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Jenna deJong

Jenna deJong is a business, real estate, county government and health reporter for the Summit Daily News. She joined the team in spring 2021 and jumped into reporting on hot-button topics in her beats, including workforce housing issues and the local labor shortage.

Jenna is originally from St. Louis, Missouri, but is formerly a resident of Springfield, where she attended Missouri State University and earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a minor in general business. While at school, she was a reporter for the student-led publication, The Standard, before landing an internship with 417 Magazine. For one summer, she was also an intern for St. Louis Magazine. Six months before graduating, she became the editor of Biz 417 Magazine, a business lifestyle publication produced by 417 Magazine.

In her career so far, Jenna has won two awards: she edited “Altered State,” a piece about Missouri’s new medical marijuana industry, which won gold in explanatory journalism from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers in 2020. Jenna won the explanatory journalism gold award again the following year for a piece she wrote about workforce diversity in southwest Missouri, called “What We Can Be.”

Though she’s from the Midwest, Jenna’s heart was always in the Rockies, so she jumped at the opportunity to make the move to Summit County. When she’s not reporting, she’s likely fangirling over the local scenery and taking advantage of everything the region has to offer. Jenna enjoys reading, hiking, biking, skiing, camping, picnicking by the lake and road trips.

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