Section 1:
Q: You talked about socializing with a
group of people. I'm trying to get a
connection here between KRNT and the
Register, because there was a time when you
working at KRNT and there were plenty of
others, including Walt Shotwell and I think,
Bob Asborough had worked there. What was the
connection there?
A: At one time, I really don't know - I
think the Cowles family owned both the
Register and the radio station. At one time,
the radio station was on the top floor of the
Register. Elizabeth Clarkson Swartz was one
of the people that used to help out up there
at the radio station, too, I believe. So,
anyway, Les Van Dyke was a news editor, I
believe. My connection with them was they
asked us to help put on a farm program once a
week. And J.F. Russell, my boss and I and
two or three others, would go up to the
studio and I did a little thing called "Farm
Week in Review" or something like that. We
just had kind of an easy-going relationship.
I didn't get any pay for that first part, but
later on, when they went on television, we
did get paid for it. I was a regular paid
participant. They just needed somebody who
could talk about farm stuff. And I could do
that, so I did. I had to get up early in the
morning to do it. There was a good
relationship between the two.
Q: Were they trading employees? Were
Register people going to KRNT and KRNT people
coming back to the Register?
A: I think there could have been some of
that, of KRNT people coming back, but not
much that I recall. I don't recall much of
that.
Q: Was the news department at KRNT
considered a serious competitor with the news
department at the Register?
A: I didn't consider it so. I don't yet.
I don't think it touches in news, the
television or radio either one. I don't
think they came close. All they can do on
radio is give a very short capsule of what
the news is about. They can't even go into
detail.
Q: So when you were on KRNT, you were also
employed by the Register?
A: Yes.
Q: Okay, I see. I thought that maybe that
was your job.
A: No, my main job, my day job was the
Register. But I did get paid by both. I
suppose I had to have approval to do that, I
don't know. I don't remember asking for it.
The way we eased into it with the farm
department. Maybe somebody had to ask to
approve that. But it was just kind of a
neighborly thing that we did. It wasn't any
difficult thing for us. We didn't get paid
for it, so. --
Section 2:
Q: Now, in the fifties, you were working
under Russell? What's his name?
A: J.S. Russell.
Q: Then he died in a car accident, I
believe. And Don Mum came along. Where were
you all this time? You were still the
editor?
A: See, there's where the titles come in
that are difficult to explain, really. The
title of farm editor - that's what J.S.
Russell's title was. That's mainly a farm
writer, chief farm writer is really what it
should be, I would think. So, when Don Mum
came on the scene, I don't remember what his
first title was, but he was being, I think,
being groomed to supplant J.S as chief farm
writer. So, that's one thing. The other
thing is, the business of Iowa Farm and Home
Register, this magazine, needed an editor and
a staff and they had different titles. Like,
Larry's was news editor, I think and I was
assistant news editor. So, that's why it's
kind of confusing. About that time, I was a
copy editor, so I seldom had any stories in
the paper. I wrote stories, but not get
byline stories. You didn't get byline
stories automatically, like now. Everybody
gets byline stories now.
Q: You had to earn them, I think, back
then, didn't you?
A: Yes. I hope I haven't confused you.
Q: No, but I'm trying to get a feel for
it. You were also involved with the Women's
page? Or was it the Home page?
A: No, Home and Family.
Q: You worked on the society page of the
Home and Family, is that right?
A: It was called a society page. But its
true name was the Home and Family section. I
think I told you on the phone one day, that
when I went from the Farm section to the Home
and Family section, Ed Hines asked me if I
would take that job. I was going on vacation
at that time and I said, "I'd like to think
it over while I'm on vacation," because I was
a little reluctant to head up a department
composed completely of women, except for the
top guys. But then, I talked to Larry
Hutchinson about this. He had moved over
from farm department to Home and Family and I
would supplant him. He was retiring. So I
talked to him about it and he explained that
the subject matter was as broad as you could
make it. He said, "Home and Family covers an
unlimited number of subjects, whereas in the
farm department, it almost had to be a farm
story or you couldn't use it." And that was
confining to me. But the idea of opening up
this world to anything involving home or
family was exciting to me. And that's why I
took the job. It's really why I took the
job. And it proved to be right. He proved
it right. It was a much more exciting job
than in the Farm department.
Q: You said it was all women that were
under you?
A: It was all women. That was one concern
of mine. How does that work? Well, actually
it worked perfectly. I don't know about
perfectly, but it worked fine. I got along
with those women just fine. I had a great
bunch of women and a lot of talent. Frances
Craig and Mary Bryson and Carol McGarfy and
Peggy Sederhar. I can't remember them all,
but a great bunch of women and I got along
fine with them. I got along great with them.
