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APRIL // MAY 2019 • IDAHO SENIOR INDEPENDENT PAGE 5
All About Idaho

LOCAL PEOPLE•LOCAL STORIES•LOCAL FUN•LOCAL BUSINESSES

A Charmed Life in Print: Nils Rosdahl

WORKING IN PUBLISHING, TEACHING FUTURE JOURNALISTS

Next, we’d see a young Nils Rosdahl
BY CARRIE SCOZZARO scrambling with a heavy load of newspapers
during his first job as a paperboy for the The
Nils Rosdahl is a self-proclaimed word Missoulian. He also worked for the Sanders
nerd, whose passions also include family, County Ledger, a Thompson Falls weekly to
singing in the choir, playing pickleball, and which he still subscribes.
ducking into a local eatery where even if he “[The town] hasn’t changed at all,” he
doesn’t know everyone, most locals have said, except that it had more lumber mills.
heard of him. Rosdahl notices, for example, Rosdahl liked being the first to know
that most people say “towards,” adding an things, he said, especially the sports scores,
unnecessary S at the end of the word. Then and as editor of his high school paper, he set
again, words are Rosdahl’s stock and trade, his course early on. He attended University Nils Rosdahl is a fixture in the Coeur d’Alene community and
has stayed close to former students, including Devin (Heilman)
both in his lifelong career as a writer and of Montana for journalism and parlayed Weeks, seen here at her wedding with a smiling Rosdahl.
editor, and during the nearly three decades his high school experience into writing for PHOTO COURTESY DEVIN (HEILMAN) WEEKS.
he dedicated to teaching the next generations both the college paper, the Kaimin—he
of journalists. later became associate editor—and the local virtually assuring he’d be deployed to
His story reads like a vintage Jimmy paper, The Missoulian. Vietnam, but another option soon appeared.
Stewart movie: from small towns to big cities “I remember my first day and the dean The Coast Guard, he discovered, was looking
and back again, a beautiful girl, some ups and [of the journalism school] asked, ‘What is the for a journalist, so he enlisted, was sent to
downs, then settling in to do one’s life’s work. purpose of a newspaper?’” Students yelled out San Francisco and wrote for both the local
In Rosdahl’s version, the story begins with his various answers, recalled Rosdahl, many of paper—sports, mostly—on top of his regular
father, a doctor who returned to Thompson them idealistic. “Wrong,” said the dean; it’s writing duties, much like he did in college.
Falls, Montana when he spied it from a troop “to make money.” It stuck with Rosdahl, who After two years on the west coast, Rosdahl
train. The elder Rosdahl was headed west understood that the newspaper could be both was transferred to the Chicago area, where
from his New York home to Seattle, where he a business and a vehicle for communication, a he wrote what were called hometown news
would serve as a military doctor, then return lesson he’d later impart to his students. releases for all five branches of the Armed
to Montana to raise six children. In 1967 and as a college graduate, Rosdahl
found himself with a very low draft card, CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

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