User:Pha telegrapher

Hello. My real name is Dan Robrish and I am a Peace Corps volunteer serving in North Macedonia. (The usual disclaimer applies: What I write here is mine alone and does not reflect any official position of the Peace Corps, the U.S. government, North Macedonia's government or any other government.)

I'm best known as the founder and first editor of  The Elizabethtown Advocate, a weekly newspaper in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. I sold that newspaper in 2017 to LNP Media Group, but continued to work there as the newspaper's editor until I left that job to accept an invitation to join the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps recalled all of their volunteers worldwide because of the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving many invitees including me in limbo. I was a self-employed freelance editor living in Yellow Springs, Ohio, during my time in limbo, but left for North Macedonia in the autumn of 2022. My service is scheduled to last until December of 2024.

The user name "Pha telegrapher" comes from Phillips Code, where Pha stands for Philadelphia. At the time I took on the user name, I was a newsman in the Philadelphia bureau of The Associated Press, a job I held from 1998 to 2010. Before that I was a reporter for daily newspapers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania; New Ulm, Minnesota, and Ely, Nevada. (The Ely paper was daily when I worked there but is now weekly.) Before that, I studied and worked on the student newspapers at the University of Minnesota and Los Angeles City College. I was born in Washington, D.C., and I am a 1989 graduate of Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland.