Section 1: Q: You can't really like somebody until you
know what you dislike.
A: I guess.
Q: What was the occasion where they sent the
Waterloo bureau reporter to Houston.
A: We went there for a fellow by the name of
Steven Hadley, who had worked for the John
Deere Credit Union. He took a million
dollars from them one day. It's a long
interesting story, of course. He left his
wife and kids and took off with two suitcases
full of money from the John Deere Credit
Union. He took a new identity and for a
while nobody knew where he was. He was gone
for three, four or five years and all of a
sudden they got him in a Houston suburb. It
was a Waterloo story so I had been covering
it all the time. When they got him, they
sent two of us to Houston. I got a call this
one morning that said, "Can you get to Cedar
Rapids by 12:30 and get on a plane to
Houston?" John Carlson and I went down there
and spent three days there digging up stories
about him. I had a real shot of getting to
him in the Harris County Jail in Houston, and
he refused. The people in the jail were
trying to help me get the interview, but it
was up to him and he said no. For a while, I
was real hopeful. That could have been a
good one.
Q: How did the final product turn out
otherwise?
A: Good, we did a nice piece which splashed
on the front page of the Sunday Register
about him and his motivations and what he had
been doing. We talked to people who knew him
who couldn't believe it and all of this
stuff. His second wife wouldn't talk to us,
but his neighbors did and it was good. He
had left his wife here and had acquired a new
wife. She was a very nice lady, too. --
Section 2: Q: Were there other times when you were sent
to another state?
A: Not very often. I , one time, went to
Florida for three days to do some
feature-type stuff for Picture magazine. The
other time was short notice and they sent me
out with a photographer to New York State to
interview Katherine Koob, one of the hostages
who was on the return.
Q: I was going to ask you about that. Talk
about that interview. She was from Iowa, but
you got the story before she got back to
Iowa.
A: Yes, just the background a little bit.
All the time the hostages were being held in
Iran and she was one of them. She was
originally from Jesup, Iowa, just fifteen
miles east of Waterloo. She had a sister
living in Wellsburg. The sister in Wellsburg
was acting as the family spokesperson
throughout this ordeal. I did a number of
stories with her and got to be pretty close
with her and her husband. When the hostages
were released, the sister in Wellsburg and
her husband were being flown to the east
coast to be there when Katherine came home,
and other family members also. The Register
sent a photographer and me on the plane with
the sister and husband from Wellsburg. My
assignment was to get an interview with
Katherine Koob, no matter how. I thought
this would be tough, maybe impossible. I
said, well, give it your best shot. They were
going to fly into New York State and they
were going to be put up at West Point. But
they were going to be sealed off from the
press. The family was going to get to see
them. So, on the plane sitting next to the
sister, I wrote this short letter, note, to
Katherine Koob, explaining who I was and that
I would like to get an interview. I just
made it sound like this was something that
would really be good for her. I gave it to
her sister, Vivian, and asked her to give it
to her sister. She agreed. Fortunately, I
had an old Army buddy who lived near West
Point, about ten miles away. I hadn't seen
him since I got out of the service in 1956.
I called him up and, at first he didn't even
remember who I was. Finally, he remembered
and I explained the situation and I asked if
we could meet and if I could use his place as
a base. On this letter that I wrote, I gave
the telephone number of my Army buddies' home
ten miles away from West Point and said she
could call me at this number. We landed in
Washington and rented a car to go up to New
York and I rendezvoused with my friend and
his wife. We explained this all to them and
they got all excited about being part of the
whole thing. That was on a Saturday. Sunday
they flew them in from Frankfurt and they
took them by bus to West Point. The next
day, Monday, the photographer and I go over
to my friend's house. We were sitting around
and I'm thinking that the next day they're
going to take them down to Washington and
they're going to be at the White House and
stuff like that and nothing is going to
happen. About ten o'clock the phone rings
and my friend's wife answers and says, "Yes,
he's here." I got on the phone and it was
Sgt. Bruno out at West Point and he said, "I
understand you would like to interview
Katherine Cogg. I'm prepared to bring her out
at 2:30 this afternoon. Where do you want to
meet?" We agreed on the Central CafŽ in
Highland Falls. He said, "I'll be driving an
old brown Chevy." My photographer and I were
pumped. We leave my friend's house and we
drive over there to Highland Falls to scope
it out. There were about 300 news people
there. This little town was crawling with
news people. I said to the photographer,
Dave Peterson, that we really had to be cool
about this because they would spot her. She
was very recognizable and if they spot her,
it would be havoc because they would be all
over her. So we just acted cool.
