I'm the founding editor at the Northern Plains Independent. We are a female owned newspaper group based in Wolf Point, Mont., in Roosevelt County on The Fort Peck Indian Reservation. Along with our sister publication, Culbertson’s Community News, we serve parts of six rural counties along the Missouri River from the Fort Peck Dam to North Dakota. Billings Gazette ran a front page story about us on Independence Day, 2019.

I started writing for print as an intern at Willamette Week, in Portland, Ore. It remains one of the last strong alternative weeklies. My time there was spent reviewing bars, books, movies and especially live theatre. I was later hired to manage the film and theatre pages as a supervising editor during a three-month transition period. I learned how to edit a small stable of freelancers and execute comprehensive listings and showtimes spreads. And I wrote a lot of feature reviews.

In 2006, I helped create a new alternative newspaper serving Clark County in Southwest Washington. After publishing the paper at a profit for two years and reaching a circulation of 20,000, I negotiated its sale to The News-Register Publishing Co. in 2008. Our paper was called The Vancouver Voice. I was also the editor.

Next I moved to Europe and took over as film and theatre critic for The Prague Post. At the time, I was the only critic writing print reviews in English for a readership based in the Czech Republic. I wrote and edited showtimes listings and reviews for every film and theatre performance in the City of Prague with an English-language component. It was a great job.

Returning to the US, I worked in Austin, Texas, writing freelance reviews for The Austin Chronicle and several arts magazines, for which I contributed cover stories and numerous features. I landed as managing editor for the Elgin Courier in Bastrop County. I was quickly promoted to The Taylor Press, flagship paper for Blacklands Publications, where I was made publisher in training.

I left Texas in 2015, relocating to Glasgow, Mont., where I took over the Glasgow Courier as managing editor. The Courier has been the newspaper of record for Valley County on the Canadian border for over a century. After three years, I left them with a good core staff and a small stack of new awards.

I spent the next autumn in St. Louis, Mo., supervising the publication of the first four weekly editions of The Northsider newspaper. They are still publishing in partnership with a successful sister publication, The Southsider.

In November, 2018, I took over as editor for the Herald-News in Wolf Point, Mont., and the Searchlight, in nearby Culbertson, two of the oldest weekly newspapers in the state.

In May of that year, I followed former Herald-News /Searchlight publisher Darla Downs in founding a new regional publication, Northern Plains Independent. We were recognized as the official newspaper for advertisements and publications by Roosevelt County in June, 2019., and we successfully sued for ownership of the Herald-News and Searchlight, consolidating ownership in local hands. The Downs family also publishes the Community News, serving the Culbertson area. I edit that paper too.

Other publications I’ve contributed to include Billings Gazette, Choteau Acantha, Helena Independent Record, MauiTime, Missoulian, National Geographic Traveler, Oregon Wine Press, Phillips County News and The Portland Mercury.

In September, 2018, I served as managing editor for the first four weekly issues of The Northsider newspaper in St. Louis, Mo. When publisher Antonio French picked me up at the airport, a countdown timer in the O’Fallon Park office was already running, the digital face subtracting to a print deadline three days away. The idea was to publish the first weekly issues of the nine-year-old publication with a skeleton crew and keep going from there. I was hired on a 30-day contract to get the team’s weekly wheels rolling and that’s what I did. French later wrote, “In my opinion they were the best issues I’ve ever published of The NorthSider.”

I was publisher and managing editor for the Glasgow Courier in Northeast Montana for three years, during which time I helped organize a congressional debate on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation (Juneau vs. Zinke), completed the transition from black and white to color and cultivated freelance photographers who led our class in the Best News Photo and Best Feature Photo categories at the Montana Newspaper Association’s Better Newspaper Contest. I’m most proud of raising salaries for my staff.

Click here for an archive of Courier clips.

In 2006, I began publishingThe Vancouver Voice, an alternative newspaper with a circulation of 20,000 in Southwest Washington.

I was the publication’s sole proprietor and publisher, handling all printing arrangements and contracts. I was also our senior editor. In 2008, I sold the paper to the News-Register Publishing Company after a short joint operating agreement.

At the Glasgow Courier, I liked to handle the layout for our agricultural supplement myself and have contributed to and managed special sections at many publications.

I was the staff film and theatre critic for Willamette Week, in Portland, Ore., early on and a bit later at The Prague Post, in the Czech capital.

I managed freelancers and worked closely with the copyediting and design teams at both newspapers. I also compiled and edited comprehensive performance and showtimes listings and wrote capsule and feature reviews, festival previews and performer profiles and interviews.

I reviewed plays in Portland (mostly poor). In Prague, I covered theatre regionally and nationally. I covered the largest open-air Shakespeare festival in Europe and one of the most vibrant fringe festivals outside Edinburgh.

My dream photo assignment is a small town powwow. Luckily, I’ll be covering six of them in Northeast Montana this year.

I shot all our photo spreads during a one month contract in St. Louis, Mo., with the Northsider newspaper. I love taking pictures of people.

Many of my closest friends and colleagues are photographers. As an editor, I like to cultivate local talent with an eye for candid portraiture and correct name spellings.

I graduated from The Evergreen State College in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. My studies were writing intensive and included an 18-credit journalism internship with a Pulitzer prize-winning alt weekly. The officials at Evergreen insist I averaged a 4.0, despite the institution’s policy of not handing out grades.

Awards I’ve won include Best Breaking News Photo, Best Editorial, Montana Newspaper Association Contest (2021, 2018, 2016); Winner, Rivet Magazine Serial Fiction Contest (2006); Best Eyes, Ellsworth Elementary Yearbook (1980).

Print is everything. But you can click here to find me on FB and here for IG. Also, Twitter: @JMWalling.

Photo overedited by Sean Heavey.

Steffen Silvis was my supervising editor in Portland at Willamette Week. He is a lecturing professor at UW in Madison, WI, and the recipient of many awards for journalism, criticism and playwriting.

360-335-5269.

steffen.silvis@gmail.com.

Ginevra Kirkland is based in Boston, MA, and is currently the US support lead for Uphold, Inc. She worked for many years in Silicon Valley tech and can vouch for me personally.

gkirkland@gmail.com.

Mary Kate Teske is the best photographer I’ve worked with anywhere. We’ve collaborated on newspaper stories about grizzly bears, arts coverage, hyperlocal photo spreads and stories for special sections.

406-839-7381.

marykateteske@gmail.com.

The guy pictured next to me is my best friend from high school. You don’t care what he thinks.