Weighing words
An unlikely path to life at a newspaper
Courteney Stuart wanted to be a lot of things, but for a long time, a journalist wasn’t one of them.
When she was at James Madison University as an undergrad, it was forensic psychology. Then she considered, in turn, law school, personal training, marine biology, and fashion buying.
“At that point I was two or three years out of college and I’d gone in 15 different directions,” she said. “My parents were starting to tell me, ‘Do you think you’re going to do something eventually?’”
The problem wasn’t that she couldn’t find anything she loved. She just kept finding new things she loved more.
“How could I be a lawyer when I could be a dolphin trainer?” she said. “Or travel to Paris and go to the fashion shows?”
In 1996, in her mid-20s, she found herself back home in Richmond in front of a career counselor, who told her journalism seemed to suit her perfectly, despite her total lack of experience. But when she showed up, brimming with confidence, to an interview for an internship at Style Weekly, she nearly got laughed out of the newsroom.
“I go in with a long-form poem and an essay from English 101 as my only clips,” she said. “The editor was like, ‘Really? Is this a joke?’”
But a vague promise to let her know if nobody else worked out left her with a sliver of hope, and that’s all her dogged nature needed. She called weekly, asking if he’d made up his mind. A few months later, she took a short gig as a summer camp counselor in Maine, but she kept pestering the editor, even though she had to walk a mile down a dirt road to a payphone to do it.
He finally caved under the pressure of her relentlessly cheerful barrage of calls. His words when he finally gave in and agreed to give her a no-pay, no-writing internship: “It’s only so I never, ever hear your voice on the phone again,” Stuart remembers, laughing.
Her editor was true to his word. At first, she wrote nothing, and her duties were strictly limited to alphabetizing press releases and entering headline after headline into a computer archive. But she was allowed to sit in on editorial meetings, where she pitched good ideas, and eventually got to turn a few of them into stories herself. And she knew she’d finally found the right line of work.
“My first day, somebody came up with a bad pun, and everybody laughed too hard,” she remembered. “I said, ‘Oh my God, my people.’”
About a year later, she moved to Charlottesville. With a recommendation in hand, Stuart interviewed with C-VILLE’s then-editor Hawes Spencer and landed the newly created job of deputy editor. Some dark days followed, she said, because she still didn’t have much writing experience, and she had to ask her new coworkers—whom she technically outranked—to teach her the ropes.
But she knew she was in the right place. Within a month she’d attended a tense press conference about a baby switch at UVA, and strutted down West Main Street in a wig and a blue sequined dress for a story on prostitution.
“I don’t know what it says about me, but I was immediately like, ‘I love my job,’” she said. “There were these incredibly compelling moments where you just are drawn into it.” And she realized the things she thought were her worst traits—nosiness and a total inability to settle on one interesting pursuit for long—were a big part of what made her a good reporter.
“Loving to write is not the ticket to being a journalist,” she said. “Total curiosity is the key. You have to be someone who has an almost inappropriate need to know, and that has to drive you.”
She’s found a deep appreciation for the public service aspect of reporting, too. The trust people put in the paper, the expectation of accuracy and honesty, is a huge motivator, she said, and sometimes the cause of some sleepless nights, “but I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said.
Nearly 17 years after coming to Charlottesville, she’s seen a lot change. When Spencer left C-VILLE to create The Hook in 2002, she went with him, and she took over as editor of the paper earlier this year. The industry has evolved—no more faxes and gluing pages together and trucking them to the printer—and the city is different, too. More conventionally hip, without some of the edge of the ’90s. But it’s still a great town for reporters, she said, and that shows in the rich media market here.
“You might have only one successful paper in a city five times this size,” she said. “Maybe there are some things we’ve lost, but when I think about the people who are doing interesting things here, the spirit, the energy of the place, and the fact that people really do want to make cool things happen in the arts, and politically—that’s what makes it fun to tell stories.”—Graelyn Brashear
Tech vs. biotech: One town, two growing industries. How do they stack up?
Charlottesville loves the sciences, and they love the city back. Whether it’s Web and mobile or drugs and lab tools, technology-oriented companies are pulling up average salaries and carving out an ever-more noticeable niche in the local economy.—Shea Gibbs
BIOTECH
Number of companies: 40
Names to know: HemoShear, Indoor Biotechnologies, Lighthouse Instruments, Adenosine Therapeutics, Phthisis Diagnostics
Average salary: $100,000
Percent higher than area’s average salary: 156
Why we’re paying attention: Charlottesville is home to 15 percent of the state’s biotech firms—the highest per capita concentration in the state. Job growth in the sector was 23 percent from 2001-08, compared to 6 percent average total job growth in Virginia.
Boom time: Biomedical engineer is the fastest-growing job in Virginia.
TECH
Number of companies: 130
Names to know: WillowTree Apps, Search Mojo,
Cardagin, Cloudbrain, VividCortex
Average salary: $74,000
Percent higher than area’s average salary: 90
Why we’re paying attention: Tech and telecommunications together are the fourth-largest industry group in
Charlottesville.
Plush position: Computer and information
systems manager is the 15th highest-paying job in Albemarle, at an average of $142,582.