I still do. We still get together and hug
each other when we see each other. I think
the world of those women.
Q: What was your concern at first?
A: I don't know. Well, there was some
concern about being a man and being head of a
women's section. I mean, that's what they
were called then. I think there was kind of
a gender thing. I wasn't sure that I would
handle that well. But I found out my fears
were nothing to worry about. Russ Shock
preceded Larry. He was the first man to head
up the all-women department. Then Larry was
the second man and I was the third man. So I
did have some predecessors. And Larry was my
immediate predecessor. Also, when Larry was
appointed assistant to the managing editor -
that was a new title - he was over both farm
and women's. But we'd been working together
for ten years, so I felt more secure with his
description and the way he outlined it to me.
Q: [inaudible comment] Do you wonder why
they didn't promote a woman to that position,
since they had such a good group of women who
were writing there anyway?
A: They had a woman before Russ Shock.
Suzette Abbott was head of that department.
At that time, it seemed to me that each woman
had her own little role. Suzette's was
strictly society and personals. Peggy Heppy
was weddings and each person had his own
little role to fill. There wasn't any
overall, somebody managing it overall. You
know what I mean?
Q: Yes.
A: When Russ Shock moved in there, he
assumed kind of an overall role. I didn't
see much change there and there wasn't much
change, even with Larry, I don't think.
Larry, I think, loosened things up a little.
He had, especially from a visual standpoint,
but that's about it there. --
Section 3:
Q: What about that transition from the
society page to the Home and Family, because
there was a call for those kinds of stories
to be written, back in the thirties, forties
and fifties. But then there was this change,
kind of a gradual change, that went to more
featuring human interest and you were there
at the time.
A: Yes, I was. I think I wanted that, I
liked that idea much more than strictly
society. And I did encourage it. I think I
did help it a lot. What I did, I believe,
was taking a more democratic approach to
running the department. I started having
these monthly editorial conferences. We'd go
over to the YWCA and bring sack lunches or
else get our lunch from the YMCA and sit
around a table and brainstorm. Think of
ideas that would make good stories. Then,
Mary McGuire Bryson, she was Larry
Hutchinson's right hand man and she became
mine, too. We were great friends and she had
a good head on her shoulders and she'd write
down all these ideas and we'd kick them out.
Everybody came, from Lois the copy editor, to
the top writers. And everybody offered
ideas. We'd bounce them around. I think
that was one of the best things I ever did,
was open this up and let everybody
contribute. Then we would go back and Mary
and I would go comb through these ideas and
usually -
Q: [interrupts] What were the story ideas
about?
A: Story ideas. What is happening in
their lives and then, their lives were as
different as the world. So, some of them
were just young mothers, some unmarried and
some older women. So they had experience
from all ages and they had ideas about
different things. So we'd sort through those
ideas and prioritize them and assign when
they were due and give them plenty of time to
develop the stories. That's one of the
things that I think is good, is giving a
reporter enough time to search out the
stories and research it and develop it.
Sometimes they abuse that, but in the long
run, it was a good thing. So that brought
new life into that Home and Family section.
Then we could forget about society news;
weddings and engagements.
Q: But clearly, there were women that had
been reporting that stuff for a while. Was
there any resistance to this effort to get
away from the society announcements and
stories, as such?
A: Oh yes, sure.
Q: What kind of resistance?
A: I don't think there was any resistance
within the department. Maybe there was, but
I didn't feel any resistance.
Q: Not the people that were writing
stories?
A: No, but some of the organizations did.
They were used to having their clubs and
activities played up well in the paper. I
thought that that news was not as important
as some of these other things. Trying to
understand the misunderstood or trying to get
humor into the paper. I loved humor! Pat
Cooney was a great humor writer. She was
good. She would come up with an idea and I'd
think to myself, "That sounds kind of dumb."
But if you gave her head, she'd come back
with a real barnburner of a story. Funny as
hell! Some people can be humorous in their
speech, you know, and that's one thing. But
be humorous on black and white paper is
another thing. Well, she was humorous in
writing. She was humorous both ways. She
had a great talent.
Q: What's the term that you are using when
you say, to give her her hat? Is that what
you said?
A: Give her her head. I mean, let them
go. Don't cramp them or try to structure the
story for them. Let them develop their own
stories and their own styles. I really think
I only refused one - I didn't refuse it. I
remember one story that Frances Craig wrote,
that I never used. That was - it just didn't
cut the mustard. She went to Europe, to
Scotland and came back and wrote a travelogue
that went on for pages and pages. I turned
it back to her to try to trim it down. I
think an editor can trim about ten percent
out of a story, if he wants to. But when you
have to trim fifty percent or something like
that, that's too much. So I asked her to.
