Section 1: Q: We are talking with Larry Fruhling at
his home in Bellevue, Iowa, on Saturday, July
15, 2000. Larry, let's just start with how
and why the Register hired you in 1959? You
asked me to ask you about that when I visited
you before. And who wanted who, and why?
A: I had been working for UPI in Des
Moines for two years and I don't know - I had
sort of a run of good luck for a few weeks.
I got some pretty good stories. The Register
did not buy UPI new service. It was about
three or four days in a row when something I
had written showed up as the banner headline
in the Iowa edition of the Omaha World-
Herald and I was really just on kind of a
roll for a while. So, a little time passed
and I got a call from Ed Hines, who was the
managing editor of the Register and he
wondered if I was interested in a ob. At the
same time, I had become bureau chief in Iowa
for United Press International, a job that I
truly, truly hated. I had really liked being
a reporter for UPI, but you know, you get
these calls every day from people complaining
that the ag markets were three minutes late
on the radio wire and the Davenport
Plains-Democrat had a peculiar deal. They
had the AP news and the UPI picture wire. So
AP would come across with a big story about a
plane crash in the Congo and the picture
editor in Davenport would start calling me,
asking for a picture. And I'd say, "Well,"
[laughter]. There was a lot of things that
would be beyond my control that I was getting
nailed on and I hated it. So I was real glad
to have Hines call me. I went over there one
day and I had never been in the Register
newsroom before, because, as I say, they
didn't take the UPI wire and I didn't know
much about the place. I walked in there and
saw this block-long newsroom with all these
people in it, scurrying about. I think
everyone who ever walks in there the first
time has the same impression. It's kind of a
big deal. So, Hines interviewed me for about
twenty minutes. He had worked for UPI for a
while and he, for about nineteen minutes,
recounted his days at UPI. And he asked me
if I wanted a job, and I said, "Yeah, I did."
So that was it. I think about the process
now, where these people go in there and
they're interviewed for like, two or three
days, by all kinds of levels of editors and
human resources managers. I always think
that must be pure hell and torture for them.
I'm sure I would have never gotten a job
there if I'd of had to go through that.
Q: Why not?
A: Oh, just because I don't like stuff
like that. I like being a reporter and
writing up stuff. I like asking questions,
but I hate answering them. Just a little bit
more about this, about the informality of the
process. Hines and I settled on a salary
figure of $218.00 a week, which was pretty
good darn money in 1969. He told me to come
to work Monday - I don't know, 1:00 in the
afternoon or something like that. So I came
in and Hines wasn't around. I didn't really
know anybody else there and I finally asked
who the city editor was. They said, "Well,
it's Gene Raffensperger. He's sitting over
there at the city desk." So, Gene was
sitting there, grumpily editing some copy,
with a big, black pencil, just marking out
all kinds of stuff and he was growling and
grumbling as he did it. I tapped him on the
shoulder and said, "I'm Larry Fruhling. I'm
the new reporter just hired here." And he
looked up and went back to his work. As it
turned out, Hines had not bothered to tell
the city editor that he hired me. The whole
day went by like that. I just stood there.
I didn't have anything to do and nobody to
talk to. Finally, somebody mentioned to me
that Jimmy Larson, the news editor, was from
a small town in Nebraska and I was, too, and
I thought maybe that would give me something
to talk about to somebody anyway. So I found
Jimmy in the wire room, all these wire
service machines were spewing out these
endless reams of news. But none of it
excited Jimmy very much that day. He was
just standing there scowling at the machines,
so I walked up and said, "Hey, Jimmy! My
name is Larry Fruhling. I just went to work
here. I'm from a little town in Nebraska."
I said, "I hear you are, too." And Jimmy
looked up, and said, "Yeah, I wish I was
still there," and went back to work. So that
was how I got started there. There was no
chair for me to sit on and no telephone and
nothing to do. After about three days, I
just finally started to trying stories and
write them up. I always thought I probably
could have stayed for three years and gotten
a check without ever doing anything. It was
just a very informal place. There was almost
no structure to it. Reporters ran the
newspaper and the editors, which is something
we could talk about later, maybe. The
editors sort of took what they got from the
reporters and stuck it in the paper and that
was about it.
Q: Now, you were general assignment at the
time you were hired?
A: Yes, I was. I got to do that for ten
months before I was kind of forced to go to
work as assistant city editor. We can talk
about that a little bit more, too.
Q: You mentioned your first impression
when you walked into the paper, I mean, it
was pretty impressive?
A: Extremely impressive.
Q: You had worked at a paper before. It
wasn't anything like that?
A: I had worked for UPI for a year when I
got out of college in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Then, I went to a little daily in western
Nebraska, in McCook, which is near my home
town. I had worked there part-time in junior
college and I guess I was kind of the
managing editor there. But you know, when
you have a staff of maybe six people and we
all sat around in a room about this size with
our typewriters. I had never seen anything
like the Register newsroom. It was very
impressive. --
Section 2: Q: And you also mentioned in the bio
sketch - I'm trying to get a physical, to
what the room looked like. The desks were
lined up in a row. They were metal desks and
I heard there were six reporters.
