Jodi Rave Lee unearths buried topics as the first national correspondent for Native issues

by Dan D’Ambrosio

With the traditions of journalism spanning centuries, it is hard to find anything unprecedented in the profession — that is until Jodi Rave Lee.

The Mandan/Hidatsa journalist, for whom Lee Newspapers created a national correspondent position covering Indian issues for the entire chain, embraces an unprecedented move not only for Lee, but also for any newspaper chain in America.

She grew up in North Dakota on the Ft. Berthold Reservation and attended high school in Bismarck. In high school Rave first became aware that Indians, when they did receive coverage in local papers, didn’t receive fair coverage. Another side to the story always existed.

Rave Lee also found that she was able to listen to whites as they talked about how they really felt about Indians.

“Both of my parents are Indian, but I do have a full-blooded Norwegian grandmother,” Rave Lee said. “I’m not as dark as the stereotype (Indian). White people in North Dakota didn’t always realize I was Indian, so I overheard a lot of comments about Indians that couldn’t be further from the truth; they get free paychecks, they don’t work; they’re lazy ...”

Rave Lee joined her high school paper as a graphic artist and when the journalism advisor asked for a guest editorial, Rave Lee decided to submit one about the United Tribes Powwow in Bismarck.

“That was the whole start of my writing,” she said. “I wrote about the powwow, explained what it was, what it meant to Native people — a way of keeping our traditions alive.”

Later in the year when the journalism advisor called the newspaper staff together to announce the Northern Interscholastic Press Association awards, he said one of them had received an award for editorial writing.

“Everyone looked at the editorial writer and started congratulating her, but I was the one who won,” Rave Lee said.

The award really boosted her self-confidence and offered her encouragement, Rave Lee said.

It was the first example of a pattern that would characterize Rave Lee’s career as a journalist — standing out from the rest.

Despite the success she enjoyed and the encouragement she received as a result of her first published work, Rave Lee did not enter journalism school after graduating high school in 1982. Instead, she took a job writing for the tribal newspaper on the Fort Berthold reservation.

One of her stories for the paper took her to the local coal gasification plant, where Natives had a hard time getting jobs. Rave Lee wrote her story about what steps Natives could take to increase their chances of landing a position at the plant, which paid well for the region. She ended up taking the advice herself and getting a job as a laborer in the plant, making $30,000 yearly at the age of 20.

But after several years working at the coal gasification plant, Rave Lee left to travel around the United States. She explored from 1987 to 1989, and said she learned something important about herself.

“I wanted to be a journalist even during that time,” Rave Lee said. “I was always trying to do some freelance writing and that sort of thing. That’s when I decided I really want to do this.”

It was 1990, and seven years had gone by since Rave Lee graduated from high school. Now that she was sure about the path she wanted to follow, she joined the National Guard as a journalist. After attending the Nat-ional Guard’s journalism school at Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne, Wyo., for a year, Rave Lee moved to Denver and enrolled in the journalism program in another community college. She had her eye on the journalism program at the University of Colorado in Boulder, but needed to establish residency in the state to have any hope of affording the Boulder program.

After a year, Rave Lee applied and was accepted to the journalism school in Boulder. She completed her degree in three years. Rave Lee grew up quickly on her first job as a business reporter for the Idaho Statesman in Boise, Idaho. She found herself feeling as if she was learning to swim by jumping into the deep end.

“It was a Gannett paper, and they expect high output of copy,” Rave Lee said. “It was hard to keep up with that pace, especially being in a new beat, a new city. It was stressful.”

At the Statesman, Rave Lee also had her first experience with trying to pitch an Indian story to a major newspaper.

“There was a story triggered by the treaty rights of a tribe in Idaho and I really wanted to do it, but the editor gave it to the environmental reporter,” Rave Lee said. “The tribe had a victory based on their treaty rights. It was a good opportunity to explain the treaties are still valid.”

Not only did Rave Lee not get to do the story, but she also had to sit by as the environmental reporter reduced the entire matter of the tribe’s treaty rights to a single paragraph in the story. Rave Lee blamed herself for not being aggressive enough to get the assignment.

“I don’t think I wrote one story in Boise that had to do with Native people,” she said.

Her Navajo husband, Frankie Lee, was a civil engineer and was having a hard time finding a job in Boise. Expanding his job search, he eventually was hired by an engineering firm in Salt Lake City.

Faced with a weekend marriage and a long, difficult commute if she were to stay in Boise, Rave Lee called the Salt Lake Tribune and was told they didn’t have any jobs. She sent her clips and resume anyway. She then called and said she was going to be in town the next day and asked if she could stop by. “If you want to,” was the noncommittal reply.

What began as an informal visit turned into a job offer covering business for the Salt Lake Tribune. The paper wanted to expand its business beat and created a position just for her. It seemed a remarkable turn of events for the persistent Rave Lee, yet she remained unfulfilled as a journalist.

“I wasn’t all that happy there either,” Rave Lee said. “I was doing my thing. I wouldn’t say I was excelling at it. It was a tough situation, because I wasn’t all that hyped up about business reporting. I thought it would get me closer to reporting on Indian issues.”

It was part of her strategy, formed by asking editors and fellow reporters for their recommendations on how she could get herself an Indian beat.

“The closest I would have gotten to reporting on Native people would be as a political writer, and a lot of people said business and politics were interrelated, so (business reporting) was a way in,” Rave Lee said.

As it turned out, Rave Lee’s reporting strategy worked to a limited degree in Salt Lake City. She was covering a business angle on the Olympics when she learned that the tribes in the area felt they were being shut out of participating in any of the economic opportunities as a result of the games coming to Salt Lake City.

