Mandy Marie Jenkins, 42, died Sunday in her hometown of Zanesville, Ohio, after a four-year battle with cancer, according to her Times Recorder obituary.

I first met Mandy on a Saturday morning in January 2013, when she rode her bike to the Federal News Radio studios in Northeast D.C. to be a guest on the 24th episode of our podcast.

For my co-host Megan Cloherty and I, Mandy was a “good-get.” She’d been the social media editor at TBD.com and oversaw data and video at Digital First Media — she was a digital news rockstar.

What I remember most about Mandy from that first interview and every time I ran into her over the years was how kind and generous she was.

I usually ran into Mandy at Online News Association conferences, such as Chicago in 2014, when she agreed to record an episode with Jeff Jarvis on the floor of the Midway.

When ONA came to D.C. in 2017, Mandy stopped me as I was walking through the convention hall.

“I’ve got somebody you should talk to for the podcast,” she said.

By this time, Mandy was the head of news at Storyful and introduced me to Ben Decker. I interviewed them both the next day about “fake news” and media literacy.

Mandy was an amazingly smart and kind person. I’m just one of the many people that she met along her journalist’s journey who are immeasurably better for knowing her.

On behalf of the whole It’s All Journalism team, I offer our heartfelt condolences to Mandy’s loved ones for your loss. Thank you for sharing her with us.

— Michael O’Connell

It’s All Journalism host Michael O’Connell remembers Mandy Jenkins, a long-time friend of the podcast who died Sunday in her hometown of Zanesville, Ohio. To honor Mandy’s memory, we’re reposting the audio from our last interview with her from February 2019.