Brett Milam

I’m Brett Milam, the new editor at The Clermont Sun and I’m a rookie. That may seem like an unusual way to introduce myself and certainly not the most surefire way to imbue confidence in The Sun readership, but let me explain.

My university commencement speaker in spring 2016 — some people do actually pay attention to those — was Marne Levine, a Miami alumna. It’s okay, I hadn’t heard of her prior to the speech, either, but her story is illuminating.

Nobody knows what they are doing, said Levine, now the Chief Operating Officer for Instagram, in her speech to the Miami University graduating class of 2016.

Even though she earned her MBA at Harvard Business School and worked in the White House, at every turn, Levine said she didn’t know what she was doing.

“I think that there are real benefits that come with a beginner’s mind, a fresh perspective,” she said. “I like to think of it as having the ‘rookie advantage.’”

So, in this sense Levin describes, I am a rookie, but time will tell if I do indeed possess the so-called “rookie advantage.” I will leave that up to The Sun readership.

Levine and I also have in common that we both applied to the student-run newspaper at Miami, The Miami Student, with little-to-no experience — she applied as the business manager and I applied as the online editor.

I knew nothing about HTML and coding, nor did I have any prior experience in journalism. I had not taken any courses and I dropped journalism as a major for philosophy instead.

But it worked out for four years and then I moved on to a brief internship at The Post Independent in Colorado as a reporter and then to The Cincinnati Enquirer as a reporter and producer.

I like to say I’ve been lucky and have stumbled into opportunities, along with gentle shoves from professors and colleagues. I’ve also worked alongside some of the grizzled veterans of the journalism field by sitting under their learning tree and sponging up as much as I could.

What I hope to bring to the table in Clermont County is not a complete overhaul of what people have come to expect out of The Sun, but continued coverage of the community people in it care about and perhaps some sprinkled nuance and a different way of presenting it.

“Keep asking, ‘Why?’,” Levine said in the speech. “And to deliberately keep going outside of your comfort zone.”

In leaving The Enquirer and a daily newspaper to take on an editing position with no prior managerial experience or time living in Clermont was outside of my comfort box.

To be perfectly frank, I even had a moment two days into my new position where I panicked and thought maybe I wasn’t capable of this.

Then I talked to the soothing source that is my girlfriend and returned to the newsroom with a renewed perspective and attitude: Why can’t I do this? At the very least, I can try.

My colleagues, like Megan Alley, Garth Shanklin and Tony Adams, have also helped me to feel more comfortable with their help, patience and know-how.

Tony is also an avid professional wrestling fan like me, so perhaps that bodes well, too. If you get a chance, chide him on the fact that I’m attending WrestleMania this year (the “Super Bowl of wrestling”) in Orlando and he’s not.

(Just definitely refrain from chiding him about his old man sweaters. Wait…) Don’t worry, he has an opportunity to amass an array of ginger jokes to direct at me, although I do embrace them.

I’m also not perfect. Earlier in the week, I got excited about a chance to dive into one of my first stories after starting here.

The story concerned Milford’s plans to build an amphitheater at Riverside Park. I missed what I thought was the city council’s Thursday meeting, so I started building the frame of the story around the meeting minutes.

About 500 words into the story, I realized that the meeting took place in January of 2016, not 2017.

Delete. Delete. Delete.

To The Sun readers, I cannot promise perfection, but I can promise honesty, openness and delivering the content that matters to you.

My phone and office door are always open. I also am that weird Millennial, who still likes getting the so-called “snail mail,” so write me a letter, too.

You can expect to hear from me most weeks, as I maintain this column to ensure a line of communication with the readers.

And sometimes, yeah, I may write about professional wrestling, but most likely not any further jokes about old man sweaters.