Just ask anyone whos ever wielded a reporters notebook for a living:

Theres a decided difference, the really good journalists will say, between simplygettinga storyand telling one.

Jake Stump, who graduates from West Virginia University this month, most definitely knows that difference.

The storyteller has distinguished himself in his classes at the P.I. Reed School of Journalism, but hes also made his name as a print reporter across West Virginia, in the newsrooms of The Dominion Post in Morgantown and at Charlestons Daily Mail.

And whether hes covering a county fair in the pastoral hills of his native Mountain State, or taking it all down on a motorbike-buzzed street in Hanoi, Vietnam, the young reporter always manages to come away with a compelling human face on the moment at hand.

To do anything less, he says, would be a disservice to all parties involved.

You have to respect the subject youre covering,the 23-year-old Terra Alta, Preston County, native said,and you have to respect the reader. You want to make the story as interesting as you can, no matter what it is youre covering. If you dont go into it with that mindset, youre wasting everyones time.

That abiding respect for the process, not to mention an iron-clad work ethic and natural talent for words, earned Stump his stripes at The Dominion Post, where he quickly wrote his way above and beyond simpleinternstatus.

From lighthearted features to articles about local tragedies to town council meeting reports, Stump did it all under deadline, and more often than not, found his byline prominently planted on Page 1.

I really respect my professors and I learned a lot in my classes,he said,but you get so much more of an education when youre actually in that newsroom and in the field.

Two years ago, while still at The Dominion Post, Stump won a first-place award from the West Virginia Press Association for a series of stories he did on the phenomenon of roadside memorials across the state.

He sat at kitchen tables and drank coffee with the mothers and fathers, the husbands, wives, and sons and daughters who lost people they loved to car crashesand were so moved, in turn, to mark the spot with makeshift crosses and impromptu shrines to lives taken away too soon.

George Esper, the WVU Ogden Newspapers Visiting Professor who has been a mentor for Stump, said those kinds of stories, the ones where people are hurting, are the ones that are the hardest to write.

It takes a special kind of writer to pull it off,said Esper, a former Associated Press reporter acclaimed for his work as a war correspondent during Vietnam.Jakes

quiet and he comes across as a friend. He knows when to lay back and just let people talk. And theyll reveal things about themselves, just because hes so personable.

Last May, while working at the Daily Mail, Stump was able to do some reporting that revealed a little bit about him too, in a very special place in the world for his family.

Stump landed a Kearns Fellowship from WVU , which awards fledgling reporters the chance to go abroad for a week to write and report. He went Vietnam, the place where his father, WillisBillStump,a lean, blonde Air Force sergeant from the hills of West Virginia(as described by his son), met his mother, Kim.

I think Im still trying to process Vietnam,said Stump, who introduced newspaper readers to his mother two years ago in a moving column that chronicled her journey from a then war-torn country to U.S. citizenship in America.

While there, Stump covered the 50 th anniversary of the battle of Dien Bien Phu, a fierce, 56-day siege in 1954 that spelled defeat for the French who had unsuccessfully occupied the country.

Dien Bien Phu sparked American military involvement in the country said to be a swinging door for Communism in the South Pacific.

The whole time I was there, I felt like an outsider,Stump said,but I also felt like I wasfromthere, even though Id never been there before. My mother still has relatives there. They were on the other end of the country so I didnt get to see them, but I kept thinking,I have family over here.

At Espers direction, Stump covered the official ceremonies of the battles anniversary, and he also interviewed now-retired generals and other officers from his fathers war.

In a first-person column that accompanied the reporting, he wrote of buying a black-market music disc of his favorite band, Slayer, in Hanoijust so he could say he didand unwittingly taking a bite of dog in a restaurant (Where I grew up,he ruefully wrote,this delicacy goes by the name of Fido.)

The Daily Mail stories that came of the journey,Student explores Vietnam roots,won second place in the country for feature-writing, in the William Randolph Hearst Foundations Journalism Awards Program.

No surprise there, Esper said.

Jakes what I call astreet reporter,Esper said of his student.He has a passion for what he does. He knows how to tell a story. He could go to work anywhere, from the Associated Press to The Washington Post. Hes that good. I can tell you, I sure wasnt writing like that when I was 23.

For now, Stump is entertaining a couple of job offers, and said he just wants toget out thereand explore even more of the world.

Most likely, hell be writing it all down in a notebook when he does.