Section 1: Q: We're talking with Dwight Jensen today,
at his home at 13 Lakeview. Would that be
right?
A: 13 Lakeview Drive, Northeast, Iowa
City.
Q: Iowa City. Today is February 19, 2000.
Thanks for having us in your home, Dwight.
This is quite an honor.
A: Thank you for coming. We're enjoying
it.
Q: Tell me a little bit about - I asked
this question of Pat - how it was that you
ended up at the Register, because you had
been working at the University of Iowa's
Daily Iowan.
A: Yes.
Q: Then, you what? Started sending out
resumes after you'd graduated or somebody
contacted you or how did it come about that
you went to Des Moines?
A: Well, Pat got her job without asking
for it. I didn't. Let me go back. I
decided, I guess, when I was in high school,
that I would like to be a journalist. I
first wanted to be a sports writer because I
wasn't good enough to be an athlete so I
decided I'd be a sports writer. The Register
was a big paper in our home, the Sunday
Register was. On Sundays, I would take Bert
McGrane's - particularly Bert McGrane's
articles in the Sunday paper about various
games and I would sit down and I would
pattern my story about our Friday night high
school game after that. That's what I did on
Sunday afternoons.
Q: Where was your home?
A: West Branch [Iowa].
Q: Okay.
A: I was, at that time I guess, probably
the sports writer, sports editor, whatever,
for the high school paper. It sort of
evolved from that into an interest in being a
journalist generally. I started in the
journalism school right out of high school in
1948 and after a couple of years, I left and
went into the service during the Korean War
and when I came back, I returned to
journalism school and that's the point at
which you picked up the question. After
working at the Daily Iowan - I was editor for
a little while - I got my degree and decided
to do some graduate work and I was an intern
for the University Information Service,
writing news releases off campus on the
campus events and things like that. I just
decided it was time to get out and get a job
and because of the background with the
Register and having admired it since I was a
child, it was what I considered to be the
ultimate journalism job. So, I applied there
and I applied to least one other newspaper,
the Mason City Globe Gazette. I had a chance
to go to both and I picked the Register,
because I thought I'd arrived already, you
know. So that's where it was.
Q: Who hired you?
A: Frank Eyerly.
Q: What were the conditions of employment?
How were you hired? What were you hired as
and what was your pay?
A: I was hired as a general reporter, as
everybody was. You know, Frank would go back
and forth - there was always a debate among
newspaper editors about whether they wanted
to hire graduates from journalism schools.
This was not just Eyerly; this was throughout
the entire profession, whether to hire
journalism graduates or whether to hire
educated people who could be taught to be
journalists. He went back and forth on that
and I just got lucky and happened to come
along at a time when he was willing to hire
someone from a journalism school. He hired
Jack Magarell one or two years ahead of me
and then he hired me in the late winter/early
spring of 1956. The idea was, to come in and
learn how to be a reporter. My pay, as I
remember, was $65.00 a week. I think that
was the normal starting pay, as far as I knew
it anyway.
I started out doing general assignment and
then the police beat. That was what the new
guy usually got to do. At first, I worked
strange hours. I worked the hours and the
days that nobody else wanted to, of course.
In the beginning, I remember getting up from
the dinner table on Thanksgiving, because I
had to go to work and things like that. But
after about six months or a little better, I
got put on the courthouse beat. The
courthouse beat was a beat where you
generally got work the same days that other
people did because the courthouse was open
Monday though Friday. But the Register being
a morning paper, the normal workday at the
Register was 1:00 or 2:00 o'clock in the
afternoon until 11:00 or 12:00 o'clock at
night. I had worked later than that, the
late afternoon to almost 2:00 in the morning
on police, but when I went to the courthouse,
I got to work Monday through Friday, from
2:00 until 11:00, roughly. After about six
months or more of that, I was put on the City
Hall beat. --
Section 2: Q: Can we go back to that? I wanted to
touch on the police and the courthouse beat.
What were the routines of those beats and how
did they compare? What would be your daily
grind? Was there something you could expect
each day or was it always something new?
A: Well, it was a little bit of both.
There was a lot that was something new, but
there were certain things that were routines.
