Helping women and minorities into newsrooms since 1993
Helping women and minorities into newsrooms since 1993
Amie Just loves spreadsheets. Her editor, Nate Head, has often dropped by her office and witnessed an accountant-like setup.
“Her screens are filled with spreadsheets,” Head said. ‘She’s highlighting things, and there’s just pages and pages of FOIAs.”
While Just’s approach is tunnel-visioned, her breadth of work is anything but that. From breaking news and features to enterprise pieces and explanatory reporting, she does it all as the Lincoln Journal Star’s sports columnist. Well, kind of.
“Sports columnist is fine, but like, I don’t have an ‘in-stone title,’” she said with a laugh. “It changes. I do more than sports columns.”
The role is new for Just, who covered the New Orleans Saints before returning to her home state of Nebraska.
It was a big decision — and one that has clearly paid off.
In 2023, Just secured the top spot in the Division C APSE explanatory category, and this year, she earned five top awards, including first place in project reporting, second in commentary, long features, and short features.
“That was something that stood out from the very beginning,” Head said. “She made it clear that she didn’t want to just write three columns a week.”
Just initially had reservations about becoming a columnist this early in her career — just five years after graduating from the University of Kansas in 2017. She was surprised when the Lincoln Journal Star reached out. She didn’t think she was even on their radar and never thought she’d return to Nebraska.
Now, she’s glad she did.
“It’s been one of the best things for my career, was moving back,” she said. “And if I had heard myself saying that 10 years ago, I would’ve been very concerned.”
Head imagines she’s one of the youngest sports columnists, but for Just, that’s not a reason to shy away.
Instead, she embraces her unique perspective and is willing to fight for it. Her former boss at NOLA Media Group, Perryn Keys, calls Just “Scrappy Doo” — a compliment of her tenacity.
“Because her brain works in a different way,” Keys said, “she is more likely to come up with a fresh, unique angle or story idea that somebody else wouldn’t come up with or think of.”
Just has penned an award-winning story about how Nebraska prepared for its football game in Ireland and compiled data diligently for a prize-winning report on the financial gains made by the Cornhuskers volleyball program.
But she also has fun with it. Ask any of her peers, and they’ll mention her article about babies named after Saints quarterback Taysom Hill.
“Not for one second was that a story I would’ve thought of,” friend and fellow journalist Ben Portnoy said. “It was a really cool and interesting thing. She picked at one piece of information and then was like, ‘Oh my God, I wonder if there’s more to this.
“That’s her skill and I think that’s her superpower.”
Just isn’t just a columnist. Instead, at 29, she’s already so much more.
Shelby Swanson will intern at the Raleigh News & Observer this summer.