20 Under 40 - 1999 Profile: Kenneth R. 'Chip' Somodevilla

PRESSTIME

By Presstime Magazine

First Published: December 1999

Kenneth R. "Chip" Somodevilla loves National Public Radio, joined a city task force to defend "extreme sports," and readily admits that he never read newspapers before attending j-school. So why is he so excited about the business?

Perhaps because the 27-year-old photographer has spent much of his short career finding ways to take his craft to the next level: multimedia.

"Nobody's going to get away with just pushing a button," says Somodevilla, who just completed a three-year stint with The News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne, Ind. "People who are just reporters and just editors are going to disappear. We're all going to have to become journalists."

Editors credit him with finding new kinds of stories—and new ways of covering them.

When a guitar shop closed after nearly four decades, he couldn't find a reporter who was interested. On his own time, he chronicled the store's final days, using a hand-held Sony MiniDisc digital-audio recorder to add interviews to the Sentinel's World Wide Web site.

A series on NAFTA subsequently took him to South Texas and Mexico, where he provided readers and Web browsers alike with similar multimedia experiences.

"His photo-story ideas typically evolve into some of our best work," says Publisher Scott McGehee.

Though he loves the Internet's audio dimension and someday wants to film a documentary, Somodevilla doesn't find those goals and newspapering mutually exclusive. "Gathering information will always be the same," he says. "It's just a matter of changing the medium, which is the easiest part."

In mid-November, Somodevilla returned to his native Texas, where he first cut his teeth as a free-lancer covering high-school football and now joins the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "In Texas, football is holy, and I'm going back to the Holy Land," he quips.

Education: 1995, B.A., University of North Texas, Denton.
Career: 1994-95, free-lance photography, Denton (Texas) Record-Chronicle; 1995, photography intern, The Journal Gazette, Fort Wayne, Ind.; 1996-1999, staff photographer, The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Ind.; 1999-present, staff photographer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Personal: Age, 27. Born, Corpus Christi, Texas. Single.
Diversions: Skateboarding, movies, camping.
Connections: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 400 W. 7th St., Fort Worth, Texas 76102, phone, (817) 390-7400.