I don't remember that much about the police
beat, but what I do remember about it - well,
I remember a couple of things about it. I
remember that we had a press room in the
police station and this is where you would
hang out. There were some old-time guys
around who covered police for the [Des
Moines] Tribune and there had been old-timers
who covered it for the Register. Maybe there
still were, I can't remember. You would just
go around and you'd look at the police
blotter and you'd check out things and maybe
go out and cover a crime or something. For a
new reporter who didn't have much background
in real day-to-day reporting, other than the
Daily Iowan, it was kind of a mysterious
place. At least I thought it was. I guess I
did okay.
I remember that in the summer, I took two
summer interns in tow to sort of initiate
them into how to cover the police station.
One was Ken MacDonald's son, Ken MacDonald
being the editor. His son was home from
college and working as an intern at the
paper. I spent a little time with him down
there. The other was one of Carl Gartner's
sons. Carl Gartner was the editor of Picture
Magazine for years and years and years and he
had two sons, one of whom did an internship
there for a few months.
Q: It wouldn't have been Mike, would it?
A: No, it was the other one.
Q: The other son?
A: Yes, I think so. Yes. I believe so.
Q: What was mysterious about that beat?
Are you saying that you had a lot to learn or
just -
A: I can't remember it very clearly. It
wasn't one of my favorite assignments. I got
out of it as soon as I could. But you
weren't very welcome, for one thing. The
police weren't very forthcoming. This was a
good many years ago and there were still some
old-time policemen who had joined the police
force in the depression because it was a
place to get a job. I remember one old-time
detective who used to talk with some pride
about taking a suspect in the elevator and
working on him until he confessed before they
got down to the floor where the jail was, I
guess. Things like that. I can't really
describe any better than that, I'm afraid. --
Section 3: Q: Then, you were talking about your
courthouse beat and then eventually, the
city, isn't that right?
A: Yes, right. Well, the courthouse -
here you covered the clerk's office. You
went in and looked at what had been filed
that day and went around - there were several
county offices that you visited, four or five
district judges at that time and you'd call
on them. That was an opportunity to get into
a little bit of political coverage because
there were - the year I was there, there were
some political campaigns.
Q: There was some enterprise reporting?
A: Yes, I suppose.
Q: So you could develop stuff from some of
the sources that you had there?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you have any memories of one that
stands out in your mind?
A: No, not really. I'd have to go back
and look at my old clippings which I haven't
done for years and years. I do remember
covering part of the congressional campaign
for the districts that Des Moines is in, in
1958 or 1956 - I'm not sure which it was, it
must have been 1956 - where Neil Smith
defeated a long time Republican congressman.
I did some of the stories on that, but I
doubt very much whether I was the primary
person on that. There were a few old things
- I need to go back and put these in some
kind of a time frame, but there were a couple
of other interesting stories that stand out
in my mind. One was when a young man took an
airplane and flew back and forth, up and down
Locust and Grand.
Q: Yes, I've heard that story.
A: Everybody got pressed into action on
that. This was one of those stories where we
all had a little piece and it got sent into
the office and put into a larger story. The
other one was the time that [Russian Premier
Nikita] Khrushchev visited central Iowa and
Des Moines and I remember being in the mob at
the Hotel Fort Des Moines when his motorcade
came down there. But I don't remember what
my role was.
Q: How was that story pieced together
about the pilot who was flying up and down
8th Avenue?
A: It would have been, I think, Grand
Avenue and Locust Street. He buzzed the
Capitol and he buzzed the Equitable Building
and I think he went clear back up toward
Terrance Hill and just back and forth.
Q: In other words, you had reporters at
each site?
A: Yes, and there was a place out in -
boy, trying to call up memories from years
ago that I hadn't even dreamed of - but there
was someplace out, on the outskirts where he
decided to put down the plane. I think it
was out around Pittsburgh Des Moines Steel or
someplace like the steel plant out in the
northwest part of town. We had somebody out
there, an old reporter/photographer named
Herb Schwartz from the Tribune, I remember,
was out there. But I can't remember anything
more than that. --
Section 4: Q: I asked Pat - maybe you can describe
what the configuration of the newsroom was,
the fourth floor, because she was talking
about where the women's society department
was and Eyerly's and MacDonald's offices and
the sports desk. Do you remember about where
the cartoonist sat? Could you walk us
through?
