Ryan Murray joins TWN news staff

Ryan Murray, 21, joined The Western News reporting staff Friday after a long, drizzly drive from Portland, Ore.

Murray, a recent journalism graduate of Chapman University in Orange, Calif., will be covering sports, Troy City Council and school board and the greater Libby area.

He enjoys hiking, cycling, running and reading. While in college, he spent four years covering Division III college sports for California’s second-best student publication, The Panther newspaper. Murray interned and free-lanced for The Orange County Register, California’s third-largest newspaper, covering community news as well as prep and junior-college sports.

A native of Aloha, Ore., Murray said he is wary of the winter weather in Libby.

“I’m not sure whether I have heavy enough coats,” Murray said. “I guess I’ll have to find alternative methods of keeping warm.”

When not being a jokester, Murray has spent time writing everything from obituaries to road-construction coverage to profiling an award-winning scientist. He’s excited to cover things at a hyper-local level.

“Libby’s not Orange County, but that might be a good thing,” he said. “To get to know your community is something I never really got a chance to do in California, and I hope Montana is a change of pace.”

Murray hopes that even though Libby is a fairly tight-knit community, he will soon meet new people and make new friends.