Today we’d like to introduce you to Annalise Braught
Hi Annalise, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’ve loved photography and storytelling for as long as I can remember and being a photojournalist became a dream of mine when I was around 12 years old.
I got my first summer job when I was 13 working at a strawberry farm in Bagley picking berries and other produce and helping with their farmers market stand. By the end of the summer, I had saved enough money to buy my first DSLR camera. When I was 15 I started interning with local photographers in the area and I kept doing that in the background while working other jobs over the next few years.
I began attending Northwest Technical College as a PSEO student when I was in 11th grade and graduated in 2013 from high school and with an associate’s in Supervisory Management. Instead of going on for my bachelor’s right away, I decided to launch my own media business, Iridescent Reflections.
I made a website and shot weddings, portraits and anything else I could just to gain more experience and learn as I went. In the few years that followed, I got married and moved from the little town of Clearbrook where my family lived to Bemidji, and in 2018 began attending Bemidji State University pursuing a bachelor’s in Mass Communication.
Not long after starting at BSU, I took a chance on a part-time job at the local newspaper, the Bemidji Pioneer. I quickly began taking on photography and reporting duties and simply fell in love with the world of journalism.
By the end of 2019, a lot of changes were taking place at the paper, leaving us without an editor for several months. Having learned a lot under the previous editor, I started stepping in to help out with various duties and keep the team organized. In the meantime, others around me took note of my abilities and a few of them encouraged me to step into the editor role.
I had just turned 25, only had a year of news experience and was still one semester away from finishing my degree and thought they were crazy to even consider me for such an important job. But after a lot of conversations and encouragement, I decided to take a chance on myself and go for it.
I became the editor full-time in January 2020, while still completing my degree, and though it was no easy feat, it was the best decision I could have ever made.
Now, just over five years later, I have fully embraced my life at the Pioneer and am so grateful for all the opportunities and challenges it has given me along the way. I not only have been able to fully utilize both of my college degrees, but it has allowed me to turn a lifelong dream and hobby into a career in the best ways.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Oh yeah, all of that definitely came with its share of challenges. Stepping into such a prominent and community-facing role, not only as a young woman in a tough, male-dominated career field but also fairly green and still very much trying to get into the news groove, was rough at first. I felt like I didn’t have any other choice but to simply trust my gut on things and rely on mentors and others in my field who I trusted to give me good support and advice.
That first year was definitely the hardest, for a multitude of reasons. Not only did the pandemic hit only two months after becoming editor, but it was a tough time to be working in the media.
Due to the heated political climate, misinformation spreading like never before and just an overall chaotic year of events, we had our work cut out for us on every front.
In May 2020, I graduated with honors, all while keeping the Pioneer going in the hardest part of the pandemic and covering the broad range of lingering impacts it had on our community.
As we got into the thick of the election season, the icing on the cake of a year came in September when President Trump decided to make a rally stop in Bemidji, giving us only days of a heads up to prepare.
This launched my team into the longest week of our lives as we scrambled to fully cover every aspect of the developing and polarizing situation in the midst of pandemic crowd restrictions and an active mask mandate. It was definitely one of the most challenging situations of my life and career thus far, but we made it through and did our very best to give everyone fair and equal coverage as it all unfolded.
There have been many smaller challenges since, but thankfully as I have become more solidified in my career and gotten a few more years of experience under my belt, I feel much more capable of facing them each head-on as they come.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
One of the things I really love about working at a medium-sized news organization is the creative and professional flexibility and freedom that comes with it. My day-to-day is a lot of managing and organizing – making sure we have enough content for the paper and website and are on top of everything that needs to be covered.
While it comes with its share of challenges, probably my favorite part of my job is having the opportunity to hire and lead my own team of folks in the newsroom. I’ve been able to work with and train so many fabulous journalists along the way. It’s so rewarding to offer some of the same opportunities to those coming behind me that my supervisors and mentors gave me just a few years ago.
Among my many job duties, I really enjoy reporting and writing when I get the chance, but my main passion is of course photography – especially when it involves nature and wildlife. I am responsible for taking a lot of our news photos and I help out with shooting sports as well when I can.
While I didn’t begin my journalism career on a mission to change the world or anything dramatic, I’ve learned so much about myself these past few years and developed a passion for the community in a way I never could have anticipated.
Any big plans?
In my time at the Pioneer, I have seen the big impact local news has on telling stories no one would otherwise hear, raising awareness, educating residents, connecting folks to valuable resources and so much more. I can’t imagine doing anything else that would have a greater impact than what I’m doing today.
I don’t have plans to leave the Pioneer or journalism any time soon, but my husband and I love traveling and exploring the world together, so I do hope someday down the road to have a job that is a little more of a freelance-style gig. I think my dream would be to focus more on photojournalism specifically, travel and continue my passion for advocacy on a grander scale.
We are welcoming our first child in June 2025, a little girl, so that’s going to be my next big adventure. I’m excited for the new challenges motherhood will bring and a whole new way that I can be plugged into our community.
I’m just so grateful to the people who saw the potential I couldn’t see in myself, believed in me and pushed me to take a chance on this job that was way out of my comfort zone. I had no idea the amazing life it would lead to and I have never regretted it for a second. Even on the toughest days, I know I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://iridescentreflectionsmedia.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iridescentreflections
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iridescentreflections
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annalise-braught-b83985115/
- Other: https://www.bemidjipioneer.com/author/annalise-braught
