• Jared GrafmanPatch Staff Verified Patch Staff Badge

  • Chesterfield, MO

Email:Jared.Grafman at patch.com

Hometown:Chesterfield, MO |

Twitter Handle: JaredGrafman

— Jared is a recent Missouri School of Journalism graduate and St. Louis native interested in how government politics effects individuals within communities.

Raised in Chesterfield, Jared spent his childhood playing ice hockey for the Chesterfield Falcons and the Creve Coeur Comets, and reading lots of comics and books. At one point, when he was in second or third grade at Green Trails elementary, he remembers starting a “Pocket Post” newspaper, in a spiral-bound memo pad, where he would write stories of his hockey games and about things that happened at school or around his house.

When he began reading Harry Potter and James Bond books in fourth grade, though, his news reporting went on hiatus for nearly a decade. He spent the rest of his time in grade school interested in playing hockey and reading, whether it was adventure books or his parents’ subscription to the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

He played four years of ice hockey on the Varsity team at Parkway Central High School, where he graduated in 2008, before choosing academics over athletics when he arrived at Mizzou and planned to become a high school teacher.

It was halfway through his sophomore year at college, after a year being involved with student government, that he joined the university’s newspaper The Maneater and rediscovered his love of reporting. The following spring he switched his major to journalism and the rest is history. He continued writing for The Maneater, finding an interest in crime reporting, until he joined the staff of The Columbia Missourian where he spent two semesters as a public safety reporter.

Jared hopes to spend a career exploring communities around the nation and world as a reporter, covering events and policies that affect the people of the communities he lives and visits, and is thrilled that he can begin that career in his hometown and with Patch. If you happen to see him reporting at an event, or writing at a Starbucks, don’t hesitate to say hello.

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