Q: They weren't expecting her to be there?
A: Outside, no. This was just strictly for
us.
Q: That's what I thought. But why where the
newspeople there to begin with?
A: They were looking for anything. It's just
this packed journalism like you see with the
Kennedy thing and all this. They were just
swarming. We just acted as nonchalant as we
could be. We had a lunch, and as the time
approached we started to get nervous. I'm
kind of leaning on a parking meter in front
of the cafe, and pretty soon this old car
comes and I knew it was them. They pulled up
right in front of the cafŽ and it was
Katherine Koob and her parents. These were
elderly people who don't move fast. In the
meantime, we had alerted the people in the
cafŽ. They got all excited and got a back
room ready for us. Anyway, they pulled up
and she gets out and I greet her and tell her
to come in. We get them in and luckily
nobody spotted them. We got them in this
back room, and this Sgt. Bruno said, "I'll
give you a half hour. I'll be around and
I'll pull up in the alley in back." Anyway,
we had a half hour, stretched into
thirty-five minutes. I very seldom ever do
this, but I did it in this case. I had ten
questions written down to start with. And so
we got in and sat down and I start
interviewing her. It went real well, she was
a good interview. I was getting it on tape.
I seldom use tape recorders because in the
early days we didn't have them and I didn't
come up that way. But I did use a tape
recorder then. I got it all on tape with
notes also. In thirty-five minutes, one of
the restaurant people came in and said,
"There are some newspeople out front.
They're snooping around like they know
something." I thought it was time to go
anyway, so we took Katherine and her parents
and hustled them out through the kitchen, out
the back door, and Sgt. Bruno was there. We
put them in the car and away he goes. We had
them. Now, we go back to my friend's house
and I get on the phone to Des Moines and I
tell them what's happened and they were
excited. Fire away. I had a fax transmitter
then, so by now it's four o'clock in the
afternoon, three o'clock Des Moines time. I
wrote about a twenty-inch story, just a
regular story. I sent that, and then they
said to do a Q&A, so I started going through
the tape. You won't believe how much is on a
thirty-five minute tape, as far as number of
words. I had no concept of this. What I was
doing was typing, listening to a phrase,
typing it out, listening to another phrase,
and I just went non-stop for about four hours
doing this. I'd get a page and take it down
and transmit it to Des Moines. I just kept
doing this until I got the whole thing sent
to Des Moines. The next day we had a banner
headline. I can show you that page, too.
Once you opened it up, you had a whole page,
an entire page, with a picture on it, of
question and answer, question and answer. I
know this for a fact, this was the very first
interview done with any of the hostages from
Iran on US soil after they got back. It was
all by luck. A little enterprise, but mostly
luck.
Q: Pardon my ignorance, but what would have
happened if she hadn't called back and hadn't
agreed to the interview? Would that have
been a lost trip, or would you have dealt
with her sister?
A: Not entirely lost because that was on a
Monday. On Tuesday, they went to Washington
and had a big deal at the White House, which
I went to. I had done my story and was
carefree and enjoying my couple of days out
there with the excitement and everything.
The Washington bureau was taking care of me
and getting me press passes to the White
House and everything. I went to that and
that was Tuesday. The next day, she had her
own press conference out near her home in
Burke, a Virginia suburb. I went out to that
and by then, there were people from the
Waterloo Courier and KWWL. I would have
covered that just like they did. I would
have had something, but it certainly wouldn't
have been anything close to what we did get. --
Section 3: Q: You also interviewed the so-called oldest
woman in Iowa?
