When I was in my senior year of high school in Oak Park, California, my Life Skills teacher began every class with a thought-provoking question to get us thinking and writing first thing in the morning.
One day, his question was something around the lines of: Would you rather have all the knowledge in the universe but be depressed? Or would you rather be ignorant and a little dumb but happy?
By that point in my high school education, I had already realized journalism was the career for me, so my hand hit the paper before most realized what the question was. To me, the answer was obvious.
Who cares about happiness? I’ve always been a very curious person. I’ve always wanted to soak in as much knowledge as I could. Why would I allow myself to be ignorant just for peace of mind?
That constant thirst for knowledge led me from Los Angeles to Eugene, Oregon, where I earned my Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Oregon in 2023 after majoring in journalism and minoring in English. Following my graduation, I stuck around in Oregon for an additional year and a half to stay near my friends and work at a local newspaper.
But I knew I’d have to leave Oregon eventually.
My grandparents instilled a love for travel in me from a very young age, and I’ve yearned to see the world and truly experience different perspectives and cultures. Thanks to their generosity, I’ve been to five continents so far at the ripe age of 24, with Antarctica being the most recent to be checked off.
All that is to say, when people ask me why I moved across the country to work here, there’s usually a sense of surprise when my knee-jerk reaction is to say, “Well, why not?”
I have an irrational fear of living in a land-locked state, despite the fact that my older brother has lived in Colorado for eight years now, and I knew I was ready to leave the West Coast for a bit, so here I am!
I have been working at The Daily Item since February of this year. I spent most of my time covering Marblehead and Lynn, but I am now dedicated to reporting on both Lynnfield and Peabody.
I understand it’s not often you may see an 818 area code pop up on your phone, and I won’t even pretend that every 818 area code phone call is worth answering.
What I will say is: I’d wager there’s a good chance that if you get a phone call from an 818 area code, it’s just your friendly, local journalist trying to learn more about your community!
If anyone — whether you are an elected official, a top commenter in a Facebook group or even just your average resident — ever has coverage ideas or concerns with my Lynnfield or Peabody reporting, please let me know.
Working in journalism requires thick skin and the ability to handle feedback and constructive criticism really well. I can assure you all that all feedback is truly taken into consideration — and the more people tell me what they want to see in the newspaper, the more I’m able to write about what readers actually want to read about!
You can reach me at amanda@itemlive.com, and once you email me, odds are high I’ll send you my phone number in the signature. Feel free to ignore my phone number or save it to your contacts so you can text me at ungodly hours of the night. To each their own.