A: Yes, I was thinking as I listened to
Pat trying to describe that, how I would.
It's hard without a board to diagram it on.
But the fourth floor at the Register and
Tribune building, which is the editorial
floor, at that time was, at least on the
west, the part that is to the west of where
the bank of elevators are, was all one big
open newsroom. It ran from Locust Street on
the south and 8th Street on the west, I think
all the way or nearly all the way to Grand
Avenue on the north. It may not have been
quite that - I can't remember any windows on
the Grand Avenue side, but maybe they were
there.
In the southeast corner of that area would
have been the library, what we called the
morgue. Along the center of the west side,
the 8th Street side, is where the editor and
the managing editor, MacDonald and Eyerly's
offices were and their secretaries were in an
open space between them. To the south of
that, toward Locust Street is where, I
believe, the editorial writers were. To the
north of that, along the 8th Street side, is
where the news staff sat. There were rows of
desks that were perpendicular to the 8th
Street side. I don't know, six or eight rows
of probably three desks each. So we were in
there all slotted like that.
Q: These were your desks or did they
change from - I mean, if a person came in
with a story, could they just sit at any
desk?
A: For the most part, you had a desk. I
had a desk which was mine. I don't believe
anybody else sat there. I was the third desk
in from the west side, the northernmost row
of these desks. I could sit there and look
down toward the managing editor's office and
see all the other reporters. To the right of
me sat Julie Zelenka, who was one of the few
women. To the right of her, sat Walt
Shotwell and back to back-to-back from us,
behind us, sat George Mills and C. C.
Clifton, the two pre-eminent political
reporters. Cy Clifton retired sometime, I
believe, while I was there, but "Lefty" Mills
was there long after I left.
To the east of us, in the area that would
have been to my left as I was looking back
toward the managing editor's office, is where
the city editor, the state editor, the copy
editors all sat around a Rim. There were two
sets of those, one at our end, for the
Register and one just right across from it,
toward the south, for the Tribune. Pat
described to you where the women's section
was, right outside the space between the
editor and the managing editor's office. I
don't remember that very well. I remember
the sports department being to the south of
the Tribune copy desk area. The
photographers were off to the east, in sort
of the northeast corner of this rectangle
that I'm describing. They had a darkroom in
there and they had their offices and desks
back in that area. As I recall, then, the
columnists sat - well, Frank Miller, the
cartoonist, was along the north side
someplace up there. And the columnists,
Gordon Gammack and some of the others, had
desks to the north, along the north side, in
that area near the north side.
The northwest corner of that rectangle was
cut out for a bank of elevators which went
down to the back, and that's where we used to
come up. The main entrance to the newsroom
was, if you came in from the Locust Street
side, and came up the elevator, you'd go
through the lobby that had the big globe and
all, and you came up the elevator and you got
off the elevator at the fourth floor and then
you'd walk around sort of a curved area that
had big prints of some of the historic front
pages from the Register there. But most of
this, at least my recollection is, that most
of us came in the back way, sort of, which
was the bank of elevators that was behind my
desk. That's probably more detail than you
wanted.
Q: No, that's the kind of detail we're
looking for.
A: Let me tell one other thing, because
the Register and Tribune building has
thirteen floors and they were very proud of
that. This was not terribly old, I think, at
that time. It had been designed by an
architect in Des Moines by the name of Amos
Emery. But the thing that I remember about
it is, this was before air conditioning.
This building was not air conditioned and on
hot days, we had to have the windows open.
And the buses right down on the street below
would blow all their black smoke up at us. I
remember sitting there in the summer, writing
stories at my manual typewriter and
perspiring onto the paper. That's something
that I wanted to get in.
Q: I've had someone else tell me that,
that it was so hot and muggy and smoky. In
fact, I was asking him about the working
conditions and that was the first thing he
thought of. That was an issue, I guess?
