Clara Hatcher, The Park Record’s new Wasatch County beat reporter, grew up in upstate New York and Duluth, Minnesota, along for the ride through her father’s journalism career. “My dad was getting his Ph.D. in journalism from Syracuse, so we lived there while he did that, and he worked at the newspaper there called The Daily Messenger,” she said. “When he got his Ph.D., we moved to Minnesota, where both of my parents started working at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.”Growing up, she tried her hand at journalism, too, writing for her high school newspaper along with competing in lacrosse and swimming. Her childhood in the Midwest was pretty outdoorsy, she said.“I went to the Boundary Waters a lot. Grew up next to the lake, so did a lot of canoeing and that kind of thing,” she said. “It was right on Lake Superior, which I really loved. I kind of miss living by water. I always had a lake to grow up next to.”When it was her turn to consider college, she knew she also wanted to study journalism. Ironically, her dad didn’t think it was a great idea.“My dad always told me not to go into journalism. He was like, ‘It’s not enough money, and you work too much,’” she said with a laugh. “(But) I always really liked writing, and I like talking to people. … I couldn’t really see myself doing anything else.”Before pursuing her degree, Hatcher decided to take a gap year and joined the AmeriCorps NCCC. She was placed in the southwest region at their Denver campus and was sent on four assignments during the 10-month program.“I lived in Colorado doing disaster relief; Arkansas building fire line; Roswell, New Mexico, working on a farm; and then Arizona working at a camp,” she said.Then she was off to college at Marquette University in Milwaukee. Hatcher studied journalism, as planned, and built up her reporting experience.“I got to do a lot of work in journalism, which was awesome. I worked for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service in school and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,” she said. “I ended up choosing my school because of two reasons: Because I wanted a lacrosse team and a good journalism program. And looking back, like when you’re 18, you don’t really know what exactly, but now I’m like, those actually worked out really well.”After graduating, she left Milwaukee to hike on the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail, through 14 states from Georgia to Maine.“My grandparents both did it,” Hatcher said. “They section hiked the trail over 10 years or so, around the age of 50 they started, and they ended up really liking one of the trail towns in North Carolina and moving there and building their house there. So I always knew I wanted to do it.”With that off her bucket list, she decided to move to Salt Lake City with her college boyfriend, now her fiancé.“We met in the rock climbing club, and then we started dating our senior year,” she said. “He got a job in Salt Lake, and I just kind of thought, ‘Well, that sounds good to me.’”Once in Utah, it took her a while to return to journalism, working for a stint in the nonprofit sector for Friends of Alta, then trying her hand at marketing for companies like Backcountry, Goal Zero and Traeger after COVID hit. An internship at The Salt Lake Tribune also gave her the opportunity to cover government and politics, she said.After a while, she began looking more seriously for journalism jobs and saw The Park Record’s post for a county reporter. It seemed like the perfect fit.“I have always liked smaller-town journalism,” she said. “I just think you can dive into stories that are really important to these small communities. In towns like Heber or Midway, people have a lot to say, and there’s actually a lot going on, but a lot of times it’s overlooked because there’s bigger cities like Salt Lake right next to them, and people think that’s bigger news.”She also liked meeting the newspaper’s editor and publisher, Don Rogers. “I really liked the fact that Don was a firefighter for a long time,” she said. “I think that people like Don who are firefighters … and just decide to start writing and doing journalism, I think that’s really important. It gives a different kind of lens.”She said Wasatch County is a good fit with her reporting interests. “I thought that there was a lot that could be done, especially with Wasatch County. It’s expanding so quickly, and so everything’s changing really rapidly. There’s a lot that can be reported on in that area. And so I was excited to dive into it,” she said.And she really did dive in, starting with election coverage right away.“I went to talk to voters who were doing in-person voting in Wasatch County. And that was really interesting because I got to talk to the kind of people who I would be covering, and so I got to see who exactly was living in the county, what kind of people they were, what kind of values they had,” she said.That first week she also attended a Heber City Council meeting and a Wasatch County Council meeting — and made time to attend other local happenings.Now a month in, she said her favorite story so far has been on the efforts to establish an historic district in Heber City.“I think it’s a really interesting solution to diversifying Heber City, and they are in the middle of trying to densify the area,” she said. “(Rachel Kahler) was bringing a different solution to the table of preserving these historic homes, rather than tearing things down there and starting over.”So far, reporting on Wasatch County has given Hatcher the opportunity to follow her journalistic instincts, as well as pursue topics she’s personally interested in, like environmental issues.“I’m looking forward to seeing what comes up for Heber City. There’s a lot going on there with them trying to densify. There’s the issues with U.S. 40, which everyone’s having a lot of trouble with, and then I’m interested in places like Hideout and Midway,” Hatcher said.The post New Wasatch County reporter returns to journalism appeared first on Park Record.