Mary McGuire Bryson did one, too. That's two
stories.
Q: Why is it hard to trim fifty percent of
the story and it's not hard to trim ten
percent of the story?
A: Well, I wouldn't say it isn't hard to
do ten percent, but fifty percent - you
really have to cut and slash, you really have
to.
Q: You're losing a good portion of the
story.
A: Yes, you're losing the guts of the
story. But Franc (Frances) had just too much
detail, which was very interesting to her,
I'm sure. But it was not to the average
reader, I don't think. Mary Bryson did a
story one time about chores around the house.
How to do spring cleaning or something like
that and my gosh! She had everything under
the sun that you could think of. It wasn't a
bad story in the first place, but there was
just too much. Jim Gannon used to have a
rule of thumb, that a story - in those days,
you pasted the stories together, the copy
together, one page onto the next one. And he
said the stories should be no longer than the
height of the writer. [laughter]. So if you
held up a story and it was longer than your
height, why then, it was way too long.
Q: Not a bad rule of thumb. Did that
work?
A: Oh, fairly good. I mean, we had some
tall people [laughter]. Mike Gartner chewed
me out one time for long stories. But
they're right. Sometimes, they do get too
long. They get carried away. --
Section 4:
Q: With the society page - I'm trying to
get into this transition here, too, because
this was not only the Register making a
conscious decision here, that they were going
to do fewer of these social announcements,
but there was a cultural change, too, coming
on.
A: Yes, I think so.
Q: What do you think precipitated the
move?
A: This was in the sixties and the sixties
was a generation - none had come along like
that before or has been since. They were
into cohabitation and we tackled those
stories, too. Gays - stories about gays. We
tackled a lot of stories that were unusual at
that time. But I think that's what people
wanted to read. They were well read stories;
I think. I think that there is no question
that there was a cultural change that
coincided with this. But you could - and
some papers did, I think - just stay in that
same rut, of reporting society news. I was
glad to be free of it. I did everything I
could to pull away from that - or we did. I
don't say "I." And I think the women in the
department supported that. I don't think
they wanted to be just writing about
weddings. One aspect of that revolution was
- I got a call one night from a reporter on
the Register, who said, "There is a woman at
a meeting that was castigating the Register
for not using men's pictures with weddings,
with engagement announcements." And she
wanted to know why we didn't. And I was
unprepared for this quizzing. I was on the
other side; I was being questioned on my role
as editor and so I said, "Well, I don't know.
We've always done it this way." And that's
true. We always had done it that way. And I
wasn't anxious to run pictures of men,
anyway. That just seemed to be falling more
into that groove of society, engagements,
weddings, all that stuff. Maybe I was na•ve,
but I didn't think she was writing this for a
story, that she was going to quote me in the
next morning's paper, but she did. And boy,
did Mike Gartner - I met him in the hallway
the next morning. She called him, too.
Q: She quoted you in the Register?
A: Yes. She quoted Mike Gartner, too, and
in his quote, I thought he was kind of
supporting my view, but when I met him in the
hallway, he cut me dead that morning. I got
the message that I had done something wrong.
There was no question about it.
Q: So what was his response?
A: Well, his was kind of, as I recall it,
a non-committal response. It certainly
wasn't "We've always done it this way,
therefore we're going to continue to do it."
I don't remember if I was there when we
changed to including men's pictures or not.
Q: Let me be clear. That woman was
writing for the Register and calling you to
quote you about why men's pictures weren't
used.
A: Yes.
Q: And she was writing, what? For another
department? Or did you know who she was?
A: She was writing for the news section.
Q: Did you know who she was?
A: I don't remember who that was, now.
Q: So when you were talking to her on the
phone, it seemed more informal?
A: Yes, I just thought it was -
Q: And that brings us to the story of the
rule that every wedding story had to include
both the parents of the bride?
A: Yes! [chuckles]. There was a lot of
anguish with every wedding story, especially
where a man was the father of a child and
then he walked away. He just left them. He
left a single mother with a child. Well, the
Register insisted that the names and
addresses and everything of the father and
the mother, and the fact that they were
divorced, I think. Or the fact that he left
home. They wanted the whole ball of wax
included in the story. And I just thought
that was unnecessary, really. All it did was
cause a lot of subscribers to be unhappy,
digging up old facts about their earlier
life, I didn't think, had anything to do with
it.
Q: . . . saying that the fact that all the
information that the Register wanted,
including the bride's parents and whether or
not the father had left them or not, the
Register wanted to include it and you didn't
think that was important.