A: No, it wasn't an issue with me in the
sense that I thought it should have been
different. We weren't alone in not having
air conditioning. The building was fairly
new, as I recall. It had been a reasonably
modern building and you're talking about the
mid-fifties. This was maybe not
state-of-the-art, but it wasn't far from it,
and this was the norm for a newspaper
newsroom. From that standpoint, I didn't
think the working conditions were bad at all,
but it was memorable that it was that hot,
yes. --
Section 5: Q: When you wrote a story and submitted
it, tell me what the process was. I think it
went from your desk to the Rim, am I right?
A: No. I worked very closely with the
city editor. Now, the City Hall beat - and I
hope I'm not digressing too much here, but
the City Hall beat, which I got to do after I
had been there only about a year or a little
more, was the beat that, at that time, was
uppermost in the managing editor's mind, or
at least it was one of them. He was
exceedingly interested in it because there
had been some difficulties in the city
government. He took a very strong interest
in the newspaper's role in making sure that
things at City Hall turned out the way they
should for the community's sake and good
government's sake. So I felt very fortunate
to be asked to do that. As a general rule,
we worked directly with our city editor or
the assistant city editor. There were one or
two, I can't remember how many, assistant
city editors in addition to the city editor
on the Register side. Very frequently, my
direct relationship, the person I would call
if I was out at City Hall or out on a story
someplace might be the assistant city editor.
The person that I would show my story to
first when I came in might be the assistant
city editor. But it went through the city
desk.
Anyway, the reason I mentioned the City Hall
beat in this context was because Frank Eyerly
took a very personal interest in a lot of the
copy that was written about City Hall. So,
sometimes, although it went first, almost
always it went first to the city desk, it
might go into him before it came out and went
on to the Rim. Or, and this was not unusual
at all, he might have come out and hovered
over me or the city desk while a story was
being written or edited, because if he had
learned about something that was particularly
troubling to him in connection with the city
government from a source outside - a source
in the community, then he would have a
particular interest on that day, about a
story. So it might go through his eyes
before it went to the city desk. Or it might
go through his eyes before it went onto the
Rim. But the normal routing was reporter,
city desk, then to the copy desk, where the
news editor would parcel it out to somebody
on the Rim. --
Section 6: Q: Okay, I have to ask you, since you have
brought it up. Are you saying he took an
interest in what was going on in the city, he
had learned something. What are you talking
about with Frank Eyerly? Did he have some
friends that he either wanted or did not want
covered?
A: No, it wasn't anything like that. It
wasn't anything particularly like that. It
was - and I don't know that this is unusual.
I suspect that it happened at my time there
and my only time in my career on a newspaper
of that type was with Frank Eyerly and the
hierarchy there at the time. But people at
that level at the newspaper were members of
the Des Moines Club and they moved in circles
with the leadership in the community and
these people talked to each other. It was
more that sort of thing. But Frank would
take a very strong interest. He was too much
of a journalist to ever say, "Don't cover
this person," or do it this way or that way
just because he wanted it done that way, but
he had some pretty strong - he was a very
good journalist and he had some pretty strong
feelings about how things should be done
sometimes.
Q: Would copy come back from him that had
stuff deleted or stuff added or notes in the
margins?
A: I don't remember him ever doing it that
way, but then, most of the time - I can only
remember one or two times when he actually
stood around my desk while I wrote a story
and I can't tell you what the specifics were,
because it's just one of those fuzzy things
that's sitting out there. I think, most of
the time he would have already talked to the
city editor or he would see the copy and the
city editor would get his reaction and
whatever -
Q: Who was the city editor at the time?
A: The city editor was John Zug. The
assistant city editor was Knox Craig. I
can't give you any specifics about anything
he ever said change or do or don't do. I
just remember that he had a very strong
interest in it and he watched over it. It
may have been more of a case of telling the
news editor how this story ought to be played
than it was how it ought to be written. I
don't know.
Q: Did he have pet issues or subject
matter that he wanted or that he took a
special interest in?
A: Oh, yes.
Q: What were some of those?