A: Right. There were big, ugly metal
desks that were three abreast, back to front,
so there was room for six people at each set
of desks. I don't know how many of those
there were. It seemed endless. There were
two telephones on each desk, so three
reporters had to share a telephone. If
somebody got on there and talked to his
girlfriend or his wife or carried on with a
news source for three hours, there would be
all kinds of people scowling at him and
butting their heads on the desk, because they
just couldn't get anything done. The desks
had these trap doors in them and the
typewriters folded down in them. There was a
great story about some guy, whose name I
can't remember. This had happened a long
time ago, about him falling asleep at his
desk and putting his head down on it and
getting his head trapped in the typewriter
trap door there and being unable to extricate
himself until he got some help.
Q: Is that local lore?
A: I think its - well, you know, there is
probably some little grain of truth to it,
anyway.
Q: Then, of course, the offices, I guess,
were surrounding the room, is that right?
A: I think that there were only the
managing editor had an office and the editor
had an office - the editor was Ken MacDonald
and I think he almost never used it. I know
Hines, the managing editor, had an office. I
don't know if anybody else did. The rest of
the room was entirely open. There was a
library and we had a couple of artists then,
who mostly drew, maybe these little
half-column maps of you know, Lenox and Des
Moines or Des Moines and Sioux City. That
was about the extent of the graphics in the
Register. The sports department and the
features department, kind of the Register and
Tribune reporters, then the copy desk had a
rim. The main news editor sat in the middle
and all the other copy editors sat around in
a semi-circle and he pitched them stories and
they pitched them back and a copy kid came
and got them and so on and so forth.
Q: Where was the cartoonist? You had a
staff cartoonist, didn't you?
A: Yes, Frank Miller was kind of back in a
corner by himself, but he didn't have an
office room. The one amenity that he had
that the others didn't was a little sink to
wash out his paint brushes. It was all
pretty egalitarian. Everybody was out there
and everybody knew everybody's business and
all of that kind of stuff. You asked me
about the technology at the time.
[recorder off briefly]
A: The technology at the time was a bunch
of old, beat-up Royal typewriters and the
news came in on wire service printers, which
operated off of a big roll of paper, an
endless roll and that went through the wire
service printer and when it got down to a
little nub, the copy kid would take it off
and put a fresh roll on. The little nubs
were what reporters wrote stories on. The
Royals had an old piece of coat-hanger rigged
up behind them and the rolls sat on that.
reporters also wrote stories on these endless
sheets of paper. I think one of the funniest
things I ever saw there, was George Mills,
who was writing a big, long Sunday story
about truck reciprocity late one Saturday
afternoon. And Dick Klein was the news
editor and it was getting late and George was
writing and writing and the story was getting
longer and longer, and close to deadline
time, Dick Klein went over there and kind of
ripped this big, long sheet out of George's
typewriter and looked at it for a moment and
held it up and very neatly folded the top to
the bottom and went down and made a crease
half way. He took his pica pole and ripped
off the bottom part and made a wad of paper
and threw it away and walked off. I thought
George was - he was totally apoplectic.
[laughter].
Q: He made it fit?
A: Well, yes and certainly the only way it
would have fit in the paper, because it was a
real long story. [laughter continues]. --
Section 3: Q: That's funny! And also, let's see.
There were not many women there at the time,
either, as reporters, were there?
A: No, there weren't very many. There
were several - they were probably sixty,
which is what I am now, but they seemed
pretty darn old to me, because I was 28 or
whatever. Generally, they had been hired
during World War II, which took a lot of men
out of the newsroom. And I think that they
did a good job and had good jobs during the
war. I mean, they got to go out and cover
real news. But after the guys got back, they
were sort of demoted again, to writing
recipes and taking re-writes. The most
notable one to me was Lil McGlaughlin, who
was one of the best writers I've been around
in my life. She wrote feature stories and
always kind of grumbled about it, but she was
a beautiful woman who had a beautiful
southern accent and she was just a tremendous
writer and reporter. She was the one who
really stood out. I think the Register, by
that time, was kind of starting to think
about hiring more young women and some were
hired, but not a whole hell of a lot of them,
certainly.
Q: How about minorities?
A: Hardly any. The guy I remember best
was a guy from - well, the country then was
Biafra, which had broken off from Nigeria, I
think. And Ike Nobita was a Biafran, who was
an Iowa State graduate student who worked
part-time at the Register. He was a
delightful guy and he was real smart about
economics, but not too good about journalism.
It always seemed to me kind of perverse, but
the Register would always send him out to
these white suburbs, West Des Moines and
Urbandale, to cover these city council
meetings. I'm sure a lot of people out there
had never seen anybody as black as Ike, who
was truly a coal-black guy. And nobody could
ever get his name right. The common - when
somebody called and wanted to talk to Ike,
some city councilman from Urbandale, they
usually called him "Ike Nupoopadu" which he
thought was hilarious! [laughter]
Q: He didn't like that?
A: He was just a terrific guy. Everybody
loved him.
Q: And how were people in the newsroom to
the women who worked there and also to Ike?
A: I don't think that was any problem. Of
course, my perspective would certainly be
different than theirs was. We would get into
the feminist insurrection in the newsroom,
but at some later point, we'd talk about the
Sioux City plane crash, which was one of the
darndest things I ever saw, what happened
afterwards. I don't know how much you want
to bounce around and how much you want to
stay chronological.
Q: I want to hear your stories, yes, but
that kind of peaked my interest. What are
you talking about?
A: Well, this was something that just
polarized the newsroom, the men and the
women, for months and months. The Sioux City
plane crash was in summer of 1989 - is that
right? Yeah. This giant DC-10 crashed in
Sioux City at 4:30 in the afternoon, which
was no more than four, four and a half hours
before the Register's first edition deadline.
And Sioux City is 200 miles away. I mean,
it could hardly have been farther from Des
Moines and it was obviously an incredible
story. Randy Evans was the city editor and
Randy was like a general whose was being
attacked from all sides and making these
decisions, just like this - I mean, "you go
do this, you go do that." [gesturing]. He
deployed 15 or 20 people, just like that.
And as far as I know, nobody could have
possibly done it better. We got up there
fast and we did a couple days of really good
stories and then we produced this huge focus
on Saturday for the Sunday paper. It was one
of the best stories I have ever been involved
in. It was a minute by minute account of
what these people went through while this
plane was en route to crashing. Everybody
that worked on it just thought it was great.
There was this party Saturday night after
we'd finished this story for the Sunday
paper, there was a Saturday night party. And
I'm skipping something here. Later Saturday,
a bunch of women accosted Geneva Overholser,
the women editor of the paper, who hadn't
been there very long.
Q: Women in the newsroom?
A: Right. Their complaint was that Randy
hadn't sent enough women to cover this crash,
that the women had been frozen out of the
action. They had their point of view and
they're entitled to it and all that, but in
fact, Cynthia Hubert stayed in Des Moines,
that wrote one of certainly the most critical
stories that were involved and a female
photographer went up there. But those are
kind of details, but these women went up and
started making this big scene about being
frozen out of this big story and the guys in
the newsroom, I mean, they were just furious
about it. Because, I mean, we just thought
we'd done a good job and Randy was taking the
heat for it. He was just in a controlled
panic when he was sending all these people
here and there. He wasn't thinking about
their sex when he did it. And this just
caused hard feelings between men and women in
the newsroom that went on and on. The guys
started going to lunch all by themselves. I
don't know what the women talked about, but I
know the men - that's all. We couldn't get
it out of our craw for two months. It would
have been a great story for Columbia
Journalism Review, because Geneva was a woman
and she was new at the job and one of her
first crisis at the newspaper was this
feminist uprising, which was unfounded in my
mind for a lot of reasons. It would have
been a great story. And Geneva, after
listening to this stuff for a while, finally
just put out a memo saying, "We probably have
some problems here, but in this case, Randy
did better than anybody else in the world
probably could have in assigning people to go
cover this terrible thing."
Q: How many women was it that were
criticizing?
A: I don't know - there were probably six
or eight of them anyway. One of them was
Julie Gammick, who wrote a column and never
covered news stories. One of them was
Melanie Lewis, who I had liked and respected
quite a bit, but she had a little cold that
day, so she didn't come to work even. One of
them was Melinda Voss, who wrote features or
health or something. She didn't cover hard
news. They were kind of the ringleaders,
really outsiders from the actual news staff
that was covering the thing.
Q: So that really was never resolved,
until people left -
A: [laughter] Yeah, I guess it resolved
itself. But the incredible thing to me, was
just how people couldn't get it out of their
craw. I mean, it just went on and on. You'd
get sick of talking about it and resolve not
to talk about it, but then half way through
lunch, somebody would start gritting his
teeth and it would all come up again.
Q: As to the story itself, you know, it
sounds like an ideal model of how a story is
going to be covered, especially the hard
news, spot news story like that. How many
people were sent up?
A: Geez, I don't know. I suppose that
there were - I stayed in the office that
evening and night and wrote the story based
on what information we were getting from the
people who were up there. There must have
been six or eight. Because the next day I
went up there. You know, everybody had just
flown out of the office and some of them
didn't have any money or any underwear,
toothbrushes. I remember that Vern Brown,
who was the office administrator, gave me a
thousand bucks to take with me. And I
thought, "Whoo! This is a big story!" So I
was up there working and I was also kind of
the payroll master, I guess, for a while. --
Section 4: Q: Can you talk about those wacky
days of working at the Register? What do you
mean by that? I guess it was the wacky
seventies. Then you went into talking about
the coverage of the Wadena Rock Festival.
A: Yes, just the atmosphere. I mean, I
wasn't prepared for this, I guess. Because I
had worked for the small daily and for UPI
for three years. Those were really
nose-to-the-grindstone jobs. There was
always more work to do than you could ever
get done. And you sat there and worked all
day. I came to the Register and maybe the
most notable example of this was John Van,
who covered City Hall. John was real
energetic and kind of hyper. And he'd come
back from a City Hall meeting and before he
could sit down and settle down and write the
story, he just had to let off some steam. So
he had a big cape and a German World War I
Picklehaube - you know, a spike helmet. So
he would put on his cape and his spiked
helmet and ride his bicycle up and down the
rows in the newsroom until he could settle
down enough to sit there and write the story.
There was the Office Lounge, which was a
real integral part of the Register's history,
as far as I'm concerned, my time there
anyway. It was just across the alley from
the Register building. It's where the
Marriott Hotel is now. If a reporter or an
editor wanted to sneak out, he could pretend
to go the men's room down the hall, and go
down this stairway and through the composing
room and by various routes, he could come out
right at the door of the Office Lounge. The
back door of it was just right across the
alley. And there was a lot of that that went
on.
Q: Was this a bar or restaurant?
A: This was a bar, just a bar. There were
a lot of sane, sober people there who went
home to their wives and children every night
after work and led normal lives. But there
was a pretty big bunch, also, that really
liked to drink and carouse and raise hell.
The Register tolerated it, I guess.
Everybody still got to work the next day and
did their jobs. Maybe I'm talking out of
school a little here, but this is the way it
was. There was a wire editor whose name was
George Hanrahan. Whenever George wore his
red blazer to work, you knew that George was
going to get hammered that night. I don't
know what the connection was, but everybody
knew it was going to happen. And there were
a couple of occasions when George would get
the paper out and close the Office Lounge and
go back up to his desk and call David
Kruidenier, who was the publisher of the
newspaper and start singing "Delta Dawn" to
him at 2:30 in the morning. [laughter].
David Kruidenier was like the nicest man in
the world and I don't know if he ever said or
did a thing about it. [laughter].
Q: That's wacky!
A: Booze was an important aspect of the
Register and Tribune. For better or worse, I
don't know which it was, because I mean, a
lot of times when we were sitting there,
drinking beer with your friends, you do get
some good story ideas, if you can have the
presence of mind to write them down before
you forget them. It was a work thing and a
social thing and it all went together, maybe
more than it should have. But that's the way
it was. I was a reporter for ten months and
then I was on the city desk for two years.
Then I went to work for the Des Moines
Tribune in, I think, '73, covering the
legislature with another guy whose name was
Norm Brewer. The legislature, the last day
had occurred, and Norm and I had to produce a
big long story. I suppose it happened on a
Friday night, probably late. Norm and I had
to write a big long wrap-up story for the
Saturday Tribune. So we were up in the
newsroom, like at 3:00 or 4:00 in the
morning. And we'd had the foresight to get a
six-pack of beer. We weren't sitting there
getting drunk, but we were sipping our beer
and writing this stuff up and having a good
time, and Michael Gartner walked in. He had
just been hired as the editor and neither of
us had met him because we had been at the
statehouse all day, every day. I don't know
what he was doing in the newsroom at three in
the morning, but he walked in and we
introduced ourselves. He said, "You guys
have done a really good job, I think, over
there." And he walked out and he never said
a word about us sitting in the newsroom,
drinking beer. Not a word about it. There
was another - I hope I don't seem preoccupied
with drinking, but like I say, it was an
important part of the way the place worked.
Q: Part of the culture.
A: Yeah, it was part of the culture, for
some of us, anyway. Like I say, certainly
not all. But there was another time when
Gartner had become an executive at the paper,
which was a terrible mistake, but [cough,
cough] for the paper. He and - well, he was
kind of behind this. They tried to put
together a poison pill to keep anyone from
taking over the corporation - this was before
Gartner tried to take it over, of course.
But they formed this committee and he had
recruited some high-powered law professor, I
think from Harvard or maybe from Yale and the
guy flew into town and called Gartner and
Gartner was going to go get him, but he
didn't have his own car. He had to drive one
of these old crummy Fords the reporters and
photographers drove. So Gartner took this
old thing out to get this guy and they got in
the car and they were coming back to downtown
and a light turned red, quickly, in front of
them. And Gartner slammed on the breaks and
there was this whole avalanche of beer cans
that came up from under the front seat.
Gartner came back and sat down at his
typewriter. You would guess that he would
say, "Well, we can't do this anymore. You
can't drink in these company cars." But
instead, he put out this little memo, "Please
clean the beer cans out of the company cars."
[laughter]. --
Section 5: Q: So, what was the story
about Mike? Why do you think it was not a
good decision that the paper took him on in
an executive position?
A: I don't know. First of all, I thought
he was an absolutely brilliant newspaper
editor. And he came down in the newsroom and
set up his desk there and helped people make
stories better and saw stories that they
didn't see, which most editors don't do. I
mean, most editors make stories worse. Most
editors are cautious and careful and Gartner
was always trying to needle a little bit more
out of a story if that was justified anyway,
and make it better than it was. But then he
became an executive and well - I suppose the
story of the ultimate sale to Gannett is
well-known by now. I don't have to go
through that. Gartner put the newspaper in
play. He tried together with the Wall Street
Journal to buy it from the Cowles family. He
did it surreptitiously, without letting David
Kruidenier know what was going on, as I
understand it anyway. That was kind of a
great trick. Because he did that, the
Register was put into play. It was known
that it was for sale. And Gannett ended up
buying it, which I think was unfortunate. I
really felt hostile toward Gartner for while,
about what he had done. But upon reflection,
I mean, this forced Kruidenier to check the
status of the newspaper with the family
members. Most of them were long-removed from
Des Moines and all they wanted was more money
and they told him to sell it. I suppose it
would have come to that in a year or two
anyway. I think that what Gartner did
accelerated the process, but la de da.
Q: Just for the record, Kruidenier was
married into the Cowles family?
A: Yes, that's right. Kruidenier's father
had been a Cadillac dealer in Pella, Iowa,
and he married into the family. Anyway,
things weren't good financially, for the
newspaper. I think there was a year when it
actually lost money, as opposed to making a
little bit. It was no fun working for
Gannett, but I don't suppose it would have
been a lot of fun working for a paper that
was losing money, either.
Q: Talking about Gartner, it might be a
good transition to your distinction between
what an editor-driven paper is and what a
reporter-driven paper is. What is that?
What do you mean by those terms?
A: When I went to work for the Register,
the reporters just came in and did what they
wanted to do. Certainly, if a plane crashed,
somebody had to go cover it or if the city
council was meeting in Clive and there were
some big deals were going on, somebody had to
go cover it and an editor would say, "Go
cover the plane crash," or "Go cover the city
council meeting." But to a large extent,
reports just covered what they wanted to do.
They ferreted out stories and covered them.
They told somebody what they were doing and
did it.
Q: They had their beats?
A: Yea, they had their beats and they knew
what was going on and they were in touch with
sources. All of that drastically changed
over time, for the worse in my mind. That
evolved into editors having endless meetings
every day and sitting in the office and
deciding what was going on and what should be
covered and how it should be covered. Of
course, they didn't know anything.
[laughter]. Well, they didn't. They weren't
out talking to people all day. That wasn't
their job. And it kind of went from bad to
worse, I think, because it evolved to more of
an editor-driven paper, certainly not totally
driven that way. I mean, these are all
matters of degree. But in my mind, then, it
became sort of a graphics-driven paper. You
decided what to cover and how to lay the page
out because you had some stupid graphic of
something or some pretty picture of
something. They decided the newspaper should
look like a television set instead of a
newspaper. And those things became - they're
still over writing importance some days.
They have the dumbest stories on the front
page of the Register, because they have a
pretty picture to go with it or some mindless
graphic. I hate that stuff. I wish that all
newspapers were like the Wall Street Journal
and they had some little, tiny half-column
photo of somebody, would be plenty for me.
But I like to read stuff. I think that
newspapers are for people who like to read
and I think there are a lot of people who
still like to read.
Q: What do you think the rationale was,
taking their side, or trying to figure out
why they would have done this to make it more
of a editor-driven paper. Were they not
getting the stories that they wanted from the
reporters or was it a management cluster
there, to make the final decision?
A: My own thinking, and I certainly tend
to over-simplify and over-dramatize these
things, but I sincerely believe that
somewhere around the late seventies, I guess,
that all these publishers went to some
meeting and they had some consultant,
probably from Belgium because if he's from a
long way away, he must really be smart, get
up and tell them that they should not just
let these newspaper guys in the newsroom
decide what's in the newspaper. They ought
to get out and ask their readers what they
want. So, the Register started doing that
and I think that you could probably draw a
straight line on the Register's circulation.
The first time they had one of these
readership surveys, they were up here, and
then they started having these, plus focus
groups and community meetings and the
circulation went like phttt, like that!
[gestures downward]. No mechanic has ever
asked me how I thought he should change my
transmission oil and I never saw any point in
asking newspaper readers what ought to be in
the newspaper, because first of all, they
don't know. We went through this for years
and there would be one of these surveys every
two or three years and there would be this
big newsroom meeting. The results always
were that the readers want more local news.
So, over time, we had all these meetings,
spaced out a few years, and we always came up
with the same thing, that the readers wanted
more local news. Finally, it occurred to me
to ask whoever was in charge of the survey,
what local news was. And she said, "You
know, that's something we really don't know."
And that was an important question in Iowa.
I remember one of these things, the only one
I ever chose to believe the results of, was
done in the late seventies, when the Register
had a huge circulation. I mean, they had
500,000 readers, which, in a state of three
million people, means that everybody saw the
Sunday Register. And it created a tremendous
cohesiveness in the state, I think.
Everybody sort of felt like t hey were an
Iowan. The result of this survey that I
chose to believe asked people whether they
were more interested in a story that happened
in their block or their town or their county,
or within a hundred miles, or anywhere in
Iowa. And the answer was, it was a local
story to them if it was anywhere in Iowa.
But anyway, we went through all that stuff
and nobody ever defined what local news was,
that all of these readers wanted. It was
just absurd.
Q: It was a waste of time?
A: It was a big waste of time. The whole
idea of this was to be more reader-friendly
and we want everybody to love us and we don't
want anybody to be made at us for anything.
