I asked for a typewriter for my 9th birthday and I published my first newspaper at the age of 11. By 19, I was the editor of a small-town weekly.Over the next two and a half decades, I developed a unique ability to target any audience with timely information, fact-driven storytelling, some sharp wit, and dry humor.After 26 years of helming newspaper departments, market-leading television news broadcasts, and digital footprint expansion projects, I am distancing myself from the bothsideism that plagues corporate-controlled news organizations and reigniting the altruism I carried with me when my journey began all those years ago.As I join the growing list of career journalists looking to exit the grind of the daily news industry, for a myriad of reasons, I am putting my wide array of skills to work telling stories that are true, stories about people and causes I believe in, and stories that make a difference.