His fast-rising journalism career began in Mukilteo

He’s at home in a newsroom.

LaVendrick Smith, a Mariner High School grad, is now a reporter for the Dallas Morning News. Before that, he interned at The Washington Post, The Seattle Times and several other major newspapers.

But before all those newsrooms, he worked in mine.

Smith was my reporter intern at the weekly Mukilteo Beacon, where I was the editor, in 2011 and 2012. He was just 17 when he started. He helped me cover Mukilteo, a city of 21,000.

Now he’s writing breaking news for Dallas, Texas, with a population of 1.3 million.

“I had a lot of the same goals that most reporters do,” Smith said. “I wanted to go to the East Coast. I wanted to work in New York. Those things were on my mind.”

Back then he thought he had it all figured out: He’d go to Northwestern University and get a job at The New York Times.

But he didn’t go to Northwestern.

Here, Smith, 25, talks about his career so far, and why he wouldn’t change any of it.

When did you know you wanted go into journalism?

I had always liked writing, but for me it started back at Mariner. (I graduated in 2012.) I had a role model in the school security guard, who read my work and said I had potential. He encouraged me to look into reporting. So I signed up for the journalism class at Mariner as a sophomore. The more time I invested in my high school newspaper, the more I enjoyed storytelling and writing, and the more I saw myself turning it into a career. I had found a sense of purpose and belonging in our school newspaper.

Tell me about your time at the Mukilteo Beacon. I only know it from my perspective.

I didn’t think you’d give me an internship. I was only hoping you could look at some of my work. The internship was a great experience. What I never told you was, I had been looking into a summer camp-type thing at Northwestern, which became a dream school of mine. High school students could go and live on campus for an entire summer and take classes and get the journalism student experience. I wanted that so bad. I applied and I got accepted, but I couldn’t go because it cost too much money. I was devastated. But I still ended up getting to write the entire summer (with the Beacon internship).

That made me a much better reporter. My summer at the Beacon really helped me improve my skills and I got the basics of journalism down — the inverted pyramid and the who, what, when, where, why. That kind of thing. I felt really prepared to go back to high school my senior year and run our school newspaper as the editor in chief. I tried to make it look as professional as an 18-year-old can make it look.

It’s kind of weird to think about now, but I don’t know where I would be if I had not interned at the Mukilteo Beacon. The experience really helped me be prepared for later on. When I went to college, I already knew so much about reporting. It came to me naturally at that point.

You didn’t go to Northwestern, your dream school. Talk about that.

No, I didn’t. I obviously applied to Northwestern. I applied to get a full-ride scholarship and I didn’t get it. I thought that meant I had gotten rejected. I remember being so upset. I thought it meant I wasn’t going to college. I was being such a dramatic teenager.

The very next day they sent me an acceptance letter. I remember being so excited because I was accepted to the school I really wanted to go to for a long time. I just knew I was going to have a long and successful career in journalism because I would go there. But I ended up not going. The out-of-state tuition was really expensive and we weren’t actually going to be able to afford it.

So I decided to go to the University of Washington. I felt way more at home at the UW. I think the best decision for me was actually to go to school at home. Hindsight is 20/20. It’s OK I didn’t go to Northwestern. This is the way it was supposed to happen. Thankfully, I don’t have any student loan debt. I got two scholarships that helped me pay for a lot of my schooling.

The University of Washington turned out to be your dream school after all.

Yeah, the journalism program has a lot of opportunities where students can get some actual experience doing reporting. While I was there, they had this trip to New York, where we get to talk to UW alumni who were working in New York. One of the things they kept telling us is you need to get experience. That employers don’t care about your grades, but they really care about you having experience. If you come out of college without any kind of experience, they won’t hire you.

I was a college junior and terrified about not having enough experience, so I went back to UW and decided I was going to get as many internships as possible. I was a features reporting intern at The Seattle Times, and then I covered the Legislature in an Olympia program they offer, and then I interned for the Tacoma News-Tribune.

Then I applied for an internship at The Boston Globe, because my girlfriend at the time went to college at a Boston university. As I was applying for The Boston Globe, I also applied for internships at The New York Times, the L.A. Times and The Washington Post. Because why not? I ended up getting The Washington Post internship.

Tell me about your Washington Post internship.

It was such a life-changing experience for me. If I had gone to Northwestern, I don’t think I would have had that same opportunity. I just feel really fortunate because I feel like that was the path I was supposed to take to get to where I am. I was covering crime and sports and courts. I’m still friends with the other interns there. One of them came up to visit me for my birthday.

I looked up everybody who had had my specific internship in the past three years. They were all working at these big-city newspapers after the internship. They were doing stuff that I could see myself wanting to do. At first I was overwhelmed: “Is that what my life will be like if I take this internship?” In the back of my mind, I had a feeling I wasn’t coming back.

I was exposed to a world of journalism I didn’t know I could tap into. I was working alongside reporters I looked up to. I’m in D.C. while the presidential elections are happening. I have never felt so close to news before. I had some of my best growth as a reporter in that newsroom. I walked away having learned so much and feeling so inspired to pursue this as a career.

Now you’re in Dallas.

Yeah, I decided to move a little closer to family. I was born in Texas and raised in Everett. I was born in East Texas in a city called Kilgore. This is my fifth daily newsroom and my second job. I feel like I’m in a good place right now. I’m still doing breaking news.

A lot of my work can get repetitive — “Oh, it’s another shooting” — but then I find a story that I can get really passionate about. I want to tell someone’s story. When I find a good story like that, it ignites something in me and it reminds me of why I first wanted to go into reporting.

What advice do you have for Mariner students?

Your life isn’t written in high school. Not being able to go to Northwestern, it was horrible at the time, but I didn’t lose sight of what I wanted to do in life. I kept pushing for it and that opportunity opened up. I was able to intern at the Beacon, go to the UW, and then more and more opportunities that I was able to take advantage of. And now I’m in Dallas doing exactly what it is I said I wanted to do 10 years ago.

It’s easy to get discouraged when things don’t go your way, but it’s worth it to always go after the things you want. You’ve got to learn how to adapt, go with the flow, take the punches, take the hits, and never lose sight of what you want.

Sara Bruestle: 425-339-3046, sbruestle@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @sbruestle.