across the Northeast. Though navigating the new normal of the pandemic initially proved challenging, I managed to produce my fair share of stories, including some with statewide significance.
I thought back to the large metro areas, at the time infested with cases, I had initially applied to, and remain very thankful they decided to not hire me back then. If they had, perhaps my journalism career would have been over before it had even begun. It’s made me realize life sometimes has an interesting way of playing out.
March 1, 2021, will mark my one-year anniversary of my first day at work in Houlton. While it is a year that has brought disruption to my daily life, it has only strengthened my conviction of the importance of journalism, of delivering clear and accurate information to a citizenry that then determines the path of our democratic system. When the world is in a state of emergency, every decision, whether it’s made by the town council or the federal government, carries importance in people’s daily lives.
One year later, it’s still my job to report on it.