A: Well, he was very - and I think Ken
MacDonald was too - he was very much
interested in the arts. Music. Cultural
things. They wanted to elevate that sort of
thing in the community. As far as City Hall
specifically, I think - before I got to the
City Hall, there had been some difficulty
with a new majority being elected on the city
council. The city manager being fired. I
think there was a perception at the time -
and I'm not sure how the passage of time has
worked on this, but there was a perception at
the time that the bad guys had gotten
control. So we were particularly vigilant.
There was a fellow named Ray Mills who was a
labor leader, who was elected to the council.
There was a man named Bob Conley who was a
lawyer and a south side businessman named
Frank McGowan. The three of them were
elected all at one time and they represented
a different view of the city government than
the west side Des Moines people had favored.
So it made for a little friction for several
of the years that I covered the City Hall.
Q: Not working in the best interests of
constituencies? Is that what you're saying?
A: I would have to say, at this point,
that I think things turned out pretty well
over time. They hired a new city manager.
He was a little more political than the city
manager who'd been fired, who'd been more of
a manager and less of a people person kind of
thing, as I recall. It was just distressing
to some people, but I don't think in the long
run, that the city suffered that much.
Q: Some people being Frank Eyerly
included?
A: Yes. See, they talked to each other.
And they agreed with each other on things
like that. My recollection is that Frank had
at least one pretty good friend among the
older group on the city council. So anyway,
I got a chance to do something that he was
very much interested in and I think it
helped. I think I probably got raises more
rapidly because I was doing work that he was
interested in and because he was satisfied
with what I was doing. And I did it for six
years.
Q: That beat?
A: Yes. --
Section 7: Q: Did you also cover county and state
politics?
A: Well, you see, at the time I went to
the City Hall, I left the courthouse and
didn't cover county anymore, at least not
specifically. The way I got involved in
statehouse coverage was, I sort of wanted to
do it and I guess I must have made it known
that I wanted to do it. The statehouse beat
was a coveted beat and after I had covered
the City Hall for six years, they sent me to
cover the statehouse for part of one year
during an election year. I never thought of
it as anything permanent or anything that
would displace anybody else. George Mills
was the veteran statehouse reporter, as I
recall, and Jack Magarell was also covering
parts of state government and I guess it was
one of those things where, because it was
going to be an election year, there would be
a greater load and they just put me in there
as an added help for a little while. I don't
recall what they did with City Hall during
that period, either.
Q: With regard to your municipal, city
beat, I imagine there were some enterprise
stories that came out of there and series of
stories, of coverage that you did. Can you
recall any specific ones that you are
particularly proud of, at the time, that
involved some investigative reporting and
some real enterprise work?
A: I did an awful lot of the routine
stuff, covering city council meetings and
covering planning and zoning meetings. I
covered things like the planning of the Des
Moines freeway from the beginning. The city
brought in a professional traffic engineer -
something that they hadn't had before - and
we began to get more stories about street
design and things like that. I think
probably - well, it's an interesting question
and I hadn't thought about it.
I won an award from the American Political
Science Association for reporting of state
and local government in 1958. It must have
been for something, but I don't remember what
it was. But the one that I do remember, and
it was one of the last things, I think, that
I did. I did a series of articles on slums
near the state capitol.
Q: This would have been before the
interstate came in, is that right?
A: I think so. I can't remember, without
going back to look up the clippings, which I
have in a box. I can't remember when it was,
but I think it was probably around 1959 or
1960, roughly. I had been exposed to some
stories out of the City Hall where I got into
neighborhoods that I wouldn't have otherwise
gotten into to and I got concerned about that
- and I don't remember how many I did.
Q: When you say 'exposed,' what do you
mean by that? You know, for somebody who is
looking in from the outside, you had sources?
Or you went down and took a look? Or you
got a tip from something that was going on,
with a lawsuit or something?
A: I can just tell you how it probably
happened. I can't remember specifically.
But over the course of those six years, I got
to know the city pretty well, because,
particularly with thing like that planning
and zonings, new housing developments, new
street improvements, problems having to do
with air quality and that sort of thing - we
didn't call it that then, I don't think, but
that's what it was - in the industrial part
of the city, and I would go out and look at
these places. So I saw a lot of the city
that way and that's what I meant.
