Did they find out who stole the bus??
And I'm with ya. I learned so much working for the paper. Perhaps one unexpected skill was cold calling. In sales getting over that fear is an enormously important barrier to cross. Once you do it though, it makes a lot of things in life easier.
For stories I'd have to call people or go find them, frequently when they screwed up, frequently when they did not want to talk to me. Just like the story above—the transit manager did not want to talk to me, but I spent a day and a half hunting him down. He didn't answer my calls, so I went down to where the buses get dispatched from in the afternoon and asked a driver where to find him. That "Somebody just didn't want to wait" quote came from that interaction.
About a year later I started a coupon website. I went door-to-door trying to get local business to buy in. That's probably not something I could have done, if I hadn't worked for the paper first.
Also, funny to think there were probably multiple reporters in those city council meetings all trying to figure out their own way of filling space. While not good for people's career prospects, having a single reporter [maybe rotating each year] write once and disseminate to all (AP style) feels more optimal.
I find that having a single source of information too often leads to very sub optimal outcomes.
Teaming would be better than that.
A story—My first semester working on the paper I was at the bottom of the food chain as an associate news editor. So it was my job to sit in Auburn City Council meetings and fill my page with a summary of those meetings. I don't know how many of you have sat in small town council meetings, but all that really happens is they announce what restaurants are granted a liquor licenses and table interesting topic indefinitely. It's boring. On occasion there would be a heated debate about installing a speed bump on some neighborhood street, but usually nothing.
I would have an assigned amount of space to fill with city council notes and I never—never—was able to fill it. So I taught myself photoshop and started creating infographics to take up space. I started a weekly gas monitor price fluctuations and would add several other graphics to fill my section. That's how I got into design.
EDIT: Also, breaking a story about a kid stealing a Tiger Transit (Drunk Bus) to get home from the bar was a crowning journalistic achievement of mine. https://www.theplainsman.com/article/2009/09/tiger-transit-s...