From the wilds of the Amazon to war-torn lands DHS graduate reporting first-hand experience

For journalist Kelly Hearn, the path to finding the heart of the story and sharing it with the world began with small-town roots and an understanding of what it is like to struggle.

A member of Dyersburg High School's Class of 1988, Hearn was a member of the DHS annual staff, where he met his mentor, Randa Reagan.

"She's the one that got me interested in writing for the newspaper," said Hearn, who began his career in a low-paying reporter's position at a Telluride, Colo. newspaper.

The newspaper position is one Hearn jokes he found to bring his mother some piece of mind and stop the "slow path to starvation" that writing his novel provided.

Finding his niche in reporting, Hearn has since made a name for himself, serving as an independent journalist and correspondent for publications like National Geographic News, The Christian Science Monitor and the Washington Times.

His payoff for "living lean" is a full-time staff reporter's position covering conflict territories and foreign policy for the Washington Times. Future stories will include coverage of war-torn areas like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hearn has had experience covering conflict. Earlier this year, he reported for the Washington Times on the civil war raging in southern Columbia. As a part of that mission, he rode in an Ecuadorian Special Forces helicopter to visit remote river settlements with members of the United Nations.

Through organizations like these and grants from The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Hearn has covered national elections in Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela; participated in six journalistic expeditions into the Amazon; and completed investigative reports on social and environmental impacts concerning the oil industry, Chinese economic and military projects in the Western Hemisphere and the impact of hydrocarbons projects along the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains.

"The challenge is to maintain some type of objectivity when you see human suffering," said Hearn. "It makes you angry. As human beings, when you report on conflict or wars or poverty, you can't help but be touched. (But) people deserve to know everything. So, the task of the journalist is to try to keep the heartstrings out of the story. But we are all human."

A common thread in Hearn's work is his ability to share the heart of the story with his readers. To transport his audience to the back of a canoe snaking down a muddy river in northern Peru where the water is no longer clean enough to drink. Or to allow readers to feel the despair of the spiritual leader of a remote Achuar Indian settlement as he watches the crops on his farm shrivel from pollutants in the soil.

Hearn's stories weave those emotions with the facts to bring the human side of economic and political issues to light. And, in doing that, his words convey just how important it is that these stories be told.

Growing up in Tiptonville with parents who taught school, Hearn credits his small-town experience for helping him connect with the people he represents, no matter the location that his stories send him.

"Living in a small town has helped me," said Hearn. "Tiptonville was a pretty poor place - especially in the '70s. And when one grows up around poverty, it is easier to relate to as a journalist."

The investigative reporter has found that same sense of poverty and struggle in tribes, settlements and communities throughout the world.

"Coming from where I come from, and understanding that common sense of struggle (connects us)," said Hearn. "As a journalist, the key to it is to make people comfortable. And the more you represent them fairly, the more you get a reputation. It's a large responsibility."

Although Hearn regularly travels to the remotest parts of the world and has shared a stage with Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin and Egyptologist Dr. Bob Brier, he said the day-to-day experience of his profession is not as prestigious as it seems.

Based out of Washington, D.C., Hearn spent the past five weeks traveling by air, land, and river to a remote area of Brazil, where he filmed for a week and a half before continuing on to Los Angeles to promote National Geographic's Expedition Week. After that, he spent a few days visiting his family in West Tennessee and continued on to New York City before heading back home to another assignment.

"You travel a lot," said Hearn. "It sounds a lot more glamorous than it is."

With his new Times position in Washington, D.C., a normal day can consist of serving as a guest on National Public Radio in the morning, rushing to cover a State Department briefing at noon and filing the copy before 1 p.m.

Lessons Hearn has learned from his Southern roots are to follow his dream and the importance of family support -- lessons he learned firsthand from his parents, Teresa Willis of Millsfield and Wick Hearn of Milan.

"My mother has always been encouraging," said Hearn. "She's a great mom. She's the sweetest woman in the world. She was a teacher for 30 years and then started her dream job. She started her own (decorating) business, Fine Impressions, and it has been extremely successful.

"And my father has always given me emotional support, no matter how tough things got," said Hearn, who also credits his step-parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters and other family members for providing a strong foundation when he found himself in dangerous situations or isolated in the jungles of the world. "(They are always) there - no matter where I am in the world."

Hearn studied political science at The University of Tennessee and completed a year of honors political studies at the University of Dundee, in Scotland. He is the recipient of the 2006 Samuel Chavkin Grant for Investigative Journalism, administered by the North American Congress for Latin America, and has received three grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He has also been honored for his reporting by The Colorado Press Association.

Hearn will be featured on National Geographic's Lost Cities of the Amazon this fall.