I did surely develop sources over time.
Every reporter did. A lot of them were city
officials who probably had an ax to grind and
used me to help grind it. Occasionally,
you'd find somebody who was dissatisfied and
would speak to you quietly. I'll tell you -
in those days, there wasn't nearly as much
use of blind sources on stories. We almost
always had to have a statement attributed and
attributed by name. It was very seldom that
you could get by, with my city desk at least,
using an unidentified source or something who
didn't want to be named. It just didn't
work. We didn't do it then.
Q: What do you think about the use of
unknown sources?
A: Well, I'll tell you. I suspect, like
anything else, you can abuse it, but I think
you get a lot more information that way. It
takes more skill on the part of the reporter,
I think, to judge when to do that and when
not to because you can pick up almost any
paper and you can spot a statement that you
think - maybe the reporter wanted to say
that and so he attributed it to something
other than a real person. So I think it puts
more responsibility on the reporters'
shoulders, but I think its okay. --
Section 8: Q: You were saying earlier, that there was
this idea of how they hired people at the
Register - I can't remember, maybe it was
Frank Eyerly at the time, was going back and
forth on would we hire educated people to
come in and they'll learn journalism or are
we going to hire journalists to come in. I
want to know from you, what was your
background in covering municipal, county and
state issues, besides at the DI. Were you an
educated person or were you - you know what
I'm saying.
A: I'd say it was mostly on the job. I
came from journalism school. I did have an
interest in and quite a number of courses in
history and political science, but I didn't
have any direct experience and I didn't have
any really heavy academic work. My work was
much more on the practical side than it was
on the government side. It's just that my
interest was in government. That's where I
gravitated. But I can name some reporters -
well, I'll tell you what. I don't believe
that Don Kaul came from a journalism school.
I don't believe that George Anthan did. They
both came while I was working there. Nick
Kotz came while I was working there and he
came from a very strong liberal arts and
economics background, as I recall. I think
he had done some work at the London School of
Economics or someplace. Anyway, he had a
very strong academic background. And Dean
Fischer was hired that way, too. He had - it
may have been Dean that did the London
Economics - anyway, all those guys came from
other than journalism schools, as I remember.
So, it went both ways.
Q: What's your opinion? Which is better?
Or are there positives to both?
A: Well, you know, having been a graduate
of journalism school, I always thought that
was the way to go. But I'm not sure that
that's an absolute at all. I don't think
it's necessarily easy to take just any old
educated person and make them a journalist.
Some editors seemed to think that, or used to
think that. I think there are some
principles and some ethics and things that
you learn in a journalism school that you
might not learn otherwise, but my feelings on
that aren't nearly as strong as they used to
be.
Q: What are some of those principles that
a journalist needs to have, as a working,
professional journalist?
A: Well, of course, other than being able
to write and being able to put things in
concise terms, understanding the subject that
they're writing about, which are all basic,
you need to have a strong sense of the
responsibility that you have, I think. And
you need to be aware of the consequences of
how you exercise it. That may be sort of
obscure language, but I'm not sure how to
describe it. I mean, it seems to me that the
ultimate danger is the kind of thing that
seems to be taking hold on the Internet where
you can just put anything out there. It's
not that simple. I don't think it's as
simple as you tell everybody everything and
then let them decide. You need to be sure
that what you're dealing with is the truth
and that you put it in a context that it
comes out like the truth.
Q: You're a gatekeeper.
A: You are! Yes, you are, very
definitely. Yes, and it's a very important
role. It's a big job. And it takes a lot of
personal character to exercise it properly, I
think.
Q: I asked Pat this too, but what is your
concept of objectivity?
A: Whoa! Well, I start from the premise
that everybody is human and they view things
through their own prism. But it seems to me
that you can take facts and relate them in
ways that minimize... .
Q: Your own influence in the story, right?
A: Yes, you should try to, yes.
Q: Okay. And I guess you would see that,
too, on a police beat, especially, where
things are almost cut and dried, but still,
you have to have a perspective.
