It’s hard to believe, but we are about to celebrate our 10th anniversary at The Frontier. 

I’ll never forget our launch, probably the most hectic, chaotic day of my life. I was young and inexperienced, but I still thought I had all the answers. By the end of our second week, I realized I had no idea what I was in for. 

But here we are, 10 years later. We’ve doubled our staff in that time frame and we’ve solidified into one of the best newsrooms in the state, consistently reporting important, untold stories about Oklahoma.

When I made the jump from the Tulsa World to The Frontier 10 years ago, part of my reasoning was that newsrooms were dwindling and newspapers were slowly decaying. Worse, no one seemed to have an answer about how to right the ship. Everyone I worked with was worried about what the future held, and I was afraid that if I didn’t take a risk, I’d wake up one day and it might be too late to salvage a career in journalism. If The Frontier worked, great. If it didn’t, well, at least I had given it a shot.

We’ve succeeded by always making readers our first priority. My first reporting job was in Muskogee, and my editor, Ed Choate, drilled into my head that a good editor always puts readers first. I would watch him meticulously go over each word of every story we wrote, and it would sometimes drive me crazy. But he told me people were paying for this product, and that meant they were paying our salaries. So we owed it to them to be as good as we could possibly be.

I’ve been editor at The Frontier since 2017. When Ziva Branstetter left and our publisher, Bobby Lorton, told me I was getting promoted, I had been a journalist for only six years. I was 35 years old and I was terrified that I wouldn’t know what I was doing. So I just followed Ed’s advice. I wanted our reporting to be unique, not just so it would stand out, but so that we could offer Oklahoma something different. If there was a controversial political appointment, I didn’t want us to be the ninth news outlet in the state to report on it.  I wanted our readers to find information in our stories they weren’t seeing anywhere else.

Now, that is not exactly a groundbreaking strategy. But our staff is the reason it has worked so well for so long. One thing the first few years of The Frontier taught me is that I wasn’t quite as smart as I had thought. By the time I became editor, I had realized that our real strength as a news outlet wasn’t whatever plan I was cooking up, it was the reporters we had on our staff. I’m amazed every day at the work they do, so I figured the best thing I could do was try to make a place that gave them time and space to do work they couldn’t do elsewhere, and then get out of the way.

Brianna Bailey is one of the best editors in the state. The time and care she places on every story we publish certainly isn’t for her benefit. I’m sure she’d love to spend less time pouring over our drafts. But she does it because she cares about Oklahoma.

Likewise for Clifton Adcock, the most dogged reporter I’ve worked with in my career. You can say the same for Kayla Branch, someone who never stops working and also never stops learning. When we hired her, I remember promising that we would give her the ability to find and report on topics she was passionate about and grow in the process. She’s now one of the best reporters in the state. 

Ari Fife interned with us while she was in college and we were lucky to hire her later on. She writes stories in a way no one else in the state does, routinely tackling difficult topics with care and patience. We had our eye on Ashlynd Huffman, our criminal justice reporter, for a while. And when she hit the job market, we hired her as fast as we could. She loves journalism more than anyone I’ve ever met.

We hired two new reporters this year — Maddy Keyes and Garrett Yalch. Maddy covers housing and homelessness for us. Her organization and attention to detail reminds me so much of Kassie McClung, a former Frontier reporter who did the state’s best COVID-19 reporting during the pandemic. Garrett interned with us twice and was one of the lead reporters on the Fields Of Green investigation, the best reporting in Oklahoma this year.

Keeping a newsroom functional in 2024 is not an easy feat. Finding new readers is tough. Finding new funding is tough. Social media companies continue to throttle news outlets, making it tougher to get our stories in front of your eyeballs. But we keep doing it because we know what it means to the state and we’re all committed to doing our best job for Oklahomans.

Asking for money is not exactly what I went to journalism school for, but it’s part of my job. Your donations are a crucial part of our continued growth, and this part of the year is the last chance for us to raise money before we determine our budget for 2025. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, The Frontier gets its funding through grants and you, the readers. All of our stories are free to read and republish. 

Now through the end of the year, your donations will be matched through the collaborative fundraising movement Newsmatch. We can earn up to $24,000 with your help. Please consider donating to support our mission of independent journalism that shines a light on Oklahoma.