We're going to have these focus groups where
these hod carriers and day care providers and
mathematics professors can tell us how to put
out the newspaper. And we're going to listen
to them. It goes on and becomes more deeply
entrenched all the time. But I got to tell
you, that I'm pretty down on the way things
are now, because I'm old and crotchety and
all of that stuff. But I also think that
there is kind of an ebb and flow to these
things and that someday, all of these
publishers will go to a meeting in Deminie
and they'll have a new consultant from
Hungary and he'll say, "Well, what we've got
to do is put more news in the newspaper."
And everything will be fine. George Anthon,
who is the chief of the Washington Bureau, is
contemplating retiring someday. What he's
doing to do is become a newspaper consultant.
He's going to get one of these sticks with
the laser light on the end and he's going to
charge fifteen thousand dollars a day and
he's going to get a 1922 New York Times and
blow it up great big. Then he's going to
say, "Well, guys, this is what we have to do
from now on. See this page here? It's got
twenty-three stories on the front page and
they all jump. And if you look at the jump,
they're all sixty inches long. This is what
we got to do now." And then everybody will
say, "Yeah! That's a great idea!" You know,
things will change, we'll start having more
room for news in the newspaper and that kind
of thing.
Q: Great! I hope it happens.
A: So do I! [laughter]. --
Section 6: Q: Talk a little bit about the competition
between the Register and the Tribune when you
were there, too. The Tribune didn't close
until '83.
A: '82, I believe.
Q: I've talked to a lot of people about
this, about this competition within the same
company, you know.
A: Yeah, the guy sitting across the desk
from you was your main competitor in covering
the news in Iowa. It was pretty peculiar.
Q: There was competition?
A: Yeah, and people outside of that little
closed society could never really believe it.
But it was really true. I mean, the
Register and the Tribune, as far as covering
state government, at least in politics, had
the best reporters in the state. And there
was nothing in particular the Tribune would
rather do than beat the Register on a good
state government story, because the Tribune
was the smaller paper and the Register always
won all the Pulitzer Prizes and had this big
national reputation. The Tribune was just
kind of this little underdog outfit. I still
identify, to a great extent, with the Tribune
because I loved working there. We beat the
pants off the Register regularly and there
was nothing that we'd rather do. We didn't
care if we beat the Cedar Rapids Gazette on a
story or the World-Herald or whoever. You
wanted to shove it down the throat of that
guy sitting across the table from you. There
were always accusations of people coming in
late at night and reading somebody's carbon
of their story. Or picking up carbon paper
and trying to see from the imprint on the
carbon what this guy had written, that he was
so proud of, that was going to be in the
paper the next day. It was very competitive.
I think the Register sure lost a big edge
when the Tribune closed down in '82. There
was other competition out there but it wasn't
competition that you'd spent some number of
years fighting against.
Q: Was there ever any cooperation on
stories? Since you would have two reporters
there covering the same beat, within the same
company?
A: Not that I know of. I mean, the
managing editor who was in charge of both
papers must have been in a lot of difficult
situations. But I don't recall the managing
editor interfering either. I'm sure that he
knew it was to his best interests to foster
the competition because everybody worked
harder and tried harder. You know, you see
the Register now, it's striking to me. We're
sitting out here two hundred miles from Des
Moines and at least once a week, what strikes
me is that there is a really good story
someplace - you know, in Iowa, a big
international or national story. And it
happens often that that story is on the
inside of the Register, maybe six paragraphs
or three paragraphs. But the next day, the
same thing is on the front page. They seem
to have no kind of visceral reaction to
stories. When the Tribune was there, if the
Register booted it, that night, the Tribune
was sure not going to boot the next day, and
they were going to revel in the fact that
they saw the story and the Register didn't.
Q: [inaudible] about the Iowa reader.
A: [laughter]. Well, there are those that
will assert that, but I think the fact
remains that after twenty-four hours or
thirty-six hours, when it goes like that and
it is on the front page the day after its
already been in the paper once. That happens
all the time. The woman driving her pickup
and three children into the Missouri River in
Council Bluffs. There was some little
sketchy thing in the Register the next
morning and apparently somebody had heard
something and called a cop and the cop didn't
say anything and they let it go at that. But
there was obviously something pretty good
going on there and I think that, in a bygone
day, somebody would have said, "Gee, let's
get three people beating the living hell of
that story." It would have been in the
Register the day after it happened. But
that's just a white motif of the Register
anymore, whether it's a local deal or not.
The illegal Chinese immigrants who suffocated
in the truck trailer in England. There were
53 of them or something? That was another
story that was buried on the inside of the
paper the day it happened and the next day,
of course, it would be front page story and
it was virtually the same story. That's one
of the reasons, I think, is the Tribune and
Register competed and I think that the
readers truly benefited from the competition.
Q: I wonder if things would have been
different if the Tribune had still existed
when Gannett bought the paper, would there be
a different configuration set up, where there
would be more cooperation than competition.
Because like you say, it was good for the
readers to have that very competition.