A: Yes, that was an experience. The poor old
lady spent all her time in bed except on rare
occasions. I had made arrangements to go up
and interview this lady. I can't remember
her name now. 110, the oldest person in Iowa
at the time. They warned me and said, "She
doesn't communicate very well." They got her
out of bed and put her in a chair and wrapped
her up in a shawl. She probably didn't weigh
eighty pounds. She was almost a skeleton.
They told me to speak real loud because she
didn't hear well. I had to get right up to
her ear and practically shout questions at
her. I would ask her a question and sit
there and look at her. She just sat and I
hardly knew if she was breathing. About the
time I was going to ask it again, her lips
would start to move a little bit and I'd get
my ear up there. I probably got responses to
six or seven questions and those responses
were just barley audible. I kind of had to
fill in some blanks.
Q: What was the story? Was this a human
interest story?
A: I asked her about the old days. She had
been on a covered wagon and had come out to
the Midwest. She had come here, then maybe
to South Dakota and Kansas and then back.
Her family kind of jumped around a little bit
until they settled here in Iowa. I wanted
her to tell me what it was like. She threw
out a few little things. As I say, I had to
fill in some blanks. Frankly, it didn't turn
out to be that good of a story.
Q: I imagine there were a few others too like
that, where you think you get an interview
and a story, but the interview just doesn't
come through for you.
A: Sure, that would happen. --
Section 4: Q: You also mentioned that you didn't write
your questions down most of the time. Maybe
talk about that idea. It seems to me that if
you've got something in mind or an angle, you
would want to make sure to get the basics
down.
A: Well, sure there were times. Of course,
that one time with Katherine Koob where it
was great to have something written down. I
don't know, I just never got into that habit
and I never felt that you got as much
spontaneity to it. I like interviewing when
it was more of a conversation. Rather than
ask this question and it sounds like you're
reading it and they respond and you move onto
the next question. I never thought that was
very effective. I would just try to get into
a conversation and as you're telling me
something, something else comes to mind and I
ask it. Ninety-eight percent of the time
that worked well.
Q: Well, I am going to have to read a
question. [laughs] One of the issues that
came up in previous interviews was the
difference between community journalism with
country papers as opposed to the objective
news coverage that you could get in a larger
metro paper that has stood more by the
journalistic principals. Making sure you
don't have any of your bias involved in the
story. Any comment about an editor that is so
active in his or her community that they are
trying to mobilize the leadership to do
something in support of that community as
opposed to what journalism conventionally is.
A: I have not had experience in that
community journalism, but I've heard about it
and I've heard people talk about it. I think
there are times and places for that to
happen. I'm glad I was never involved in
that because I'm much more of a person who
thinks that if you're a journalist, you are
going after the facts, the good along with
the bad. And if something you write is in
anyway detrimental to the cause, that's too
bad. But if it's the facts and something
people should know, then it better be there.
I can understand particularly in small
communities where you want to get a bond
issue passed or you want to get a new
library, the newspaper is all for it and
should be for it editorially, that's the
place for it. But in the news coverage, if
somebody points out that this is going to
cost more than they're saying it is and
there's some support for that, then you had
better print that, even though it's going to
hurt the cause. I just firmly believe that.
I feel sorry for these small town editors who
get caught in that and they want to be
journalistically pure and yet know that in
doing so they are not only going to hurt the
effort, but they're going to get criticized
for it. People say, "Why do you put that in
the paper when you know we are trying to get
this library?" It's tough. I sympathize with
them.
Q: I wonder if there's a role for it. Maybe
you wouldn't call it journalism, but you're
writing about and for the community.
A: I've heard arguments there that if it's
for the good of the community, and it very
definitely is, then the paper should go out
all for it. I still say you do that on your
editorial page. You can write articles about
this new library, my example, and how much
good it's going to do the community, which is
true. Make good solid news out of it, quote
people and run the figures and all that.
It's good, decent journalism and yet it's not
promotional. Then you go to the editorial
page and write an editorial saying that we
must pass this bond issue and get this
library. To me, that's the way to do it.
But to be the cheerleader, I draw the line
before that. --
Section 5: Q: With regard to the Des Moines Register,
talk about the differences that we see today
as opposed to what it looked like before,
based on how it reads, what it looks like,
its internal policies. I know you retired in
'96, but you saw the transition from what
happened when the Cowles were running it and
when Gannett ran it. Did you notice things
differently under the new ownership?
A: Yes, and it didn't happen overnight. Of
course the one thing that everybody notices
and talks about is how the Register had
pulled back from the state to central Iowa in
emphasis. That had actually started before
Gannett took over. In all fairness to
Gannett, that was a trend that was beginning
a bit before they came in. Those of us who
saw that bit by bit were disturbed about it
at the time. But we thought, when they were
pulling back and stopping home delivery in
little towns way out in the corners, we
thought we could understand it. It certainly
wasn't practical and saved money. I know one
instance where a paper deliverer had to drive
eight miles to deliver one paper somewhere up
in northwest Iowa. I understand that you
can't do that very much. So to streamline
that with everything we were saying. Then
Gannett came in and of course Gannett
initially said, "We're not going to mess with
your product. You've got a great paper and
we're not going to tell you how to put out
your paper and what your paper should say."
I think everybody believed them. I think
what happened is that they didn't march into
the newsroom and tell us what to editorialize
and cover. But what they did do was to put
in fiscal restraints. They kept budgeting
and budgeting and budgeting to make more
money. Cutting the budget really dictated
what the newsroom could do. That's what's
happened. I could point to little things.
One year, maybe around '94 or '95, they
decided that they no longer would send
photographers to University of Iowa football
games out of state. Well, maybe if they were
close games like Illinois or Wisconsin, but
not to Indiana or Ohio State. The Register
had been doing this for years and years. It
was just one little thing, but it was one of
a number of things like that. Cut down on
travel, not only out-of-state, but within the
state also. Just pare down, pare down, pare
down. Another thing, people would quit and
they wouldn't get replaced for a long time.
They had a "dark time" or something, they
have term for it. This was built into their
budget. I don't know exactly what the
percentage is, but I've been told that built
into their annual budget is a certain amount
of dark time. In other words, instead of
having a full staff of two hundred, at any
one time we don't have any more than 180. In
other words, there are twenty positions that
are open and not being filled and, of course,
not being paid for. That was a way of
reducing your budget. Eventually, the
positions would be filled, but by then some
others had quit.
Q: On the average, you would still be at 180.
A: Yes. That's just a figure I throw out.
That's not the actual figure. It's that kind
of practice. If they just say that we're
going to have 180 employees instead of 200,
that's one thing. But to me, it's deceptive
and deceiving to purposely string it out so
the position is open for eight to ten months.
There are some positions that you can't fill
right away, I understand that.
Q: Any other internal policies that changed
with this internal budget squeezing that was
going on?
A: They have done some of, what I call,
rather underhanded (if that is too strong a
word) things with long-term employees whose
salaries have built up over the years. I
think they've been quite unfair to some of
them. Not me. I left under good
circumstances on an early retirement offer
that I thought was very fair. I had no
personal complaint. I do have some
complaints about how some of my friends were
treated. Long-time employees were given
negative annual reviews and, one way or
another, were forced out. Had they stayed,
life would have been miserable in one way or
the other, so they left. I think it's been
very done very cleverly by management in some
cases, as a way to get rid of higher-priced,
long-term, valuable employees and replace
them with younger people that they would pay
a lot less. Not that these weren't good
people, but they weren't experienced people.
There were several people, I won't mention
their names, but they were victims of that.
And some of them were very, very good
journalists.
Q: People that are still there?
A: Most of the people that I'm talking about
are gone. They've left because of this
manipulation.
Q: I've heard examples of people who were
there in higher positions who were demoted to
points where they were lesser paid.
A: There's a good example of one who was an
editor and just simply refused to write bad
reviews when they weren't warranted. That's
really what editors were forced to do was to
write negative things in reviews so people's
salaries would not be raised. This one
editor, who at one time was my editor, the
city editor, and was probably the best editor
I ever had as far as somebody to work with.
Just a great guy. He was in another
department as an editor and he just refused
to do that. His integrity wouldn't allow him
to do it. He was demoted. "You don't do
that. You are now a copy reader."
Q: Can I ask who that was?
A: David Witke.
Q: Other people that you saw that happen to
that are still at the Register today?
A: Probably. I can't think of an example
right off-hand. --
Section 6: Q: Jack, what do you think of the look of the
paper. I assume you still read it.
A: I do. It's still a very good paper. I
want to say that initially. It's still a
paper I enjoy reading and I look forward
every morning to it. As far as I,
personally, am concerned, it's not as good a
paper as it once was. That's got nothing to
do with the fact that I'm not working for it.
Tape Two, Side One
Q: We were talking about the look of the
paper and that you thought it was still a
good paper.
A: Sure, of course it's a good paper. I
don't think it's as good of a paper as it
once was. Particularly for the outstate
editions. As far as Des Moines readers, it's
a better paper. But still, it's a good
paper. The things I'm critical of are the
stories are not as complete or sometimes
fairly superficial. That's not the
reporters' fault, not necessarily the
editors' fault, but just because there are
restraints. I know that there's a rule that
no more than two stories can jump off page
one. Consequently, you get some major
stories that they're covering in eight inches
on page one. Well, eight inches is not
enough for some of these stories. I just
think that 's foolish. The one thing that
newspaper had over television is you can do
it in detail and depth. If you're given ten
inches on page one and that's all you can
write about the budget situation, you're not
getting much depth.
Q: That seems to be a Gannett standard.
A: That is, that's not a Des Moines Register
rule. Just because I'm thinking of it right
now, the way I think about the Register, I
think of two different papers. I think about
the Register back when I worked for it up
until sometime in the eighties, maybe, as one
Register and the Register today as a
different paper. I know it's the same paper,
but to me it's almost like two different
papers.
Q: I know we touched on this earlier in the
interview, but I just wanted to expand on the
difference between bottom-line journalism,
what you're going to make this quarter, as
opposed to what the duty of the newspaper is
to the reader.
A: I think the newspaper, whether it be the
Register or the small town weekly, I think it
has a definite responsibility to its readers.
Number one, it has to make money. We all
know that, you can't have a losing business.
And it is a business. So you have to make
money. The thing of it is how much money.
Some newspapers will be content to make five
or ten percent, and Gannett is not content at
that. Making money comes number one for them
over its responsibility to its readers. I
think it should be about equal. You have got
to make money, but I think there is a
definite responsibility to your readers to
inform them of what they should know and do a
decent job of it. I think the Register used
to do a great job at what their mission was.
Covering Iowa. I do not think they're doing
a great job of covering Iowa now.
Q: They might tell you, on the other hand,
that the readers aren't demanding it. That
the stories they put in the paper are what
the readers want.
A: Right, and they'll tell you that their
mission is not to cover Iowa like they did.
If that's it, so be it. That's their
decision. We used to say it's their railroad,
they can run it the way they want to. For
me, personally, it was a better, more
interesting, more comprehensive, better
product years ago than it is now.
Q: And we know that it is focused more on
central Iowa and Des Moines than it was. How
are Waterloo stories being covered with the
closing of the Waterloo bureau?
A: If there's a lot of story significance,
it's usually done either by phone, somebody
will have a reporter in Des Moines telephone
people here, or they'll pick it off AP. If
it's big enough, they will, on occasion, send
somebody here. Though it has to be pretty
major.
Q: When you were at the bureau, were you
given guidelines as to what stories you would
be looking for? Parameters. Stories for the
Sunday paper or something else?
A: Just only in very broad terms. I was
given a lot of latitude in that way. What I
thought would be a good, interesting story,
whether it would be feature or a news
happening--where something had happened in
the last week or two and you went in and did
some in-depth backgrounding and reporting on
it and really explained the situation. I
thought those were good stories to do. There
were assignments from Des Moines. It wasn't
all my decision by any means. They certainly
assigned stories and most of them I thought
were reasonable assignments. Once in a
while, I thought it was a nothing story. But
they wanted it, so I did it.
Q: I know it's unusual in a newspaper
business, but did you have an immediate
supervisor that you reported to?
A: Day to day, I would report to what we used
to call the state editor. They call it metro
Iowa editor now. I would work through him or
her. I talked with him every day on the
phone and just told him what was going on and
what I planned to do. Find out if he had
anything he wanted me to do.
Q: So this was a kind of reporter paper.
We're not talking about editors sitting down
and deciding what was going to be coming out.
A: Not until recent years. Then there was
more and more of that. They would decide
what they wanted you to do.
Q: Even when you were there?
A: Yes, the last few years it was more and
more that way. They would have a meeting
sometime in the morning to figure out what
was going on. They would come up with
something and decide to have Hovelson in
Waterloo do it or something. Or Wally in
Cedar Rapids or something. I would get an
assignment to do it. I was here in Waterloo
and I figured northeast Iowa was my
territory. Every once in a while, they would
have a story in Council Bluffs and they
didn't have anybody in Des Moines to do it,
so they asked me to do it. I had to do it by
phone, which was all right, but it was kind
of out of my territory. That was happening
more and more.
Q: What happened to your own story ideas when
this became more of an editors' paper?
A: Well, if I had something I was working on
but they had something they wanted, they won.
Unless my story would override this other
story, which occasionally it would. But if
they wanted something, I would have to drop
whatever I was doing.
Q: Were there specific instances where you
felt you were really dealt a bad hand?
A: Yes. Of course. There were times like
that, but I think that's going to happen with
any paper. There are just going to be that
natural disagreements between reporter and
editor about what you should be doing. That
is going to happen. I think it's happening
more and more often in later years. --
Section 7: Q: As we're wrapping up here, here's an
opportunity for you to talk about your
feelings about when the Waterloo bureau was
closed. The decision made that they no longer
needed a person out here.
A: I guess it didn't surprise me a great
deal. I was disappointed, although I wasn't
too surprised. It all fell into the pattern.
They were tightening up and I'd been with
the paper for 28 years and I was one of those
long-time employees whose salary had built up
over the years. I was reporting out here in
the state and they were concentrating on
central Iowa. It was pretty inevitable that
they would eliminate the Waterloo bureau when
I chose to take the early retirement. If
they were going to replace me, it would not
be with somebody in Waterloo, it would be
with a reporter in Des Moines. I don't know
if they ever did that. I couldn't keep track
of if somebody was hired as my replacement. I
don't know. Anyway, even though I wasn't
totally surprised about it, I thought it was
a bad move on their part. One reason being
that Waterloo and Cedar Falls still do not
have a morning paper other than the Des
Moines Register. Whether they have a bureau
here or not, I don't know how much of a
difference that means in their circulation.
I don't know if you can determine that. It
was another responsibility to their readers.
They are the only morning paper we get
delivered here. I think they owe us
something. I think they owe us more than
stories about the Clive sidewalk project.
They are taking up space with that where they
could have written a Waterloo story or a
Decorah story, or even a story out of Georgia
that's of more interest. I've said that
before.
The other thing that they've done, and this
one really gets to me, is that the paper that
we got here and in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City
and Dubuque, all in eastern Iowa, was the
second edition that had basically a ten to
ten-thirty deadline. It came off the presses
beginning at eleven. That was fine. We got
in sports, in particular. We got in the night
games. They got covered and you got them the
next morning. They put a pencil to it and
decided that if they cut that edition out and
put all of the out-state papers on first
edition, which has a much earlier deadline
and rolls off the presses beginning at nine
o'clock, or maybe earlier now. They put it
all on that. Consequently, we don't get any
of the evening news. Particularly in sports.
But anything that happened at night,
otherwise, we don't get. Let me give you an
example of how that's bad. Ames had a bond
issue on something this spring. I can't
remember what it was, but I thought it was
pretty significant. They had a couple of
advance stories. They still had an Ames
bureau. The reporter there wrote a couple of
advance stories and I was interested in it. I
thought interest throughout the state.
Because of the deadlines we're on, the vote
was on Tuesday. Of course, the result was not
in on time for the paper we got on Wednesday
morning. Thursday morning, I pick up the
Register and there's no story about the Ames
vote result. Nothing. We were never informed
by the Register how that came about. I
finally found out by emailing the Ames bureau
reporter and asking her what happened a week
later. That's just one specific example of
how we get short-changed because of the
deadline change. The edition change. It
happens with baseball games. If it happened
last night, we won't read about it in the
Register until tomorrow. Now it's two days
old. That type of thing. That's a real
disservice to a lot of readers who have been
good, loyal Register subscribers for many
years.
