Editorial staff welcomes two new journalists

TONY DODERO

While it’s always difficult to lose members of our Daily Pilot team

as they go on to new jobs, the good part is young and energetic

journalists are always waiting in the wings.

That’s the subject of this week’s column, as I introduce the two

most recent additions to the news staff, Michael Miller and Lindsay

Sandham.

Miller has taken on the new role as education beat reporter. This

is a crucial job, covering the Newport-Mesa Unified School District

and our local colleges -- UC Irvine, Orange Coast College and

Vanguard. Thus it was important to get a suitable talent for such an

important beat.

I met Miller at a Christmas potluck here at the office. He was out

from his job in Connecticut to visit his former co-workers here at

the Times Orange County offices, where he worked as a clerk, and

approached me about landing a job on the Daily Pilot staff.

Even though Miller, a Fullerton native, came armed with an

impressive portfolio of stories he had written, I probably wouldn’t

have given him much thought if the young man hadn’t been persistent

as heck, even cornering another editor here for an impromptu job

interview.

And he barely got back home to Connecticut, when he called me

about the job again, and that was quickly followed by a note in the

mail.

I figured someone that dedicated would have to make a good

reporter.

So we hired him and pulled him out of his snowy East Coast exile,

where he was working as a reporter at the Pictorial Gazette in Old

Saybrook, Conn.

I asked Miller to give the readers a little bit about his

background:

“I first got a job with the Los Angeles Times, as a calendar

clerk, at the age of 18, two months to the day after I graduated from

high school,” he said. “From 1998 to 2002, I wrote and edited

entertainment listings and also wrote occasional articles while

pursuing my bachelor’s degree in English at UC Irvine. Afterward, I

spent a year in England studying for a master’s degree in creative

writing at the University of East Anglia.”

He wound up, like I said, in Connecticut. But now that this

California boy is back in the Golden State, he’s looking forward, and

so are we, to big things:

“As one who came of age in the Newport-Mesa area, I know central

Orange County as a diverse area, rich with arts and education,” he

said. “I look forward to covering this region -- both for the major

public events and for the small stories that fall through the

cracks.”

Next is Lindsay Sandham.

Sandham has the title of news assistant, but has already proven

she is a capable writer.

Sandham comes to us via the Metropolitan State College of Denver,

where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a

minor in French. She says she’s fluent in French, though her grammar

skills are lacking.

And she sounds like she had a pretty tough time in college,

spending a summer in the South of France, studying the language,

culture, food and wine.

I guess somebody has to do it.

In college, she worked for more than a year as a news reporter and

then later as a news editor of The Metropolitan, the college’s weekly

student-run newspaper.

She was also a calendar listings editor for the Boulder Weekly, a

member of the Society of Professional Journalists for two years and

was one of three plaintiffs in an unsuccessful lawsuit filed against

the Metro State College administration in relation to open meeting

laws.

But, hey, you have to admire her for trying.

“I’m excited about my position as news assistant at the Daily

Pilot,” she said. “I have the opportunity to grow my features-writing

skills, as well as learn the intricacies of a daily community

newspaper. I look forward to quickly becoming a beat reporter, so I

can focus on my news-writing and reporting skills, as my overall

ambition is to work as a foreign correspondent covering breaking

news.”

As I said, she’s well on the way to that goal.

So next time you run into one of these two new staffers, please

wish them well and point them to some good stories to tell.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

TELL IT TO THE EDITOR

* TONY DODERO is the editor. He welcomes your comments on news

coverage, photography or other newspaper-related issues. If you have

a message or a letter to the editor, call his direct line at (714)

966-4608 or the Readers Hotline (714) 966-4664, send it by e-mail to

tony.dodero@ latimes.com or dailypilot@ latimes.com, or send it by

mail to 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.