Mathew Ursua

Once I Was a Reporter Mathew Ursua

As his Asperger's syndrome degenerates into schizophrenia, Mathew Ursua loses his intellect and with it his prospects for a normal future. His ambition unfettered in the face of certain failure, Ursua enrolls at the University of Hawaii and works his way up to the editor's chair at a community college student newspaper. He then reports on pivotal events- from a rape trial to the controversy surrounding construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope atop Mauna Kea- for the flagship campus newspaper, Ka Leo, and advances to a coveted summer internship reporting for the state's biggest daily, Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Once I Was a Reporter is a memoir chronicling a man afflicted by mental illnesses as he becomes a news reporter in search of sanity and salvation.