A: I'm sure that Gannett would have
knocked the Tribune in the head the same way
the Cowles family did, because Gannett has
done that in quite a few places. They took
over the Louisville Courier-Journal and
immediately killed the afternoon paper there.
I think its happened elsewhere, too. --
Section 7: Q: And also in your bio, you mentioned a
series of stories you did on inflation with
Arnie Garson. Can you talk about that, just
as a veteran news reporter. What were the
steps that you went through to bring that
story to the paper?
A: We set out to do this early in 1979 and
inflation had gotten to be a terrible problem
in this country. There was one year that
things cost 12% more at the end of the year
than they did at the start of the year. Jim
Gannon, I think, was the editor then, and
this was his idea that we try to figure out
how this was affecting people and they way
they lived. And we tried to think of the
best way to do it.
Tape One Side Two
Q: I was sitting and talking with people
in the neighborhood.
A: Yes. I mean, the idea was that if the
town were big enough, it kind of reflect what
everybody in the state was going through for
better or worse. So we went up there and
spent an entire summer reporting on this.
That was a tremendous commitment of time for
the Register, for two guys who made a decent
salary at least, to spend four months working
on one story. We stayed at the Holiday Inn
in Fort Dodge and when we checked in the
first time, the corn was about like that
[holds up finger], it was springtime. By the
time we finished reporting, great big old
corn was there. We talked to everybody we
could think of: bankers and farmers and
welfare recipients and social workers and
teachers. We came up with what I think was a
very good series of stories which really told
about what had happened and how people were
adjusting. The ones who had benefited from
it, the farmers, were getting rich. They
were in debt. All farmers are in debt and
all farmers have land. They were paying off
their debt with dollars that every year were
becoming increasingly numerous and worthless.
Meanwhile, the value of their land was just
going through the ceiling. And Fort Dodge,
itself, was basically prospering from all of
this. I guess we kind of went up there
looking for - thinking we would find people
eating dog food because they couldn't buy
macaroni and cheese anymore and then the
story was just the opposite. This sort of
typical Iowa community was doing very well.
So we wrote this big long series that truly
did go on and on. Arnie was very meticulous.
Arnie and I were classmates at the
University of Nebraska and Arnie had started
out in engineering and switched to
journalism, but he still carried his slide
rule in his holster as a student. He was
very precise and meticulous and loved to
figure out things mathematically. We had all
that kind of stuff, a lot of human interest
stuff and it was a good series. That was
going to start running on a Sunday, I think,
in October. The day before that, the federal
reserve board decided they were going to get
rid of inflation so they tightened down on
currency, which didn't really have any impact
for several months - really, a couple of
years. But the story was kind of shot out of
the water the day before this big series ran,
not that it harmed the series any, I don't
think. It was kind of unlucky timing on our
part. We should have finished it up a week
earlier than we did so we could have gotten
it into the paper.
Q: With something that big, how often
would you be sending the stories back?
A: We didn't have anything in the paper
for three months.
Q: Oh, is that right?
A: Like I say, it was a big commitment of
resources for the paper but they thought it
was important, so they did it. I can't
remember how we did it. I think we simply
saved everything up and after we checked out
of the Holiday Inn in Fort Dodge for the last
time, we got a little room upstairs in the
Register and laid out what we had and figured
out what to do with it and did it. It was
another instance where Jim Gannon had the
idea, the editor, and he set us loose and we
just did what we wanted to. We covered it
the way we wanted to and wrote it up the way
we wanted it and the Register stuck it in the
paper and that was it.
Q: How was it that you were chosen to do
an inflation story? Did you have some
expertise or was it just your interest in it?
A: I knew about as much about inflation as
I do everything else, which is about that
much [shows with hand]. I was a business
writer for a year in '79 at the Register and
I guess that's why I became involved in it.
Q: Was it something you wanted to do?
A: Yes. I always loved to get into stuff
like that, that you could really get into.
That would strike a lot of people as adult
subject and maybe it struck the readers that
way, too, when we published it. But I just
have always loved to - that was a great thing
about the Register. No matter what else was
going on there, I still was kind of
privileged, I guess. I mean, I got to spend
lots of times doing kind of deep, long things
and I loved doing it. I really did.
Q: Very labor intensive. Not only the
interviews and all, but the research that
goes with it.
A: Yes, but it's sort of rewarding to
think that you've been able to figure
something out and figure it out pretty well
if you spend enough time and effort at it.
It's simply fun to do. I like knowing more
about things than most other people do.
Besides that, somebody gave me a salary to
find it out. --
Section 8: Q: We talked already about Jimmy Larson.
Anything else you want to add about him,
because you brought him up in your biography.
