Hello, Keizertimes readers. I’m Herb Swett, your new community news reporter.
Although I’m not new to the Keizertimes, having freelanced for this paper for a dozen or more years, this is my first time as a fulltime employee.
I was born and raised in Portland and have been in the newspaper field in many capacities. I graduated from Lewis & Clark College and originally had my eye on a law career. A year at the Willamette University College of Law made me realize that law was not where I belonged.
I then enlisted in the Army; it was the Vietnam era, but I was never sent there. While in the Army, I thought over what I wanted to do with the rest of my life and decided that journalism was where I belonged.
After five quarters at the journalism school at the University of Oregon, I obtained a second bachelor’s degree. Since then, I have been working for newspapers. I have had jobs on both weeklies and dailies and during part of the 1980s published a weekly, the Monmouth-Independence Sun-Enterprise. I did not make enough money as a businessman, that paper eventually was absorbed by the Itemizer-Observer in Dallas.
I also have been involved in medical transcription, sometimes full-time, but even then I have found time to contribute an occasional story to one weekly paper or another. I am not involved in transcription now.
Keizer, with its growth potential, excites me. Although next door to Salem, it has the name of its town on the second largest school district in Oregon, for example, as well as a professional baseball team. I covered the Salem-Keizer School Board and the Volcanoes, when freelancing for the Keizertimes, but now, of course, they are in the capable hands of Joshua Manes. My capacity of general assignment reporter enables me to cover a variety of topics, including city government, and I am grateful to Lyndon Zaitz for giving me the opportunity to do this for Keizer.
If you have any comments about my news coverage, please get hold of me at the Keizertimes I welcome your ideas and any information you may have.
(Reach Herb Swett at [email protected])
