Writing, copy editing, photographing news and events on a freelance basis for a regional newspaper publication, taking in four to five counties in Eastern Kentucky. Worked with police reports, from press releases, wrote features and my favorite subject, public agencies and how they spent taxpayer money. I did this for nearly four years, while I worked at substitute teaching, retail and tutoring jobs. The Review operated like The Morehead News, as our revenue came from advertising sales. My job was to create revenue by having excellent content to read, leading consumers to view businesses' advertisements.

Tutored students in middle school grades with language arts, and other classes. At these ages, 11-13, students are social, seeking approval, and standing out is scary. One eighth grade group had a persuasion piece creeping toward deadline, and just selecting a topic caused (humorous) anxiety.How do you begin? At the beginning! Once I had them "brainstorm" aloud about topics that interested them, they found a desire to write, instead of an awful assignment, using words. During brainstorming, they talked, had ideas, got excited, and topics were narrowed to concise information to use for each element of their writing: introduction, body and conclusion. Energy replaced agony, and they wrote better articles in a faster span of time. One male student remained tough. He liked being an outdoorsman, that's all.. Nothing wrong with the outdoors. He was going to ''persuade" that he enjoyed hunting and fishing. Then we talked about roads, and got to the gross things he saw in ditches on his walk to the woods, and suddenly... an anti-littering campaign was born! He loved talking about gross things people threw out of their cars once he thought about it (and after a light switch flickered in my own mind). Sighs of relief spread throughout the land.....

I wrote stories of all types, from courts to features to public agency meetings, that were the core of information as to how local elected officials spent taxpayer money. At one point, I hurry back into town after photographing a forest fire to get to the five o'clock city council meeting, where residents complained that the city should use its resources to get an ever-growing deer population under control in their neighborhoods inside city limits. Our city sits inside the Daniel Boone National Forest. Covered many issues, such as the sale of alcohol and its controversial votes, creating a taxing district for a tourism program and what to do with the money, etc, and that was only council. I covered events includeing four different governors, the county administrative meetings, economic development, chamber of commerce, school board of directors, airport board, city utility board, tourism commission, public events, parades, festivals, the board of regents for Morehead State University, accidents and police reports, as well as courtroom trials and wrote enterprise stories and features, and took feature photographs wherever I could, without being chased away! One of my favorite things to do was to write opinions, editorials, and commentaries. My topics were usually a bit controversial, which gained readership, which, in turn, brought in revenue from advertisers. In my opinion, it's content that drives sales. Create a good product, and it can't help but get noticed.