A: Jimmy Larson was a brilliant news
editor at the Register for a long time. I'm
not sure exactly when he finally got
displaced, but he was the news editor when I
went to work there. And Jimmy always looked
like a bum. He'd come to work with razor
cuts all over his face and he would have
these little tufts of toilet paper stuck on
his cuts. His neck tie was usually under one
collar but not the other one and kind of
flying over his shoulder and he had cigarette
burns all over his white shirt. He looked
like a bum. He looked like some homeless guy
who wandered in there. In fact, a reporter,
Dan Filler, was walking up the street in Des
Moines one night with - I think it was Cal
Holtman. He was kind of a big shot guy in
the Iowa legislature. And Jimmy - it was a
cold winter night and Jimmy had on his big
overshoes that were all unbuckled and his tie
was all askew and he had on this kind of
raggedy old trench coat slung over his
shoulder. And Jimmy was walking around with
his head down. Dan said, "Hi, Jimmy, how you
doing?" And Jimmy kind of "Umf," and kept
walking. They walked a little further,
Filler and Holtman and Holtman says, "Who in
the hell is that bum?" [laughter]. Hiller
said, "That's the most powerful man in Iowa.
That's the guy who decides what's going to be
on the front page of the Des Moines Register
every day!" And Holtman was just astounded!
But Jimmy was brilliant. He could take this
terrible mix of stuff every day and come up
with the best stories and put them on the
front page. Even when I went to work there,
there was a little news meeting at 4:30 every
afternoon that Ed Hines, the managing editor,
ran and everybody would say what was going
on, to the extent they knew what was going on
at 4:30 in the afternoon. And Hines would
sort of pick out all these stories and then
Hines always caught a bus at 5:00 to go home.
And of course, all kinds of things would
happen after that and Jimmy would forget
everything except what was going on and what
seemed like the news to him. And he'd do
whatever he wanted to. There were nights,
there were a lot of nights when there were
breaking stories between editions. Jimmy
would just totally tear up the whole
newspaper, two or three times a night. He'd
run down to the composing room and yell at
the top of his lungs, "Checkers!" And
checkers meant that everything was going to
get moved from one place to another. And he
was just brilliant at it. He loved doing it.
He, too, probably drank more than he should
of. But it never seemed to impair his
ability to put out a great front page every
day. Of course, when we got into all this
committee meetings and focus groups and stuff
like that, Jimmy wasn't really the kind of a
guy for that sort of newspapering, so he got
bucked out of his job. He still works there
as a part-time and still is a marvelous guy.
I mean, I never knew anybody who worked there
who just didn't have the highest regard in
the world for his ability, really. Everybody
not only loved him as a character, but just
thought the world of his ability, however he
did it, to put out a good newspaper every
day. --
Section 9: Q: Were you there at the time Frank Eyerly
was there?
A: No. Eyerly had just gone and Hines had
just been hired when I went to work there. I
only heard about Eyerly.
Q: I heard plenty about Eyerly.
[laughter].
A: He apparently was an irascible hard guy
to get along with, who also was a pretty good
newspaper editor, I think most people
thought.
Q: How about working for Ed Hines? How
was he?
A: Well, the paper had been a pretty wild
place and Ed - he had been a business writer
and he was a very serious, sober guy. He
wasn't very personable, really. But he was
just more serious about everything. After I
was a reporter for ten months, he wanted me
to go to work on the city desk. I was having
the time of my life for ten months, because I
had escaped the drudgery of UPI and was
getting to find out how much fun it could
really be to work for a newspaper. I really
didn't want to do it, but he told I should
and his charge to me was to keep the
newspaper out of trouble, which was the last
thing I was interested in. I mean, I was
having fun getting into trouble. [laughter].
But he was a lot more sober and serious. I
don't think he's a bad newspaper editor,
probably, but he - a lot of people didn't
like him and finally, I think, the pressure
from the staff is what got him dethroned and
Gartner hired.
Q: What kind of trouble are you talking
about? What kind of trouble did the paper
get into?
A: Just writing up stories that got people
upset. There was one - and I still don't
understand this and I never will. But there
has been some kind of a situation in Johnson
County, Iowa City, in which some county
officials were indicted, secretly, for
something. They were indicted and that was
announced but the indictments were sealed and
nobody could find out what they had been
indicted for. That was going on and it had
been going on for a couple of days. One
night about six o'clock, a reporter named
Mike Sorkin found out what the indictments
were for. It was some real low-level bribery
of some kind. These guys had taken calendars
with birds on them from the Caterpillar
Company or something like that. It was kind
of rinky-dink stuff. But Sorkin wrote up the
story and we made it a one-head, which is a
major story. It wasn't a big banner, but it
was a big, one-column headline at the top of
the page and Hines had the first edition sent
to his house by cab every night as soon as it
came off the press. And he saw that story
and called and demanded that we kill it. I
was stunned! Why? He said, "Because nobody
told me it was coming and I don't like to be
surprised." That was the only explanation I
ever got out of him. I mean, it was
humiliating to the paper, because here's this
story in the first edition. All the TV
stations grab the paper of the newsstands so
they can read the newspaper at ten o'clock.
The wire services grab the paper and swipe
everything out of it. So everybody in Iowa
had this story the next morning, except the
Des Moines Register, unless you got the first
edition. I went in the next day. I was
ready to quit except I had a wife and two
babies or I would have. I was just - I
thought it was really humiliating for the
paper. But Hines, he said, "I don't like to
be surprised," and that was all he ever said
about it.
