ST. PAUL 鈥� Mary Murphy didn't know she loved reporting until she took a high school journalism class based on advice from classmates who told her it would be an easy A.
"It wasn't the easiest of A's, but I did get an A," she said, referring to the course she took at Hopkins High 歪歪漫画 in Minnetonka, which she graduated from in 2016.
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On Oct. 1, Murphy began a new job as the Minnesota state correspondent for Forum Communications Co., the parent company of The Forum.
Murphy said that prior to taking the aforementioned journalism class in high school, she had not been aware of how important unbiased reporting is to democracy and to the healthy functioning of society in general.
After high school, she continued to pursue her interest in journalism and in 2020, she graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle with a degree in journalism and political science.
After working at an internship covering the Washington State Legislature for the Washington State Journal, Murphy said she came to understand the meaning of a phrase she had long heard but never fully grasped: Find a job you love and you won't work a day in your life.
"It was incredibly energizing," she said of her internship.
This past summer, Murphy did freelance work for the Seattle Times and Cascade PBS in Seattle.
Murphy said one story she that she feels particularly proud of was about a new law passed by the Washington Legislature that allows DACA recipients to be hired as police officers.
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As she wrote in her story, former President Barack Obama introduced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012, providing protection from deportation to immigrants who came to the United States as children.
Murphy's story noted that even before Washington passed its new DACA law, the state offered DACA recipients a number of opportunities, including access to college financial aid and professional license fields like teaching and nursing.
Murphy said the new law allowing DACA recipients to become police officers in the state of Washington was met with backlash from some, adding that she did her best to include in her story the voices of DACA recipients who had embarked on becoming officers and their reasons for doing so.
"It's one thing to report on the policies, it's another thing to get to know the people it is impacting," she said.
As a reporter, Murphy said she welcomes feedback on stories.
"Even if it's criticism, I think it's important for audiences to engage directly with journalists. We want to know what people want to hear about and how they're responding to the information we're giving them," she added.
Of all the jobs she might have found after college, Murphy said ending up covering state news and the lawmakers in Minnesota's Capitol was a stroke of luck.
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"Politics reporting is a pretty coveted beat in journalism," she said. "I feel grateful I got my pick of the litter."
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