Bob Mercer leaves print journalism this week to tell the news on television. Mercer’s replacement in Pierre, covering state government for newspapers in Aberdeen, Watertown, Mitchell, and Rapid City via Forum News Service is Sarah Mearhoff:
Mearhoff grew up in Pennsylvania and graduated from Penn State University with a journalism degree. She worked as a legislative relief reporter for The Associated Press in Mississippi earlier this year.
In 2017, she worked for the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association to provide coverage for six news outlets, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Mearhoff also worked as a government accountability reporter for the Ithaca Journal in Ithaca, N.Y., and interned with The Hill newspaper in Washington, D.C. [“Watchdog Journalist Hired to Cover South Dakota Government,” Forum News Service, 2018.09.26]
I get the feeling Forum News Service is trying to understate Mearhoff’s youth. She got a Liberal Studies degree (uh oh, Dennis!) from Montgomery County Community College in December 2012, the day after her 16th birthday. She got that early degree through dual-credit classes she took in home school. She was going to dance professionally and go to college for ballet and English, but she took up journalism at Penn State in fall 2015 in response to the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the Black Lives Matter movement. She graduated two years later.
In another apparent deflection of Mearhoff’s youth, Forum News Service omits from its resume her freelancing for Teen Vogue. Mearhoff’s last two articles appear to be some mid-move pet breaks, but her prior work at Teen Vogue involves mostly serious policy reporting.
Forum News Service content director Steve Wagner says Mearhoff’s “experiences and talents make her the ideal person for the job.” Wagner misuses the word ideal. I would suggest that the ideal replacement for Mercer would be someone with years of institutional knowledge of South Dakota government, business, media, history, and biography to inform her reporting from Pierre. That ideal probably wasn’t available (I see only one article under Mearhoff’s name that even mentions South Dakota, this fine August article on a judge’s ruling requiring an honest environmental review of Keystone XL), so FNS had to settle for the best it could get: a young reporter not connected to anyone in Pierre but eager to prove herself as a serious government watchdog. I welcome Mearhoff’s efforts to that end.
And I suspect a sharp reporter like Mearhoff won’t need this advice, but I’ll say it anyway: Ms. Mearhoff, when you get to Pierre, look up Bob Mercer! He can get you started on all that institutional knowledge.
Wouldn’t hurt her to get a wingnut specific rabies vaccination, unless of course she is of that particular persuasion. I sincerely hope she is independent or non-political.
Let’s recall that Mercer wasn’t Mercer when he started out. So, she’s not going to have the depth of understanding of SD government/politics he does. What that means is she’s going to be looking at things with a new eye. Most journalists, when they start out, have a parietal eye that senses b.s., corruption and nonsense. Over time, some journalists lose that parietal eye and start becoming “institutions,” rather than mere reporters.
She will discover good aspects of SD government that are fairly unique to South Dakota. One is that the power of legislative leadership to bury bills without a hearing doesn’t exist. In one of the greatest reforms of government that occurred in SD, all legislative bills get a hearing. No chairman or party has the power to completely bury any bill that is introduced. Every bill gets a chance to be heard, and citizen testimony presented at one hearing, at minimum.
Even better than this, though, is the right to refer and initiate laws. Citizens take seriously the state motto, “Under God, the People Rule.” Some of us might quibble about the God part, but there is a constant struggle in the state about how much the people rule. Right now, there is a corrupt, one-party state that lords it over the people. But the people fight back through ballot measures. And, perhaps, there will be a bit of a change after November’s elections.
If Sutton wins, it will certainly be an exciting time in South Dakota, and one that a new reporter can sink her teeth into. Sutton isn’t a progressive bombthrower, like me, but he will make changes that the elites will not be happy with. Whether a largely corrupt Legislature will allow that change to occur will make for good stories in 2019.
Clearly Ms. Mearhoff should include conversations with old hands like Mr. Pay in her on-the-job training.
Thanks, Cory, but I would think she should talk to you and other progressives in the state. It might be good to organize a meeting with her and various progressives and progressive groups in the state so she can get a head start on a learning curve.
She did stories for Teen Vogue? Wow! Teen Vogue has been ahead of some of the hoary old timers in regard to school terrorist attacks and #MeToo.
A smart, eager, young woman might be a very good choice and breath of fresh air in such a massively corrupt state as SD.
Best of luck, Ms. Mearhoff!