A: Yes. I think you do see it there as
well as other places. There is a tendency, I
think, on the part of a lot of journalists,
and I think I was guilty of this too. You
tend to see things as 'this is something that
everybody needs to know about whether they
want to know about it or not, and I'm, by
golly, going to make sure they know about
it.' I don't know if there's anything wrong
with that, really, but it's not always
realistic. --
Section 9: Q: And you read the paper, the Register?
Tell me what you think about it, reading it
today as compared to what it was when you
were there.
A: Well, I'm disappointed in it and I'm
not alone, by any means, on that. I was very
proud to work at the Register and I did
think, at the time that I worked there, that
it was one of the best newspapers in the
country. And I think it was. I think, you
know, we might be talking about, among the
10, 12 - 15 best newspapers in the country.
I mean, there are some others that are pretty
good too. It had developed, over time, a
long history of being the preeminent
newspaper in the state, newspaper of
statewide influence, and statewide coverage.
I'm sure that, from other people you'll get
more detail than I could give you about how
Gardner Cowles and Harvey Ingham came down
from Algona and bought up newspapers and made
it the state paper. During the time that I
was there, I would hear stories from my
colleagues about some of the greats who were
there ten, fifteen years before. One that I
never met but heard a lot about was an editor
named Stuffy Waldows. And then there was
Ding Darling and there was W. W. Waymack and
there were a lot of people who were there and
gone before I got there, but there were some
really great journalists there at the time
that I was. During that time, the Register
flew out into the state to cover stories,
still had its own airplane, still had the
peach sports section, had a four or five
member Washington Bureau together with the
Minneapolis papers that were also owned by
the Cowles family. During my time there, we
sent Gene Raffensperger and others out into
the state to open up bureaus in Davenport and
Waterloo and Iowa City and Dubuque, I think,
and some other places, because we were going
to have bureaus in the major centers in the
state. The result was that you considered
anything that happened within the state to be
a story that was of concern and while there
might have been some inevitable Des Moines
bias, there wasn't the kind of Des Moines
bias that there is now.
Now, I understand what's happened to
newspapers economically and the economic
realities and all, and I can't make a
judgment as to whether this was inevitable or
not. But I just think it's lamentable that
it has happened because living here in Iowa
City, we don't get a newspaper that is that
meaningful to us from Des Moines. I take it
because I'm involved in some things that
happen in Des Moines but I really do
seriously question whether even that I
couldn't get just as well from the Cedar
Rapids Gazette, frankly. The other thing
that we prided ourselves in, and I used to
hear Frank Eyerly talk about this, was the
editorial section. The team of editorial
writers who were top flight people and I
think probably still are. I used to hear
Eyerly talk about how we take more syndicated
columns than anybody and then just steal out
the best and give our readers something that
you can't get anywhere but the East Coast and
that sort of thing. They probably come close
to that still, but not as much as we did
then.
But those were all the things that I thought
made the Register a really, really fine
newspaper. There were only - I'm not sure
whether there were more than three or four
other papers in the country that had the kind
of statewide influence that the Register and
Tribune had. I think it was a very strong
influence on the development of the state and
on the sense of cohesion between Des Moines
and outlying areas where there is always
going to be some tension because of the
rural, urban conflicts. So, that's how I
feel.
Q: Sometimes I just lose my train of
thought here.
A: I gave you too much in one shot!
Q: I had asked Pat about this also, but -
okay, the Des Moines Register was not only
Iowa recognized, but it was nationally
recognized.
A: Yes.
Q: I mean, one of the best in the country.
A: Yes.
Q: And one of the reasons, some people
have said, that Washington politics, New York
politics, even the West Coast, looked to the
Register to get a feel for what the rest of
the country was doing. I mean, you talk
about Iowa, but then, the Midwest and then
the heartland, in general, you think that's
true or maybe they could have gotten that
from the Kansas City Star or the Chicago
Tribune? What made the Register something
that stood out among these people out east
and out west?
A: Well, I don't have any direct knowledge
of that. But I do think that if you're on
either coast, and you want to find out what
the sense or what's going on in Middle
America, you would go to one of the great
newspapers. The Kansas City Star was one of
them. The Louisville Courier Journal was one
of them. The Minneapolis Star Tribune. The
Register. I don't know that we had any
monopoly on that. But I can remember Editor
and Publisher and other organizations
publishing lists of the best newspapers and
the Register and Tribune would usually be in
the top 10-12, in that particular period that
I remember. So, I think that's why other
editors would look to us.
