The Racheal Clark File
Racheal Clark was looking for a home – and found it at the Groesbeck Journal. What began as a job (two years ago this week) has morphed into something more. Whether or not it turns into a career is still an open question, but for now at least, she’s a reporter covering four different counties and doing it exceptionally well.
Her adult background is a wandering, roaming path that started out in photojournalism at the University of North Texas and took a detour after she realized she wasn’t quite ready for academic life. She left UNT and moved to Waco.
“I spent the next 10 years there working as a server and bartender, just drifting through life,” she explained. She became a manager but didn’t end up making the restaurant business her life’s work either.
“A job listing caught my eye while I was job hunting – Groesbeck was looking for a theatre teacher,” she explained. “I loved theatre, and while I certainly wasn’t qualified at the time, I decided to go back to school and seek certification.”
That took her to Europe. But theatre doesn’t pay well, especially in smaller communities, so she worked . . . until her employer closed its Waco location.
So how did the 35-yearold end up in the newspaper business after all that?
“It was my sister who spotted an ad in the paper for a reporter position, and I decided to apply,” she said. “I liked writing and had always wanted to try writing a book, as I’m an obsessive reader – I typically clear 300 books a year and have an almost embarrassingly long daily reading streak in my Kindle app.”
The reporter position was at the Groesbeck Journal under Editor Jennifer Paul.
“Jennifer said my cover letter was written in complete sentences and didn’t have any mistakes, so she offered me the job,” Racheal laughed.“Racheal has become a valuable part of our news team. She approaches every aspect of her job with dedication, heart, and a quiet determination to get it right,” stated Paul. “Watching her grow from an aspiring theatre teacher to the reporter she is today, now well on her way to a master’s degree, has been a privilege. I knew from the moment I interviewed her that she’d bring something unique to our coverage, and I’m glad I trusted that instinct. She’s come a long way, and we’re lucky to have her.”
With such a varied background, what does she think of journalism and newspapers?
“It’s a lot more vibrant than I was expecting,” she said. “Even when I was studying photojournalism in 2009-10, everybody was saying newspapers are dead. There’s a lot more than I thought to it.”
Good or bad?
“I like capturing moments,” she said. “Not this last year, but the one before that, at the National Night Out, there was this little boy who was curled up in the bucket of a backhoe . . . and it was the best picture. I like people watching while taking photos.”
She said she also enjoys writing features, although much of what she has dealt with has been more news oriented.
Whether she stays in the business or not is, at least at this point, an open question. Racheal has applied for and been accepted into a Master’s Degree program at Maynooth University in County Kildare, just west of Dublin, Ireland. She will be studying critical and creative media with an eye toward potential non-profit work.
The program is scheduled to begin in August of next year. If it got delayed, none of us here at Texas Local Media would mind one wee bit.
Timmons is a career newspaperman, award-winning author and industry consultant. He is the group publisher for Texas Local Media’s Central and Limestone newspaper groups which includes publications in Cameron, Marlin, Thorndale, Rosebud, Groesbeck, Mexia and Fairfield. You can reach him at tim@themexianews. com
Today is the second installment of a series of columns introducing our staff to you. This week we have reporter Racheal Clark.
Clark attended school in Fairfield until her freshman year, moved to Groesbeck High School and then ended up graduating from Wortham in 2009. She briefly attended UNT after high school, pursuing a degree in photojournalism. She attended MCC for two years, doing an additional semester after graduation that included a theatre trip to Europe. While in school, she worked as an assistant manager at the third-party logistics and later as an alterations specialist at David’s Bridal. Both jobs ended when their Waco locations shut down. She went back to school and is scheduled to graduate with a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in Digital Media and Professional Communication in December.