By Jamie Hughes

In June 2008, I sat at a luncheon with a panel of media executives from the Sioux Falls, S.D. area. I was a student at the American Indian Journalism Institute.

Another student asked Randell Beck, then executive editor of the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls and now the newspaper’s publisher, what he looked for in potential employees.

I still remember exactly what he said: “I’m looking for someone who wants to change the world.”

At the time, his response confused me. I thought journalists were supposed to be objective and slightly closed off, with a touch of apathy.

It wasn’t until the next summer at my internship in St. Cloud, Minn., that I understood what he meant. My epiphany came after writing a story about same-sex marriage.

My story used a few same-sex couples to illustrate what they must go through to ensure that they are entitled to the same legal rights as married heterosexual couples should something happen to one partner. One woman had to go through a second-parent adoption to have rights to the son her partner had given birth to following artificial insemination. Another couple placed both of their names on the mortgage to their home to ensure that the surviving partner would have a place to live if one partner died.

In all of this, I realized what Randell Beck had meant, or what he might have meant.

It wasn’t that we, as journalists, need to change the entire world (although some journalists definitely can and have), but that we should try to change one person’s world at a time.

My motivations behind my story about the same-sex couples weren’t to change the entire mindset of Central Minnesota. I simply wanted to give readers information and a different perspective on an issue in a compelling way.

I might not have changed anyone’s mind, nor was I intending to, but if one person received a different perspective that made him or her think differently about same-sex marriage and challenged his or her views, then I think I accomplished what journalists should strive for every day — changing the world, one person’s world at a time, through compelling, relevant and interesting information.

Jamie Hughes is a student at the University of Oklahoma. She was a Summer 2009 Chips Quinn Scholar for the St. Cloud (Minn.) Times. Hughes is editor for The Oklahoma Daily, the campus newspaper, where she has been assistant managing editor, news reporter and arts and entertainment reporter. She was a 2008 summer intern for the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., through the Freedom Forum’s American Indian Journalism Institute. She reported on the Democratic National Convention for Reznetnews.org, a Native American news Web site. Hughes is a member of the Native American Journalists Association.