One of the hardest things for a newsroom to do is report on itself. Kalispell’s Daily Inter Lake has been in that position since first covering the story of a missing plane that involved two of its reporters. Journalists who weren’t gathering information about their colleagues last week were searching for them along the Flathead River south of Polson.
In this case, the reporter whose job would likely include writing on the plane crash, Melissa Weaver, was one of the four missing. Those assigned to the “cops and courts beat” are often among the youngest on staff. It’s a job offered to those fresh out of college and one of the toughest assignments.
But newsrooms in Montana are filled with young people. Weaver, 23, was just four years younger than her coworker, Erika Hoefer, who accompanied her on the sightseeing tour of the Flathead Valley. My newsroom has its share of 20-somethings and many of them are friends with those at the Inter Lake.
While there is a level of competition in reporting stories among the handful of news outlets in the Flathead Valley, the prevailing feeling is one of camaraderie. Reporters gather together at the courthouse on election nights, sit through hours-long city council meetings and greet each other at basketball tournaments. More often than not, they are eager to cross paths.
Whether at a newspaper, radio or television station, many of them hang out together when they’re not working. I’ve been part of a few of these gatherings, but now in my 30s, I’m not quite part of the fraternity anymore.
When news first broke that a plane carrying Weaver, Hoefer, and Missoula men Sonny Kless and Brian Williams had gone missing, we all held our collective breaths. Molly Priddy, our reporter assigned to cover the story, knew the two victims from Kalispell. Like many of you, when the crash site was found with no survivors aboard on Wednesday, June 30, we were jolted.
It’s tragic. I can’t begin to fathom how difficult it was for the Inter Lake’s reporters to write about not one, but two of their colleagues’ deaths. Montana newsrooms, even at the state’s daily newspapers, are small places. And because the nature of this business, they feel even smaller.
I spoke briefly to Inter Lake Publisher Rick Weaver by phone to offer condolences from our newsroom to his just hours before the wreckage was found. He was gracious, as always. I worked at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle when Weaver was the publisher there and spent time with him recently at the Montana Newspaper Association’s annual convention. On his first day working at his new job in Kalispell, Weaver swung by the Beacon office to chat. He’s a class act.
After the crash, Weaver said in a statement, “A newsroom is often like a big family and they were an important part of that. Not only were they an important part of the newsroom, they were friends with everyone.”
Every time I get a chance to meet a young Montana journalist, it’s another reminder of why this job is still worth it. I’m biased in this regard, but I would argue it takes extra ambition to make it in a field that is largely thankless and hyper competitive. Melissa Weaver and Erika Hoefer chose it anyway. And they will be sorely missed.