Jennifer Brooks -- A Working Reporter from Ohio University.

 Jennifer Brooks always knew she wanted to be a reporter.

Even though her earliest memory of words is when she spilled a bowl of alphabet soup onto her lap as a child. Despite this traumatic incident, she was a remarkably handy child with adjectives and obscure grammatical rules. At the age of seven she invented the word "hampup" -- to indicate a pork chop that curled too much upon frying. By the time she reached puberty she was instructing her teachers at school on the difference between an en-dash and an em-dash. Her Master's thesis at Ohio University was on "I before E, except for months with an R in it."

Upon graduation Ms. Brooks was offered a position with the Laramie Boomerang -- but it was a position not sanctioned in the Twister rule book, so instead she signed on with the Detroit News. And there she began her meteoric rise to anonymity. Her co-workers remember her fondly.  Belinda Bellwether, the current whiteboard monitor at the Detroit News, recalls: "Jenny was just a ball of fire! She got more scoops than Ben & Jerry's. Of course, she wrote everything in Latvian, her native tongue, and we had to translate it into English. But considering the scope and depth of her work, it was well worth it."

Tom Sneffle, who worked with her on the Nashville Tennessean, is convinced she's twins. "No one person could do all that work, eat all those hard boiled eggs, and crochet a life-size Statue of Liberty with steel wool in a matter of months, unless there were two of them. I think the other twin has been pensioned off and is now living comfortably on a chinampa in the Xochimilco."

She was invited to work for the Minneapolis Star Tribune ten years ago, during a period of controversy and turmoil at the newspaper caused by the Canadian Pulp Wars (1994 - 2019.) Her quick intelligence and disdain for wiffle ball led to a brokered ceasefire that is still in place today. She also ended the practice of sending cub reporters out to find brass magnets. 

Her advice to new journalists includes this profound thought:  "Anyone can write a news story, but not everyone can read it."

She is very fond of Ding Ding Tongs.