Q: And also the fact that it was Iowa that
was covered. I mean, the Register covered
not just Des Moines or not just central Iowa.
It was rare when you found a newspaper in a
state that covered the entire state.
Stringers, correspondents, and like you say,
flying out.
A: The only other one that I can think of
is the Courier Journal, which at one time,
did the same thing in Kentucky, I believe.
Q: What do you think we've lost, not
having that kind of coverage? Why is it
important?
A: What I think we've lost is the sense of
cohesion that having a newspaper that covers
the entire state can help in gender. And as I
said, it may be that it's just one of the
economic realities today, that we can't have
it anymore. But I think that's what we lost.
You could identify - people in the far
reaches of the state have difficulty
identifying with other parts of the state
anyway, and with Des Moines in particular. I
think you could identify more if you had a
newspaper that was including you in their
orbit.
The motto of the Register was "The Newspaper
Iowa Depends Upon." I used to get derisive
comments from people who were mad at us.
George Mills will tell you that having
somebody mad at you means you're doing your
job. That's one way to look at it. But
people would say to me, "it's a newspaper
that depends on Iowa," and they would twist
that slogan other ways. It's true. The
Register did depend on Iowa and Iowa depended
on the Register and I think we were better
for it. At that time, anyway. --
Section 10: Q: There's something else that you brought
up in your letter to me and in our talks on
the phone. The Register covered Iowa because
these other communities weren't able to. A
lot of these small communities had small
papers that were almost novelties for some of
these local Chambers of Commerce. Talk about
the distinction between the Register, the Des
Moines Register as it was when you were
there, and a community paper serving,
perhaps, the Villisca or Grinnell, even.
A: Okay, yes. Grinnell has got a pretty
good newspaper, by the way. But the Register
applied resources to the coverage of news
that nobody else could. Most small
newspapers are so limited in the resources
that they can put to news coverage that they
have to rely on wire stories, they have to
rely on things that people send into them.
In the public relations business, it's
actually automatic that you can get little
newspapers to use any news release you send
out because they need something to fill up.
The other thing about it has to do with the
quality of work they get, because little
newspapers can't - they don't pay people
enough and they aren't able to keep the
really good ones long enough for them to get
trained in the area and in what they're
doing. The Register, when I worked there,
had people who had been there for 30 and 40
years. I mean, Mills and Cy Clifton are two
examples. But there was Nick Lamberto, there
was Allen Hoshar, there were a whole lot of
people, and that's just on the Register side.
The Tribune had them too and sports had
them. There were just a whole lot of people
who had been there for 30-40 years. Maybe by
that time, they were starting to burn out, I
don't know. But at least there was a history
there and there was a body of knowledge and
experience there that the smaller towns would
not be able to replicate.
Q: Do you think that there is a role for
some of these smaller community papers in
that, even though they may be indebted to the
Chamber of Commerce or people's public
relations departments, of a way of getting
the news out, where they wouldn't otherwise
have it.
A: Oh, of course there is, sure.
Q: You know, you've got birth
announcements and things.
A: Oh, yes, there are all kinds of things
that small town newspapers can and should do
that any larger newspaper isn't going to be
able to do. One of the things about the
Register is that it was always a small paper.
That is largely because there was a business
decision made in the early years to keep it
small so it wouldn't be so expensive to truck
it out into the state. You go to most cities
of the size of Des Moines and you're going to
find a big, fat paper. You go to Milwaukee
and the paper is huge. The Des Moines
Register was one of the few papers, and I was
never on the business side so I can't speak
in any depth on this, but it was one of the
few papers around, I understood, that got
more of its revenue from circulations than it
did from advertising. If that's true, then
that provides an economic reason for keeping
it small. So the news hole is always tight.
There is no way that the Register at its best
can cover all the thing that a community
needs a local paper to do. But I think what
that means is that most people need to read
more than one newspaper.
