A nose for news and a knack for a good story will take you a long way in a journalism career. Dan Traylor displayed both when he wrote his first story as an intern for the Roseburg News-Review.

"It was born with four eyes, two noses, two mouths and two tongues, but it's just one cat."

It was the summer of 2005, and the reporter assigned to cover the story of the kitten with two faces was too freaked out by the idea. Traylor wasn't. He wrote the story, which got picked up by the Associated Press and beamed around the world.

Currently editor-in-chief of the Daily Barometer, Traylor was already a veteran reporter when he interned at the News-Review. His career started in junior high school in Milton-Freewater, where he was a youth columnist for the Pendleton newspaper, the East Oregonian.

His high school didn't have a newspaper, so Traylor started one. He began covering school football games and circulating a single news sheet among his fellow students.

The Union-Bulletin in nearby Walla Walla, Wash., got interested in his work, and during his junior year of high school he covered sports for the paper as a freelancer.

"Then I thought it might be a career path," Traylor said.

No kidding.

At the Barometer, Traylor has tried to engender the mentality of being a news organization, not just a campus newspaper. The paper covers international issues as well as student and faculty news.

It's a big job.

"Basically, every moment that I'm not in class, I'm here," he said.

The highlight of his work at the Barometer was covering the Beavers' run through last year's College World Series. He flew to Omaha for the championship series and then flew back to put together an eight-page special section - no advertisements, all features and photos.

"It was an amazing experience to be there when they won," he said.

Gwyneth Gibby covers crime and the courts for the Gazette-Times.

Dan Traylor

Age: 23.

Residence: Corvallis (hometown is Milton-Freewater).

Occupation: Editor, Daily Barometer.

Education: Oregon State University senior, majoring in political science.

Family: Single.

Misc.: First assignment as an intern at the Roseburg paper was writing about a cat born with two faces.