Too few people can say they are doing the job they dreamed about as a kid.
When my seventh-grade English teacher assigned our class to research a career, I picked “journalist.” I still have the red folder stashed among the collection of things I probably should have tossed years ago.
Back then, I didn’t care about the role news organizations can play in making their community a better place, holding power to account or other high-minded, capital-J “journalism” ideals. My thinking was simple: I loved to write, and journalism sounded like the most direct path to transform a passion into a vocation.
To this day, I’m not sure my family totally understands what I do or why I do it. What’s a “managing editor,” anyway?
Growing up in post-steel Youngstown, I had watched family and friends work (and lose) jobs they hated. My seventh-grade research found the pay to be relatively meager. But I figured if someone might pay me to do something I loved, it was at least worth a shot.
Journalism changed my life. I met my future wife in our high school journalism class. We both have made careers in the business some-25 years after clashing over a group project to produce our own newspaper. (And, yes, I still have a copy of that somewhere too.)
It led me to Ohio University, where I was the first person in my immediate family to graduate college. Working at The Post, an independent student newspaper, opened doors to friends, mentors and internships that shaped the journalist I would become.
When I arrived at The Dispatch as a summer intern in 2008, Columbus was as foreign to me as any country. But I fell in love with this city. That summer cemented Columbus as where I wanted to live and The Dispatch as the place I wanted to work.
It took five years to find my way back as a full-time reporter.
I got to know Columbus from the street level and the suite level. As a transportation reporter, I wrote about everything from potholes to the dangers lurking on Ohio’s rail lines — well before the East Palestine disaster. I learned who pulls the levers of power while covering City Hall and state and local politics.
Just before the 2020 election, I worked with a colleague to use state records to identify voters who had been wrongly purged from Ohio’s rolls and exposed the weaknesses in the state’s registration system.
I’ve stood in the snow outside crime scenes and (literally) melted parts of my shoes reporting on the extreme heat at the Franklin County fair.
The only place I’ve never really dabbled in journalism is sports — ironic, given my obsession with it. I live and die with every pitch, pass and pull-up jumpshot in Cleveland.
Sports also happens to be the one place I have felt out of place in Buckeye-crazed Columbus. I’ll probably regret telling you all that I love the Notre Dame Fighting Irish because my Irish-Catholic grandfather couldn’t stomach Woody Hayes. One of my toddler’s favorite phrases is “boo Brutus.”
What would you say… you do here?
After today, you shouldn’t see my name much in print.
As managing editor, I help shape content across our newsroom. When I was a reporter, I could control my own corner of the world. Before returning to The Dispatch in June, I was hyper-focused on the Ohio Statehouse as the politics editor for Cleveland.com.
My focus now is more global. I have a hand in everything, from street crime to development trends.
But a big part of my job is making sure that we stay focused on a mission to produce deeply reported journalism – the kinds of stories that often peel back the curtain to expose how things really work (or don’t) or shine a spotlight on parts of our community. You’ll find many of those published in our Sunday edition, but I want that kind of reporting to be a part of our identity every day.
Columbus is in many ways a thriving city, but it has plenty of problems that deserve our attention. The best journalism can right injustice and push our community to be better than it is today. Those are the stories I want The Dispatch to tell.
Journalism has the power to change lives. It certainly altered the course of mine.
Rouan can be reached at rrouan@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Staff profile: Meet Rick Rouan, the Dispatch’s new managing editor
Reporting by Rick Rouan, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
