Nate Hellman, who began work June 15 as this year’s Snowden intern

at the Baker City Herald, cut his journalistic teeth as a sports

reporter and later sports editor and editor-in-chief at Portland State

University’s newspaper, the Vanguard.

He’s interviewed PSU football coach Jerry Glanville, a legendary

character and former NFL coach with the Houston Oilers and the Atlanta

Falcons, so many times that Glanville felt comfortable enough to change

his soggy socks after practice one day in Hellman’s presence.

“He was some fun interview,” Hellman said of PSU’s most famous employee. “You just don’t want to get him started telling stories of his days with the Oilers.”

Apparently Hellman has good timing: During his junior and senior years, the Vikings’ basketball team qualified for the NCAA tournament, earning Hellman trips to Omaha in 2008, where PSU lost to the eventual national champion, Kansas, in the first round, and Boise in 2009, where the Vikings also bowed out in the first round, this time to Xavier.

Fast forward to this summer, when Hellman has spent his time here learning about Baker City and writing such human interest stories as a decades-old, lost-and-found wallet at Baker Middle School, which ran on Page 1 of today’s edition.

Hellman, 22, graduated from PSU June 13 and began his summer-long internship at the Herald two days later. He’s one of 12 interns selected from a field of 57 applicants for one of the coveted Snowden positions, a program that’s benefited the Baker City Herald and its readers since 2000.

After he’s done here, he plans to further his education by completing a master’s program at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Ill. That degree program is one year and includes a term working in Washington, D.C., where Hellman hopes to cover Capitol Hill.

Then it’s off to find a job, after he’s learned the ins and outs of what’s called the new media, a term that includes blending online stories with brief film clips, still pictures and other visuals, using the power of the Internet to connect with readers, especially young readers.

He’s not too worried about the prospect of finding work, because he’ll have the “Medill Mafia,” graduates of one of the nation’s best journalism schools, to help him find work once he’s done with the program.

Hellman switched over from sports to news at the PSU newspaper after his sophomore year, but he never really left the sports beat. One morning just after the November 2008 election he was in the office early, preparing to cover football practice, when someone called the newsroom to say that Jeff Merkley, Oregon’s then senator-elect, was about to declare victory at a campus press conference.

Whom to send, wondered Hellman for just a flash, before grabbing his camera and notebook, putting on a better shirt, and rushing to cover the event himself. He jostled with television and other newspaper reporters to bring the story of Merkley’s victorious press conference to his readers.

“It was for me the very essence of working at a college newspaper,” Hellman said.

Hellman landed work at the Vanguard even before he started school in 2005. Even as editor-in-chief of a staff of about 60 he was paid a stipend so small that “it probably worked out to about $1.50 an hour,” he joked. “But I didn’t care. It was a really good experience, and it led me to discover what I really wanted in life.”

Since coming to Baker City Hellman has uncovered at least two of its jewels: Geiser-Pollman Park and Mad Matilda’s Coffee Shop, which he compares favorably to “the kind of coffee shop you’d find in (Portland’s) Hawthorne District.”

If you have story ideas for Hellman, he can be reached in the office at 523-3673.