Sohal starts as Forum reporting intern

GEOFFREY WOEHLK/THE FORUM
Gurtej Sohal began working as a reporting intern at The Forum in May. He said he enjoys the “community-driven” vibe of smalltown journalism and likes to tell people’s stories.

MARYVILLE, Mo. — Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed The Forum recently welcomed Gurtej Sohal as an intern reporting on news across Nodaway County.

Sohal, from St. Joseph, is headed into his senior year at Missouri Western State University where he is the editor-in-chief of Griffon Media and majors in convergent journalism and public relations.

Sohal said he’s been interested in writing since he was younger, and enjoys learning about people and telling their stories. But in college, he started off on a different career path, studying computer science.

“It was fun for a while, until it got way too tech savvy for me,” he said. After a couple of years, “I took a moment to reflect and I was like, ‘Huh, I don’t know if I wanna continue in this field.’”

It was a creative writing class that eventually set Sohal on the path to journalism.

“When I got the opportunity to express myself, I was like, ‘Wow, this is really fun,’” he said. “… I didn’t know I could do this. And it kind of brought me back to my roots of being creative, in that sense.”

A professor suggested he join Griffon Media, where Sohal immediately distinguished himself. After a year, he was editor-in-chief.

“I kept writing and I kept telling stories and I was like, ‘Well, this is something I can do,’ you know? … ‘I’m enjoying putting myself in this situation, learning and getting these stories out there. I can make something of this.’”

Sohal said one of his favorite parts of journalism so far is the daily challenge of talking to people — a steep hill to climb for self-described introverts who find themselves in a profession that requires interacting with all sorts of people in different situations. But now, the enthusiastic Sohal said he enjoys meeting new people and learning their stories.

Unsurprisingly, Sohal said his favorite types of stories to report on are ones focused on people. That’s part of why he said he sees himself reporting in a small town like Maryville rather than a bigger, metro area.

“In larger (cities), they have a lot that needs to be covered,” he said. “But whenever you’re in a smaller one, it seems more impactful to me. It’s more community-driven.”

He said he got that vibe even from his first assignment at The Forum — graduation at Nodaway-Holt — where he said the “sense of community was so strong.”

Down the line even further, Sohal said he’s eventually interested in becoming a librarian — ideally finding a way to fuse his passion for journalism with his passion for reading.

For now, Sohal said he is excited to get out there and get to know the people of Nodaway County.

Interns at The Forum spend their time doing the same on-the-ground work as any other reporter at the newspaper and are held to the same high standards of professionalism and accuracy. At the same time, they work one-on-one with The Forum’s award-winning journalists to hone their craft as they prepare to enter the workforce.

Sohal will be with The Forum through the middle of July.