MOSES LAKE — The Columbia Basin Herald has welcomed Washington State University (WSU) undergraduate Laura Guido into its midst to serve the Herald’s readers from Olympia.

Guido will report from Washington’s capitol as the Herald’s Olympia intern for the next four months.

Guido hails from Pullman, where she was born in what is now WSU’s campus health and wellness center (was the city’s hospital at the time). Her birth ties to Washington State University didn’t compel her to stay in her hometown for college, though.

Rather, it was the reputation of WSU’s journalism school in the Edward R. Murrow College of Communications that convinced her to pursue her higher education in Pullman.

“I originally was not planning on staying in Pullman, but the program is so good and that’s what I was interested in so I stayed and I actually really like it,” Guido said.

She is now a junior at WSU, leaving her one year of schooling after she returns from her stint in Olympia.

Guido said her interest in pursuing journalism was the natural marriage of her interests. In high school, her favorite classes involved writing, video and photography, so multimedia journalism was the obvious answer to the equation — “a really perfect fit,” she said.

She comes to the Herald after being contacted about the opportunity by Ben Shors, one of her journalism professors at WSU.

“It just seemed like a really good opportunity to explore one avenue of journalism,” Guido said. “There are lots of different directions I could take.”

Guido is still unsure where she wants to take her journalistic career, but she has a feeling she will find herself working in the online space. She said her writing ability coupled with her interest in video and photography may lead her to use all of her talents in the online medium.

Yet, the many paths her career could take leave her with uncertainty about which she will follow. That made the opportunity in Olympia reporting for the Herald more appealing, she said.

“I’m still not sure which one I want to do, so this seemed like a really good opportunity to try it out — being a real reporter,” Guido said.