Q: I imagine they're thinking that the local
paper will cover that story for the people
that are interested in it and otherwise
somebody like yourself in Cedar Falls will
have to scramble.
A: If you live in Cedar Rapids, you get the
Cedar Rapids Gazette. Fine. You will get it
the next morning in the Gazette. I wrote a
long letter to the publisher, Barbara Henry,
and explained that I thought it would be a
good business decision to include
Waterloo/Cedar Falls on a later edition just
because of this fact that we don't get any
other morning paper. This county has been a
good subscriber to the Register.
Q: A good market.
A: Yes. We are talking 125,000 people. --
Section 8: Q: Jack, just to wrap this up. You are the
advisor to the student paper at UNI. Is that
correct?
A: Yes.
Q: What can you tell the students over there
who are looking to pursue a career in
journalism as to the state of journalism
these days and what they might expect and how
they might change it?
A: [laughs] I don't know if they can change
it. I do talk to them about this from time to
time, because there are some who are
interested in going into it. For one thing,
they have grown up with computers. They are
used to working with them and putting out a
paper with a computer because that's the way
they do it at the Northern Iowan, the paper.
I don't have much to tell them on that
because I didn't grow up with them. For me,
it was kind of a culture shock to go from the
clackity old typewriter to computers. For
them, it's just natural. I do forewarn them
that I don't think they can expect to have as
much voice in the operation as we once had as
reporters. The trend is away from
reporter-driven newspapers. These are
editor-driven papers now. Management. There
is a very good book out, something that I've
read about when MBAs run the newsroom, I
don't know if you're familiar with that. But
this is what has happened. The newsroom is
run now...in newsroom management, the first
thought is business and not journalistic.
It's just where the priority is. I forewarn
them of that. Newsgathering is different. I
worked four months on USA Today on loan.
Reporters there come in and sit down in front
of the computer for eight hours and get up
and go home. They call up all this stuff on
computers and that's where they get half or
more of their information. Then they make
telephone calls. I worked there for four
months and it was a great experience, but I
didn't like that way of reporting.
Q: What's wrong with that?
A: I suppose there's nothing wrong with it.
In some ways, there are some advantages to
it. You have quicker access to more
information, no question about it. What's
wrong with it, you don't get the personal
touch. It would be like you conducting this
interview with me over the phone. I don't
think you would get as much out of it that
way. You don't have the personal contact.
Being where it's at and talking to people who
know about it, you just can't capture that
any other way. I know it's not always
possible to do that and you have to get
things electronically and telephone and all
this sort of thing. But to just sit there
all day and call up this information and sort
through it and put it together. You come out
with good information and good readable
stuff, I guess. To me there's something
bland about it. You just don't get the feel
that you can by actually being there.
Q: Has the newspaper career been satisfying
to you?
A: Oh yes. Newspaper people rank pretty high
as complainers. We do a lot of whining, I
guess, even when things are good. It
certainly was a great, fulfilling experience
for me. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
Q: If you thought you had another fifty
years, how would you feel about that?
A: That's a good question. The problem is
that if you've done it one way for so many
years, like people my age did, and then have
to make the changes. I know one thing the
management at the Register keeps saying is
that people shouldn't be resistant to change.
I agree with that if the change is for the
better. The problem is that a lot of the
change that I see I don't think is for the
better, nor do my colleagues. People like
Flansburg, for example, whom you talked to.
We see some of those changes as being for
financial reasons and not for journalistic
reasons. That's what we object to. If I had
another fifty years, it would be tough
because I remember the way it used to be. I
think that's true in so many things, not just
for journalism. But for somebody starting
out now, fine. They don't have that to
compare it to. It's the good old days
mentality, I guess. Some of that you have to
throw out because of the sentiment and what
not. I still feel that we are not doing
quite the job in some areas that we should be
doing.
Q: Great, those are my questions.
