When I landed my first job in 1977 at what was then called the Idaho Free Press in Nampa, the profession was experiencing a boom on the heels of the blockbuster movie “All the President’s Men.” The film portrayed the real-life work of young Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in exposing wrongdoing in the Nixon administration.

Actor Robert Redford, incidentally, was a lot better looking than Bob Woodward, the member of the duo he played, which went a long way toward romanticizing the profession.

The movie was followed not long afterward by the popular television series “Lou Grant,” which also portrayed the work of reporters in a dramatic and very realistic fashion.

The news photographer on the show, known as “Animal,” was not so good looking, but this scruffy character did for photojournalism what Redford did for news reporting: made it cool. Both portrayals also helped attract a flood of recruits to the field.

I still think it’s cool to be a journalist, despite all the targeting and turbulence the profession has been through over the past couple of decades — cool and crazy and challenging and vitally important. For some, it’s even deadly.

Hopefully the whole world has been reminded of all this in recent weeks while watching news coverage of the war in Ukraine. Many of the reporters, both men and women, have demonstrated astounding courage in their efforts to show the world what is happening there, and I have a feeling their work will inspire a lot of young people to follow in their footsteps, even if not all of the kids want to actually report from a war zone.

A quick scan of the want ads at journalismjobs.com indicates there are lots of positions available, a veritable vacuum, so the time is right for a resurgence like we saw in the post-Watergate America.

Back then, simply landing an interview at a newspaper, any newspaper, was a monumental task. In an effort to get ahead of the pack, I mailed out cold more than 100 packets with my resume and a selection of photo-copied writing clips of my work from the Colorado State University student newspaper.

One clip I was particularly proud of was an article from the 1976 flash flood in Colorado’s Big Thompson Canyon. The death toll from the flood eventually reached 143, but when I arrived at a Red Cross station at the mouth of the canyon the morning after the flood, the extent of the disaster was not yet known and people were desperately looking for their loved ones.

That clip and a half-dozen others were accompanied by hand-typed cover letters to newspapers from Coos Bay to Santa Fe to Flagstaff, but apparently none of the editors who received my mailing were impressed. Then I revised the cover letter and started offering to work for free, saying I just wanted a chance to prove myself. The pitch impressed the editors in Nampa, and they decided to hire me (for pay).

Coincidentally, one of my bosses there, the late Mike Simmons, ended up the managing editor of The Herald Journal in the 1980s. He was a bit like Lou Grant, now that I think of it: tough but sensitive.

What The Herald Journal needs right now is a public-affairs/general assignment reporter, someone to keep community members informed about what their elected and appointed leaders are doing, someone to help people understand the many issues facing Cache Valley. It’s the exact same job I landed all those years ago in Nampa.

Along the way, the person we hire will discover like I did that there is also a never-ending supply of fun, fascinating and heart-warming stories to tell.

Consider this column an expanded version of the want ad appearing on page C5 of today’s paper.