About lesbowen.com

I built this site to showcase some of my work as a professional journalist. I don’t own any of the content, as those rights belong to the publishing companies that employed me. To the extent possible, I have provided links to the original source on the websites where it first appeared.

About Les Bowen

I was born to a middle class family outside Salt Lake City, Utah. In high school, my extracurricular activities were yearbook and newspaper, where I focused on design and pagination.

My college coursework at College of Eastern Utah in Price, Utah, (now part of Utah State University) was in journalism and mass communication. It was there I wrote my first journalism. I wrote news, features and opinion. And I still designed. When my college newspaper needed a website, I built it.

After college, I took a job as a reporter at the local twice-weekly newspaper, the Sun Advocate (sadly, the paper where I cut my teeth fell victim to media consolidation and closed in late 2018). In my time at the Sun Advocate, I worked with an amazing staff. We wrote exceptional news, won awards and even had some fun at it. When the company bought another newspaper in 2007, I was tapped to be editor of the Vernal Express in Vernal, Utah. My career has since led me north central Washington state as editor of the Lake Chelan Mirror and Quad City Herald; to upstate New York as editor and general manager of the Genesee Country Express, to the Oregon coast as digital editor of the The World, and to Arizona’s third-largest metropolitan area, where I was a multi-platform reporter for The Daily Courier in Prescott.

In 2016, I decided I no longer liked having my employee benefits cut (the third time in five years). I loved my job as reporter, but I expected adequate compensation. So I went through the revolving door. My boss is now one of my previous sources, and I’m a certified elections officer for Yavapai County.