Jimmy was born on Feb. 12, 1975, in Reno, Nevada. Growing up there (excluding five years in Lamoille, Nevada), he graduated from Wooster High School, where he was involved in academics, the school band, school government and debate. Yes, he was a major nerd.
He parlayed this nerdiness into an admission letter to Stanford University, and after high school graduation, he was off to The Farm. His goal: To become a sportswriter, preferably covering his beloved Los Angeles Dodgers. This did not happen. Anyway, he stayed on the journalism path, majoring in communication and – much to his surprise – history, after falling in love with a required history course he was forced to take as a freshman.
His junior year, he got involved with the college newspaper, the Stanford Daily, ensuring that he would never have a life in college. He also had a summer internship before his senior year with a small, struggling alternative newsweekly in his hometown, the Reno News & Review.
Despite a bout with an engagement and a five-year membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he graduated with a degree in history and communication – with honors, even – in four years. His first job out of college: a newsman position with The Associated Press’ San Francisco bureau.
This lasted five months before he decided to leave the good gig and the Bay Area excitement for the relative calm and unemployment of Reno. After a brief, temporary stint as a reporter for the Reno News & Review, he joined the Daily Sparks Tribune as a crime/courts reporter. He soon started a humor column for the paper, which, to everyone’s surprise, ended up lasting six years and winning a slew of awards.
After a festive, award-winning year-and-a-half at the Trib full-time, he was hired by the Reno News & Review as its news editor. Five months later, due to reasons nobody fully comprehends, he was named the editor of the News & Review, a month shy of his 25th birthday.
Some 21 months later, Jimmy left the News & Review, and in November 2001, he left his hometown for the warmer climes of Las Vegas, where he became a staff writer for another alternative newsweekly, Las Vegas CityLife. As the political reporter and eventually the news editor, Jimmy became a semi-regular on the weekly TV newsmagazine Nevada Week in Review, where he proved the axiom that the camera, in fact, does add 10 pounds.
After 14 months in Las Vegas, he was asked to become the editor of CityLife’s sister newspaper, the Tucson Weekly. In January 2003, he moved to Tucson. He remains in Tucson to this day, where he lives in a nice house (although it’s slightly ghetto – just slightly) with his cat, Beavis, and his boyfriend, Garrett.
E-mail Jimmy: jiboegle@stanfordalumni.org. Comments are appreciated!
jiboegle@stanfordalumni.org