I'll miss his stories from years of adventuring in local news and his professionally curt phone call demeanor while interviewing evasive sources. The hard-news hound always seemed happiest with his finger in somebody's eye after raking up some muck. With no disrespect meant to the Miss Tri-Cities organization, it captured his mindset at the event. While John was certainly loathe to learn the new social media whizzbangs and mobile reporting tools available, he was always a lively journalist - even filing stories this week while on pre-retirement vacation. Sometimes, the perception by young people of grizzled old reporters is that they're dead weight, reluctant to get with the times. Today we say farewell to reporter John Trumbo, a 40-year veteran of the news business. It's sad that a six-hour assignment was the most substantial in recent memory, but I'm to blame for not digging up my own story to work on long-term. It gave me a small taste of what I've been missing by not having another project to work on. It's strange to say, but the somewhat disappointing shoot was one of the more encouraging assignments I've had lately. People assume photographers are looking for set-up photo opps and it takes a while for them to realize we just want to be there to document whatever happens. Every subject has a different level of comfort while being documented in their daily routine, and almost nobody ever gets what I'm looking for as a photojournalist after half a day. He just wasn’t used to being followed around all day. The wall wasn't because Stirling was uncooperative. We didn't know any more than that going in, and digging up parts of the story was part of the thrill. The team has players from schools in both towns in addition to students at Jubilee, which is a Christian boarding school for high school students with disciplinary problems. You can read Craig's story here, but the quick summary is that Stirling is the first Jubilee kid to play starting quarterback for Waitsburg-Prescott. This time, Craig pitched the story and we covered it together, following Stirling through practice and back to the Jubilee Youth Ranch, where he lives. When writers work stories, the photo department is often a stop they make toward the end of the process. The few chances I've had here were mostly self-generated, like my stories about the Burgess brothers and the Kennewick girls bowling team. It's rare to have time to work on stories when the newsroom has been halved since I was an intern in 2007. Last week, I had the opportunity to spend a full shift photographing a story with Craig Craker about Waitsburg-Prescott quarterback Stirling Eastman.
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