A governor going to federal prison. A woman dying of anthrax. The collapse of Enron. The growth of female gangs in California. A governor running for president (to clarify, this was not the same governor who ended up behind bars).
Then there was the quirky stuff, like the tongue-in-cheek homage I wrote about the fake gym competitors hit before competing in the annual jumping frog contest in Calaveras County, Calif.
As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up. (For those wondering why jumping frogs are a thing in the Sierra foothills, google Mark Twain and Calaveras County.)
I’m a journalist, and at one point or another in my life I reported on all those topics for a daily newspaper.
But, until now, I have never written a regular column. This is my first, now that I’ve been asked to write a twice-monthly column. But before launching right in, I thought I should introduce myself.
I’m a Georgian by birth, nomad by choice. I love University of Georgia football, reading and traveling, not necessarily in that order. The Pietá in Rome is one of my favorite sculptures and it left me awestruck when I saw it, but — no disrespect to Michaelangelo Buonarroti — watching the sun melt into the horizon of the Yucatan jungle in the Mayan ruins of Uxmal, Mexico, transported me to another world.
I spent my 20s, 30s and early 40s wandering the country with my wife, and eventually two children, working for newspapers, before settling here in New Mexico in the 2000s.
While I am a lifelong journalist, that line deserves an asterisk. In the 1990s I took three years off to go to seminary. I did not become a pastor, but I enjoyed my time reading and debating philosophy, ethics, history and theology with my professors and fellow students. Less enjoyable but, frankly, more life-changing was the semester I sat at the bedside of young men dying of AIDS at Grady Memorial Hospital in downtown Atlanta and feeling utterly helpless; I earned class credit, but learned more in those moments about the human condition than in all the class sessions I logged or books I read: when death comes, we are all the same.
I became a journalist out of college, not because I felt a calling to do it, but mostly because I could write and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. It was the era when fax machines were state-of-the-art tech in newsrooms and inspecting public records meant going to a government office and requesting, then sitting with documents to pore over.
Most of the people who remember those days have retired. Sometimes I feel nostalgic but if I go on too long about the good old days, call me on it. A lot about those days wasn’t always good.
For the past 23 years, I’ve spent more of my time around statehouses and state government. This is my 19th legislative session in New Mexico, which is difficult to wrap my mind around.
Why, you might ask, have I stayed in journalism all these years? Because, if you’re doing it right, you’re constantly learning.
As I like to joke, the more I know, the more I know how much I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but I still wake up every morning amazed at how much I’ve yet to learn, thanks particularly to the people in my life — my family and friends. They are of all political and ideological stripes and from different walks of life and economic circumstances.
It’s like a philosopher friend told me once.
You go into philosophy for the answers, you stay for the questions.
I like that. It kind of sums up me and journalism.
Trip Jennings started his career in Georgia at his hometown newspaper, The Augusta Chronicle, before working at newspapers in California, Florida and Connecticut where he reported on many stories, including the resignation and incarceration of Connecticut’s then-governor, John Rowland, and gang warfare in California. Since 2005, Trip has covered politics and state government for the Albuquerque Journal, The New Mexico Independent and the Santa Fe New Mexican. He holds a Master’s of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. In 2012, he co-founded New Mexico In Depth. New Mexico In Depth, a nonpartisan, nonprofit media outlet, produces investigative, data-rich stories with an eye on solutions that can be a catalyst for change.