About
Short version:
Daniel Victor, 24, is a reporter for The (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News. He previously wrote for the Centre Daily Times while attending Penn State, and also enjoyed a summer internship at The Wichita (Kan.) Eagle.
He does not take himself too seriously, so writing in the third person feels very strange to him.
Longer version:
It all started with a cute girl in his ninth-grade journalism class.
He had zero interest in the class. He did have interest in her, though. So when she begged him to join her on the newspaper staff the following year, he had no choice but to follow.
They eventually had a one-week romance, ending with her dumping him for his best friend, but he forgave her. Because of her he had discovered, quite by accident, his apparent calling to the world of journalism.
He eventually became editor in chief of the Lions’ Digest, which was named the Most Outstanding High School Newspaper for 2002 by the American Scholastic Press Association.
Once he got to Penn State, he begged for as many writing assignments as the Centre Daily Times would be willing to give him. His work there included a summer internship, a few years as a reporter/columnist for a youth-centered publication, and one semester as a three-days-a-week staff writer.
But it was his summer internship at The Patriot-News after his sophomore year that allowed him to eventually fool his editors into hiring him after graduation in 2006. For 2.5 years he covered the Hershey area, including the creation of a Ning network for his beat as part of Jay Rosen’s beatblogging.org project. He also covered Pennsylvania’s role in the Obama campaign, during which Howard Dean told him that he “look(ed) like a blogger.”
He’s now trying his hand at mobile journalism, and he’s convinced that community-building and crowdsourcing are the two biggest keys to journalism’s future. He’s taking a stab at a blogging project called Central PA NewsVote, in which he solicits story ideas from readers and allows them to vote on which he should cover.
He’s intent on there being a future for professional journalism, and on him being around for it.