Wyoming Democratic Party hires Brodie Farquhar as new communications director

This is good news:

The Wyoming Democratic Party has hired Brodie Farquhar as its new communications director.

Farquhar came to Wyoming in 2000 and has written extensively for state and regional media.

Farquhar has written for the Casper Star Tribune as a staff writer and as a freelancer, covering natural resources, politics, education, the state legislature and more. He served two years as managing editor for the Wyoming Business Report, building a cadre of freelance writers around the state. He has also written extensively for New West, High Country News, Yellowstone Journal, Billings Gazette and Wyofile.com, which he co-founded.  

Farquhar has also served public relation stints for the Colorado School of Mines, Crested Butte Mountain Resort and Michigan chapter of The Nature Conservancy. “I know how to work with reporters, from small-town weeklies to major dailies and networks,” he said. Guiding reporters around the West’s energy development sites was a particularly valuable experience when Farquhar worked with the Energy & Minerals Field Institute at Mines.

He has a bachelor's degree in journalism and a master's in natural resource policy from the University of Michigan, where he was a Scripps Fellow for Environmental Journalism.

Farquhar said he's always striven to maintain journalistic objectivity, but is looking forward to an opportunity to be an advocate for the Democratic Party and progressive values. "I believe most people have beliefs and values firmly rooted in fairness, common sense and the progressive tradition, contrary to the drumbeat of right-wing talk radio. I want to help Wyoming citizens look beyond the surface, to the real core and context of today's issues," said Farquhar.

Farquhar has covered every conceivable beat in his journalism career, but has developed expertise in covering such natural resource issues as energy development, western water rights, agriculture, wildlife, the Endangered Species Act, snowmobile use in Yellowstone, wolf and grizzly bear recovery plans. In his coverage of the 2006 Wyoming legislative session, Farquhar first wrote about the American Legislative Exchange Council, which writes corporation-friendly legislation, and more recently, voter ID and “shoot to kill” bills.

Farquhar and wife Sharon have three children and one grand-daughter, as well as a mellow golden retriever and calico cat.