By EMILY NOHR
J Alumni News staff
Lise Olsen (left) receives news-editorial alumna award from Interim Dean Charlyne Berens
Lise Olsen is adventurous.
A 1988 J school grad, Olsen dug deep for stories in the classroom — and in the basement of the Union at the Daily Nebraskan.
Her job as a working journalist has taken her to several states and countries — and she’s even helped reform state and federal laws through her work.
Olsen, now an investigative reporter at the Houston Chronicle, has always had a courageous spirit and a desire to travel, and she still finds excitement in each of her endeavors.
The excitement in her work is what keeps her going.
And her willingness and fearlessness in journalism earned her the 2010 College of Journalism and Mass Communications’ Outstanding News-Editorial Alumna award in March, too.
Becoming a journalist at UNL
Olsen grew up in Lincoln and never thought she’d attend the university in town.
But after visiting the J school and meeting a few professors, she decided she’d give journalism — and UNL — a try.
She quickly met professors whom she remembers as “caring” and “great mentors.”
Bud Pagel was one of those.
She saw the good things Pagel did for the college and its students, like creating opportunities with big name newspaper internships. Olsen wanted to be part of that.
She started by writing features stories for the Daily Nebraskan her freshman year. By her junior year, she was a DN columnist.
“At that time they had a real strong staff at the DN,” Pagel said. “She and a guy named Ad Hudler both had columns. They’d write columns, and they’d argue over who was more influential in the column.”
During her junior year, Olsen started working part time for the Lincoln Journal.
That gig lead to an internship at The Grand Island Independent, where she covered all kinds of beats and worked on two special projects, including a series of stories on Laotians who’d come to work at local meat packing plants and transformed the city’s culture.
The following year, Olsen headed to St. Petersburg, Fla., to work at the Times.
Fluent in French, she took a year and studied abroad in France, interning at a French-language newspaper in Paris.
Journalism students spent some one-on-one time with Lise Olsen when she returned to UNL to accecpt an alumna award of excellence
Leaving college and heading for the real world
When Olsen graduated in 1988, she followed some wise advice Pagel had given her years before.
“He thought that students would really quickly take a job after graduation,” Olsen said. “He said to wait and look for opportunities.”
And that’s just what she did.
While she returned from France, Olsen made arrangements to meet with newspaper editors and old friends on the East Coast. She flew to Florida, then hopped on a bus and started visiting her contacts all the way north to Washington, D.C.
Her friend and fellow J school grad Kema Geroux recalls reconnecting with Olsen on during that trip.
“One of the things that makes Lise a really good journalist and a really great friend is that she’s really loyal, and she’s very dedicated to people,” said Geroux, now a site facilitator at a challenge course program in Virginia Beach. “She’s extremely tenacious when she gets an idea and she’s very good at tracking down what she needs to know, too.”
Olsen received several job offers but settled in Norfolk, Va., with a job at the Virginian-Pilot. There, she worked her way up from a general assignment reporter to the education beat.
“She cares about people, and she cares about making sure they’re treated fairly,” Geroux said. “She’s the kind of person who champions people who otherwise might not have an advocate.”
Her best story as an education writer, Olsen said, was a series of pieces documenting nepotism and corruption by a school superintendent who got fired as a result.
She covered city hall and worked as a computer assisted reporting specialist on the paper’s projects staff, too.
“I got into it (computer assisted reporting) because I was already into investigative reporting,” Olsen said. “Computers give you another way to ask questions — but you have to know what question to ask.”
Olsen started attending Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc. conferences as a UNL student — and it was at IRE that she learned more about computer-assisted reporting.
“It all came about in my first years of journalism,” Olsen said. “Once it started happening, I was really fascinated with it.”
Change of plans
By a series of weird circumstances, Olsen said, she and her husband — who was her boyfriend at the time — pooled their money in 1993 and headed to Mexico and South America. The trip was a longtime dream of her boyfriend’s, Olsen said. He wanted to visit and explore all the countries between where he lived and where his grandparents lived.
Living off $10,000 for the entire year, the couple hiked around the continents while she freelanced for a couple of publications.
The trip, though, was more to just have fun, get a break and get better at Spanish, Olsen said. When the adventure wound down, Olsen returned to the Virginian-Pilot but then learned about another interesting opportunity.
She found out IRE wanted to start a project in Mexico. They were looking for a journalist who knew both computer-assisted reporting and Spanish. Olsen had both qualities and stood out among the other journalists who applied.
“It gave me a big advantage and got me the job,” she said.
As its founding director, Olsen helped build IRE in Mexico to a 200-member organization. She produced a newsletter and worked from the small office in Mexico City and traveled all around Latin America speaking and giving workshops.
But at the end of the two-year grant, Olsen’s time was up. She’d gotten married before moving to Mexico and her husband, Ron, had struggled to find work there as a veterinarian. She decided that it was his turn to pick their next home.
Her only request was that his job take them to a place where she’d be able to get a job at a newspaper, Olsen said. He chose an island in the Pacific Northwest, and she easily found a job at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
She wrote about illegally detained immigrants and Washington’s death penalty policies. The detention series led to a U.S. Supreme Court case and the freeing of more than a hundred immigrants. The death penalty series, in which she’d reported that drunken and disbarred lawyers had handled some capital cases, led to improvements in state rules about the appointment of defense attorneys.
But her time in Seattle was cut short because of an offer from another big newspaper: the Houston Chronicle.
Chasing the adventure to Texas
Olsen and her husband decided this move could be another chapter in their busy lives as adventurers. So they headed to Texas in 2007.
She’s been at the Chronicle ever since, writing mostly criminal justice and civil rights stories, Olsen said.
“I’ve done a lot in my career to help people, and I feel good about that,” she said.
Most recently, she’s been investigating and writing stories about the oil spill in the Gulf Coast.
And while the grind at work can be overwhelming, Olsen keeps her cool by taking breaks and staying grounded. For Olsen, keeping the balance — and knowing when enough is enough — is key.
“The truth is that journalism is an extremely high burnout profession,” she said. “The first five years you lose a lot of people in the newsroom, and by the time you’re 10 years into journalism, there’s even fewer survivors.”
Fortunately, she’s had the opportunity to work for companies that have allowed her time off and flexibility in her work.
In addition to her job at the paper, Olsen also teaches computer-assisted reporting classes and seminars through IRE.
She loves spending time with her husband and their two boys. They like to hike, camp and go to the kids’ various activities, including gymnastics and bowling.
The adventures continue.
For access to Olsen’s latest work, go to www.chron.com.
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