Open Notebook: We’re All Responsible for Creating A More Just Future. That’s Why I Joined Scout.

Growing up in Happy Valley I was a red-dirt-kid, digging up wild onions, catching tadpoles, and taking shade under gnarled oaks. Before the smell of summer was smoke, it was the smell of oak leaves browning under this persistent sun. I learned and loved the landscape but knew very little about the people or history outside of my small world in that little unincorporated part of what we refer to as Shasta County. 

I moved away for college as soon as I graduated from West Valley High. Like so many other kids with enough resources and support, I was ready to leave as soon as possible. 

I spent the next almost-fifteen years living in different cities around the country. I learned a lot during that time, one of the most important lessons being that, by and large, a lot of people have a pretty good understanding of what needs to change for their lives to be better but it’s much more rare to find communities that value people’s lived experiences.

I moved back to Happy Valley in early 2018, and while I loved the city life, it’s even more true that nowhere else I have lived has made as much of an impression on me as this place has.

I love Shasta County. But that doesn’t mean that living here always makes me feel good, or that I think it’s the best place in the world, or that I would want to have a beer with all my neighbors. 

The love I feel for Shasta County is something different. It’s a love that drives curiosity and inspires action, fueled in part by a sense of responsibility, a core value that I am learning from Indigenous organizers doing transformative work here.  

Shasta County feels like an amplified, and at times exaggerated example of the trends and issues faced across our country and, in some cases, globally. The ways that we address our differences here together can do one of two things: play out a frightening fraying of democracy and diminishing hope for a truly accountable government and economic system or be an example of a path forward around (or through) the divisions, fear, mistrust, and anger that many of us are experiencing. 

My belief is that we are not living through an inevitable outcome. Together as a community, we can change the underlying structures that actively create the conditions for harm. And the media has an especially central role to play in building a better, stronger Shasta County. That’s why I joined Shasta Scout. 

What Annelise has built with Shasta Scout is something that all of us in Shasta County have been missing and in vital need of—the context for why the place we live is the way it is. Through her reporting, she has given us the context that often sits behind chamber doors, or within council meeting notes, or in even less accessible places like private communications between people who, with or without our input, make decisions that impact all of us. 

With the stories she’s published, Annelise has given us details about the who, what, where, why, and how things are the way they are. She’s shown us how things got that way and sometimes she’s even been able to give us a glimpse of how we might change things for the better. 

What Shasta Scout does is unusual for a news media organization. That’s because it takes unique and intentional insight into power structures, immense amounts of time and effort, and the independence to report it without being influenced. 

I am drawn to Shasta Scout because the work here doesn’t shy away from meaningful stories and or the time it takes to untangle them into narratives that are both factual and understandable. I am proud to be a part of Scout because as a news organization we are deeply committed to sharing, not only information, but the process and the tools for civic engagement that we as journalists learn along the way. 

I come to Shasta Scout with a deep love for this place, with a rich variety of life experiences from elsewhere, and the empowering connections I have to local people that are doing deep life-consuming grassroots community care. 

I’ve joined Shasta Scout because I want to see people’s voices truly and meaningfully represented. And because I believe that a better shared analysis of our current lived experiences can lead us as a community towards radically different, and better, solutions.

At Scout we make our journalism process transparent and accessible to the public. I’m committed to engaging in with both openness and humility. I welcome your questions, feedback, tips, and ideas. Email me: michelle@shastascout.org.