Rave Lee went to the paper’s Olympics beat reporter with her tip, and he told her to go ahead with the story herself. Rave Lee jumped at the chance to write the story, in which she compared the plight of the Utah Indians to the involvement of the Native people in Canada in the 1988 Calgary games.

The story ran front page. While the story was a success, making a difference for the tribes in the area, Rave Lee found herself even more uncertain that she could make it as a journalist, because she wasn’t happy.

“At that point I’d come to the realization that there are no (Indian) beats,” Rave Lee said. “I was doubting myself as a journalist. What I wanted to be a journalist for wasn’t happening.

“Stories about Native people only make their way into the paper when there’s controversy. Papers weren’t covering the news just to cover it.”

It was at this moment of doubt and disappointment that a remarkable thing happened to her. No one was more surprised than Rave Lee herself.

“Out of the blue I got a call from Joe Starita at the Lincoln Journal Star saying they had a business reporting job open at the paper,” Rave Lee said. “He said that he put out a lot of phone calls and a lot of people recommended me for the job. ‘I made 20 phone calls and 18 people said call Jodi Rave (Lee).’”

But Rave Lee was not particularly receptive to Starita’s interest in her as a reporter. The job at the Licoln Journal Star was another business beat. Rave Lee did not want to cover business again and the Lincoln Journal Star was actually a smaller paper than the Tribune. Again, Rave Lee felt pangs of doubt in her abilities as a journalist.

Rave Lee wasn’t counting on Starita’s remarkable ability to find out what people are all about. As they talked, it didn’t take Starita long to uncover what Rave Lee really wanted to do.

“For once, I said I really got into journalism because I wanted to report on Indian issues,” she said. “I really had an honest heart-to-heart talk with him.” Rave Lee told Starita that she didn’t know if journalism was right for her and that she was having doubts about continuing as a reporter.

Starita responded by asking Rave Lee to send her resume and clips.

She called to make sure he had received her clips and resume. Starita said he had. After reading them, he said he wanted to kidnap her. He talked Rave Lee into coming to Lincoln for an interview. To overcome her reluctance, he pointed out that she was living in Salt Lake City writing about banks.

In her interview with Starita, which also included editor David Stoeffler, the subject quickly turned to reporting on Indian issues. When she was asked how often she would want to report on Indian issues, which would be in addition to her business reporting, Rave Lee threw out a high number.

“I went over with the attitude that I didn’t have anything to lose,” Rave Lee said. “It doesn’t make sense for me to leave (Salt Lake City) and here’s what I really want to do. I want to report on Indian issues 10 times a month, or three times a week, or whatever. I did throw out a high number. I just thought what the hell. I didn’t even know if I would stay in journalism (any)more.”

After returning to Salt Lake City, Rave Lee received a call from Starita asking her to bear with him and give him some time. The editors wereworking it out. As she would learn later, the trio was going to Lee Newspaper’s management in Iowa with a remarkable proposal.

The call from Starita came. He had a job offer. Then he told Rave Lee that he would like to offer her the job of being the national correspondent for Lee newspapers covering Indian issues for the entire chain.

“I was shocked,” Rave Lee said. “He decided to shoot for the moon on this one and he got the stars.”

Starita told Rave Lee that not only had corporate given them the go-ahead to offer the job to her, but also committed to devoting significant space to the project.

“We got all 25 column inches, not 10,” Starita said.

“There’s a lot of people outside Lee who couldn’t believe it,” Rave Lee said. “They don’t have the best reputation for covering Native issues. That they would hire a Native woman to cover Indian issues caught a lot of people by surprise.”

An announcement in June 1998 of the hiring of Jodi Rave Lee and a description of her new beat in all the Lee newspapers brought Rave Lee hundreds of e-mails and letters from excited readers with story ideas, or just words of encouragement. The e-mails and letters weren’t all from Native people. Many whites wrote to her as well.

Covering a territory that includes nine states and stretches from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains, Rave Lee quickly moved beyond what Indian journalists call the three C’s of Indian stories — casinos, crime and customs.

In her first year on the Indian beat, Rave Lee wrote stories on Native women smokers, using cradleboards for their infants, the appointment of the new Secretary of the Interior and a taxation bill in the Supreme Court that had an effect on tribes.

“The beat has gotten stronger as I’ve been able to fill it out,” Rave Lee said. “It’s a balance of topics.”

Rave Lee has attended meetings with all of the Lee editors to get input on stories they’d like to see covered. She was also flown to a meeting of the board of directors so they could meet her. In addition to her regular stories, Rave Lee does one package each year in which she gives extensive coverage to one topic affecting Native people. Her package in 2001 was a nine-part series on suicide among Indian youth, which is at epidemic levels.

Suicide was a topic Rave Lee suggested at one of the many meetings she has with her editors, and it was Stoeffler who suggested it for the topic of her big package for the year.

“I still think how incredibly lucky I am,” she said.

Early in 2001, Stoeffler was tapped by Lee management to move into the corporate offices in Davenport, Iowa, as vice-president of news. With Stoeffler in a position to affect things at a corporate level, Rave Lee approached him with an idea for the direction of the Indian beat. She told him that as much as she loved reporting, she wanted to be in management where she could oversee a team of reporters covering Indian stories. Each reporter would cover the reservations in individual states. And there still could be a reporter in Rave Lee’s current position, someone covering the big picture.

“Its one step at a time, and that’s the next logical step,” she said. “I can’t cover all these stories.”

If Lee takes Rave Lee up on her proposal, the chain will once again be breaking new ground. Perhaps the wake from that action will spread even farther than the first step taken in making Rave Lee their national correspondent.