HI! I'M DOROTHY.

My career in journalism started in college, during my time at The Independent, which is the student-run news magazine at Fort Lewis College. There, I wrote about controversy over speech regulation on the college’s student app, political beliefs and attitudes among students during the 2020 presidential election, a professor’s effort to increase Native American representation in the sciences and a 232 mile prayer run for missing and murdered Indigenous women. 

Some of the projects I’m most proud of that took place within my journalism classes include an in-depth story on varying pandemic protocols at Colorado colleges and a documentary on the restorative justice program being implemented in Durango School District 9-R. 

I’m passionate about studying media trends, which I wrote about for both my journalism and political science senior theses. In one, I studied the perception of the need for, constraints and efficacy of investigative journalism in the Four Corners Region by reporters in the area, which was awarded an Andrew Mellon Foundation grant. In the other, I conducted an ethical analysis of two social-media-based citizen journalist Instagram accounts, in an attempt to help understand how professional journalists should interact with them as we exist in a new era of information circulation. 

Currently, I write for the Pagosa Sun, a weekly print publication based in Pagosa Springs, CO. During my time here, I’ve written about a controversial land exchange between an energy executive and the National Forest Service, a family’s story about lending a hand during a wildfire in the area, a development that proposes to double the size of the town and I continue to follow a lawsuit against the town for its short term rental fee. 

Thank you for taking the time to check out my writing, and please get in contact with ideas, tips or anything else on your mind!