Donald do you think it is wise to try and persuade an independent writer in secret? It makes people think you care more about “your” message and how it is presented than you do just hearing the truth. I say let Mearoff find her own way and make her own judgments. She has written some pretty good articles that went nationwide already and would probably resent a bunch of harpies crying about not winning elections. Also, Pierre is a pretty boring place already so if you pre-construct or haze her she will become bored, insulted and just leave.
The truth is, between being bored and eaten alive by the black flies she won’t stay long anyway. . . It would be cool though to have a new nationally known writer at the same time as our first woman governor. Could be somewhat exciting. Well, not really but it’s something to talk about. . . in Pierre. yawn
Good point, Debbo! Some folks might think Teen Vogue is fluff, but Mearhoff’s freelance articles there include local bicycle activism, suicide in prison, Hurricane Florence, anti-coal activism in Australia, refugee education, and guns in schools. And that’s for a national publication. I’d contend that writing is at least as big a feather in her cap as the other items included in the FNS bio.
Her biggest was her article on the 7,000 dead democratic party members killed in Mississippi by the democrats. www. travelbreakingnews. net
tag/ lighten-up- plus-lightening- body-lotion/
Thanks Cory. I wasn’t aware Teen Vogue was so forward looking till I began reading about their articles of political importance to teens. Excellent reporting.
Cory, I get your point, but I would offer her the opportunity to her anyway. It’s not unethical for a journalist to learn more about the various points of view out there. That’s part of her job, and if we can make her job easier, why not? The other side does it all the time. It’s not really “meeting in secret.” It’s meeting “on background.” She should meet with other groups and individuals as well to get to know the various actors, what their concerns are or will be, how they fit into the state political scene.
And trying to persuade a journalist about the correctness of your position, or just letting that journalist know what issues you are most interested in and why is just good basic public relations work. Progressives don’t do that enough.
I would find out tidbits of leaked information and hand it exclusively to one journalist to give them an opportunity for an exclusive. The next month I’d give something to someone else. Trump did it, and you see where he is now.
OS: try again with the link. I see no big article on Mississippi; the content you cite says nothing of the sort that you claim. Your link is actually spammy click-bait, so I’m deactivating it for readers’ protection.
Donald’s right: we’re fools to think other interests don’t try to cultivate relationships with the press in order to gain better coverage.
You libbies, especially you out-of-state ones, seem to think this young woman will go to Pierre with a libbie “twist the truth” bent on her “reporting.” You are no doubt correct, and I salute your truth in this matter.
She should sit down with Messrs. Kloucek and Nelson, the two most ineffective in the legislatures over the past 82 years, and get their scoop and then run with it. She’ll do great there, I am sure.
Cory, same writer, same author. Did you read the article?
. . . and you are the decider of who is racist. . .
What is this Teen Vogue of which you all type? Not a thing for young ladies who are trying to mimic that hedonistic (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and very young and risque lady named Madonna, is it? I newspaper for those Madonna fans is now replacing Mr. Mercer?!?
I remember when Grudz first started commenting here. He pretended to be so centrist. Wasn’t that long before he started taken potshots at “you libbies” and making it clear that women and girls must adhere to certain behaviors and appearance that fit his narrow definition of “ladylike.” He’s moved on to calling us liars, in more words than one.
Oh Grudzie. If you want to limit commenting to current SD residents only, then give us your full, real name so we can check your real address. My full name is out there, but not yours. Therefore you have NOTHING to say to me beyond an apology.
No, really, OS, I’m not kidding: I clicked on the link you offered (and I just did it again to be sure, thus giving the spammers more satisfaction) and found a website offering “Travel Breaking News,” ads, and a poorly written (I suspect computer- or non-native-English-speaker-generated) blurb about minimalist packing. Here’s a screen cap:
Where on the page do you see anything by, about, or faintly connected to Sarah Mearhoff, Democrats, or murder?
I don’t assume anything about any journalist. Most are pretty skeptical, and won’t just believe anything anyone says. I guess that’s why Trump hates real journalists. Most journalists have an open mind and good research skills. If that is “libbie” to you, Grudz, then I suppose you will think she’s a “libbie.” I assume, then, that Grudz stereotypes a conservative as someone with a closed mind and no skills in research. Sometimes I think that of what I call “the dumb crowd,” but I’ve know too many conservatives who aren’t that way.