Duffy Hayes

I’ve always been a news junkie, like I’ve really been tied to society and what’s going on through the news. And what’s always interested me is how a newspaper shapes that vision. And how we are that prism through which people view what’s going on in society. And I would say that’s what really drew me to that.

If you want to get specific, I don’t think I’ve ever been more satisfied than when I was a daily beat reporter. There were times when I felt like I was making a difference every day. I felt like what I was doing was important. And what I’m doing now is sort of on a higher level, and I know it’s important, but, you know, you don’t get that day to day connection with people that you do when you’re a reporter.

One of the best stories I ever wrote was when I covered the County Commission and the county manager was a guy I had a lot of close contact with. And he had been at his job for about 20 years. And I just never knew his back-story, and what I figured out when we did an exit interview for him was that he was the Emergency Call Center. He was the county manager during Columbine down in Denver when that happened, and I had never known that.

And he sort of walked me through – he was on the front line of when the calls came in, and he was the connection between the media and law enforcement and that sort of thing.

I just remember thinking, I never knew that about you, but getting to interview him and learn that different side of him and not only did it give me an insight into him as a person but such a major event. I got to see it through a different set of eyes. So that would be one of the more memorable stories, I guess, I’d written the past.