bio

Who is Jim Brumm?

Part of the answer is in this autobiography based on the one Jim prepared for ClassMates.com.

What is there about high school that sets the tone for the rest of our life? It is just four years out of a life that so far is more than 18 times that.
I have lived eight times those four years in my wife’s hometown, North Brunswick, N.J.; leaving because the air quality threatened her health.
Yet, in my mind, Mattoon High School is where Jim Brumm the individual started.
My family moved to Mattoon, Ill., in October of my freshman year of high school after having lived in six communities in Southern Michigan and one in Northern Ohio. I moved on to a summer job as a camp counselor a couple weeks after graduating in May 1956. Before I got to Michigan State University that fall, the rest of my family had moved on to Racine, Wis.
There were a few visits back to friends the next two years, a drive through town 34 years later and a 40th high school reunion. But Mattoon of the mid-1950s remains my hometown in so many ways. There has been nothing in the next half century to dislodge it.
I cut college short to take a crack at Navy flying.
After dropping me from flight school, the Navy trained me as a journalist. It was on-the-job training that has stood me in good stead for half a century and couting. While in the Navy I married a New Jersey gal I met in college. The only extended period we’ve spent apart in 50 years was compliments of the Navy, which was sending a lot of young men to Southeast Asia in the mid-1960s. My tour in Vietnam was with the Seabees.
The job choice after discharge was Dow Jones or UPI. Dow Jones paid more. And I’ve been a financial reporter ever since, taking a buy-out after 22 years with Reuters.
This retirement was accepted because it meant an end to commuting -- the bane of working in New York City, in hopes there was a small newsroom with a short commute that could use an experienced reporter.

My wife, Ruth, and I have raised four birth children and being foster parents of medically fragile children resulted in adoption of three who have now joined the "grown" status of our birth children.

The adoptions added impetus to my desire to work a decade or two beyond the traditional 65, like my grandfathers did.

Instead of a small newsroom, the buyout was followed by which left me without a place to practic my trade. Over the past decade, a freelance career has put me back on track toward my goal.

Much of the rest can be found in this resume, an outline of a very successful journalism career.

JAN 2002 - PRESENT -- Freelance journalism since accepting the Reuters buyout has included articles for The Christian Science Monitor, the Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger, PubAux, California Energy Circuit, the Anderson (SC) Independent-Mail, NJBiz, StreetInsider.com and Forbes Special Sections. Recently this effort has focused on reporting for the Wilmington (NC) Star-News; Reuters; and NewsBase eletters NorthAmOil, Global LNG and Unconventional Oil & Gas Monitor.
SEPT 1979 - DEC 2001 -- Reuters. Senior equities correspondent available to help on any story with writing or guidance. Created North American Energy Service in September 1981. Headed it until April 1985. Recent reporting has focused on electric utility deregulation; distributed generation; and energy technology, such as fuel cells and micro turbines, while supporting coverage of oil, chemical and metal companies.
1976 - 1979 -- Freelance writing for The Christian Science Monitor’s business section, primarily energy trend pieces.
MAR 1973 - MAR 1979 -- The Oil Daily. Reporter covering refining and other process industries, deregulation of natural gas prices and petroleum industry economic issues. Became managing editor in 1977 with responsibility for news content of the daily paper, layout and copy editing.
JAN 1972 - MAR 1973 -- Reuters. Copy editor and reporter for U.S. financial wire.
MAR 1971 - DEC 1971 -- American Metal Market. Reporter and writer of weekly stock market column. Make-up editor.
AUG 1970 - MAR 1971 -- PR Newswire. Desk editor.
FEB 1970 - AUG 1970 -- PaineWebber Research Department. Wrote and broadcast daily radio up-dates on the stock market.
OCT 1967 - FEB 1970 -- Dow Jones. Hired as rewriter, copy editor and stock market writer at Dow Jones Broadcast. Later transferred to the Dow Jones News Service, the "Broad Tape."
SEP 1959 - AUG 1967 -- U.S. Navy. Attained the rate of “First Class Journalist.” Tours included one year in Vietnam supervising press relations for the Seabees and four years as a news editor and producer at the New York studios of Armed Forces Radio.
EDUCATION: Attended Rutgers, New Brunswick, N.J.; and Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.

PERSONAL: 72. Married with four birth children and three adopted children.