The Courier-Journal (Louisville)
MEET MAGGIE MENDERSKI
What’s your role at the Courier Journal?
I always tell people I show up to interview you it’s because you’ve done something amazing or something unbelievably heartbreaking has happened to you. As The Courier-Journal’s features columnist, there really isn’t any in-between. Most often you’ll see my byline on quirky human interest stories. A couple of my favorites over the years were writing about all the different trinkets left at Muhammad Ali’s grave in Cave Hill Cemetery, visiting the Eastern Kentucky church camp where one of the Backstreet Boys grew up, and profiling a Louisville lawyer, who now works in the same law office where his father once shined shoes. On the tougher end, I’ve also helped cover the Western Kentucky Tornados in 2021, the historic Eastern Kentucky flooding in 2022 and the Old National Bank mass shooting in 2023.
Give us a brief history of your journalism career
I graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism a couple years after the Great Recession. Newspaper reporting jobs weren’t easy to come by, so I worked for a small daily paper in a town of 12,000 people in rural Missouri for $6.75 an hour. I was one of two news reporters on a tiny staff, which meant I helped with everything. I took all my photos, designed news pages, edited stories, and even helped hand-stuff advertisements into the print paper.
In my mid-20s, I worked as a general assignment reporter for the Quincy Herald-Whig in Quincy, Illinois, and the State-Journal Register in Springfield, Illinois. Lured by some sugar white sand beaches and the promise of being a business reporter, I took a job at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in Southwest Florida in 2015. Basking in the sunshine didn’t last for long. The homesickness set in about two years later, and I decided to move closer to my parents in St. Louis. That’s how I ended up in Louisville.
The Courier Journal hired me as a business reporter in 2018 and then promoted me to columnist in 2019. After all that moving around, I’m very relieved to feel rooted in Louisville.
Tell us about your day-to-day
Readers ask me all the time if I have fun with my job, and genuinely, I do. Being a features writer makes you a life-long learner. I’ve spent afternoons sipping through the lab at Maker’s Mark, strolling through the pawpaw patches looking for Kentucky’s only native tropical fruit, and watching a local blacksmith turn surrendered guns into garden tools. The days I spend reporting keep work very interesting.
Writing days, on the surface, likely look very bland, but the best writing days are the uninterrupted ones where I can sip coffee and let a narrative roll out. I usually prefer to do those from home to keep down distractions, but my cats Quincy and Moxie don’t always understand that. Moxie jumps on my lap every day at about 4:15 p.m., which is my little cue its time to power through because the day is almost done.
What’s your biggest accomplishment or something you are most proud of while working at the CJ?
Recently, I was nominated for Today’s Woman Magazine’s “2024 Most Admired Woman Award,” which has been a very humbling experience. (To vote, please visit tinyurl.com/voteCJmaggie. Voting ends April 30.)
Aside from that, I am so grateful The Courier Journal lets me write features full-time. Narrative writing is where my heart is, and the editors here have been incredibly supportive in giving me the space and freedom to explore it. I never thought I’d get a role like this. I’m also really proud of the national awards our team won from the National Society for Features Journalism in 2021. I was one of four reporters from The Courier Journal honored, and our staff was named fourth overall in its category for the Finest in Features Sweepstakes Award.
What’s cool or fun that you want people to know about you?
Aside from writing quirky and fun stories, I’m mildly known in the Louisville media community for co-hosting a Thanksgiving Day dinner for any journalist in the area who don’t have a place to go. Many of us are transplants, and often that means spending holidays away from family. Somehow last year my husband and I crammed 23 journalists in our modest shotgun home for the occasion. The tradition started in 2018 as an excuse for me to try and make my great-grandmother’s German stuffing recipe, and it has turned into a fun day with all the fixings.
Bonus: What kind of interesting things can readers expect from you in the next month?
We’ve been planning our Kentucky Derby stories since November, and it’s been hard to think beyond that. This month, one of my columns will take you on my search for the missing grave of the first Kentucky Derby winner Aristides. I’ve also got a fun feature in the works about a local couple from Corydon that comes to the Kentucky Derby dressed as iconic movie characters.
After that? It’s back to the drawing board. As always, I welcome all your suggestions about the weird and wonderful things in our community.
Features columnist Maggie Menderski writes about what makes Louisville, Southern Indiana and Kentucky unique, wonderful, and occasionally, a little weird. If you’ve got something in your family, your town or even your closet that fits that description — she wants to hear from you. Say hello at mmenderski@courier-journal.com. Follow along on Instagram @MaggieMenderski.