A: I didn't.
Q: That it had nothing to do with the
wedding.
A: I didn't think, for a wedding
announcement, that it was that critical. But
it was a rule that was very firmly entrenched
when I came into the department. The first
year that I was in that department, I did
pretty much go along with the way things
were. I didn't try anything new much that
first year. I had to get my feet on the
ground first. But then I started agitating
for either easing up on that rule or
abolishing it all together. I really wanted
to abolish it all together. It not only was
aggravating for the mother, but it was
aggravating for the editors because you had
to practically give a genealogy before you
could write a wedding story. It was time
consuming. So I kept agitating with Frank
Eyerly and Ken MacDonald to get rid of that
rule. And I got nowhere. They said no. The
idea was that it was not responsible
journalism to omit that. One day I happened
to notice an obituary which had the same
situation involved in the obituary. So I
clipped it out and sent it in to Ken
MacDonald and said, "If it's okay to omit
this information in an obituary, why isn't it
okay to omit this information in a wedding
story?" He sent be back a little note
saying, "You win." So we dropped that rule
thereafter. I think there was a big sigh of
relief among all those women who were writing
the weddings, because it was a big headache
to us, as well as to the people involved. We
came to the decision, and this was with Dave
Whitkey, who was involved in this decision, I
remember, of letting people determine what
they wanted in their own wedding stories. It
was considered that after all, this is
something that goes into the scrapbook and
the only people that care are the bride and
the groom and maybe their parents. So that's
what we did. --
Section 5:
Q: Did you ever come across any ethical
dilemmas when you were a reporter or when you
were an editor, and I'm thinking in terms of
getting too close to your sources? Or
conflict of interest that you saw? Or
perhaps, advertisers having some influence?
A: I always thought that advertisers had a
lot of influence. And I used to fight it,
tooth and nail. It seemed to me that every
time I said something favorable about
Younkers, they'd come out with a big ad that
promoted the very same thing that we were
talking about. So I talked to an official
from Younkers one day, and he said, "Oh, no.
We plan these things way ahead." That made
me feel a little better but now days it seems
that they go out of their way to mention
advertisers' names. There is no effort made
to keep them separate. And I think maybe
that's probably a good idea. I don't find it
offensive to me, if they mention advertisers'
names. I just don't like the idea of being a
tool of the advertiser. I don't like that at
all. I'd rather just go ahead and do our own
thing. If it happens to help an advertiser,
that's fine. But I don't think you should
set out with the idea of helping the
advertiser. The whole attitude has changed
on that, though, I think. Maybe it is all
right.
Q: From what to what?
A: You see, issues where they have, say,
like recently they just had a garden section.
It looks to me like the editorial people
kowtow to the advertisers, by writing about
things that they are going to advertise. You
know what I mean?
Q: Yes. Do you have a problem with that?
A: Yes. I don't have a problem now. I
mean, I worry less about that now, than I did
then. But when I was an editor myself, I
worried a lot about it.
Q: But even as a journalist, do you think
there is any integrity being compromised
here, when that kind of behavior is just
being tolerated?
A: I think so. That's why I didn't like
it before. But I think if you take the fact
that you're doing this to help the reader,
that might put a little different slant on
it. So you help the advertiser in doing
this, that's just accidental. If we didn't
ever talk about McDonald's hamburgers, that
cramps our style. But if you are going out
with the idea of writing a story to provoke
interest in buying McDonald's hamburgers, I
think that is hurting your integrity.
Q: Do you see that happen? At the
Register?
A: I think the division between news and
advertising is less sharp now than it was
then. One other thing that I might mention,
as far as - I forget what your question was. --
Section 6:
Q: It had to do with ethical dilemmas.
A: Ethical dilemmas, okay. The Register
is pro-choice, editorially speaking, very
obviously pro-choice. So when they named me
editor of the Home and Family section, which
obviously involved pro-life or pro-choice,
that could conceivably put me in a awkward
position, or the Register in an awkward
position. But, I was never - nobody ever put
any pressure on me to write anything
pro-choice, even though I was very much
against pro-choice and still am. My attitude
on that was if I have to put something in
about abortion, I would put in a pro and a
con. I'd go that way, rather than pick out
one or the other. There was only one really
strong pro-life story that I published
shortly before I retired. This was a story,
I forget where it came from, but it told
about abuses in abortion clinics. I think I
was justified in using that. Earlier I
mentioned the art design and what they did
for this page, was very distasteful to me. I
shudder at the appearance of the page. The
appearance - it had some big jagged thing
coming down the middle of the page and I
didn't like it at all, but there again, that
wasn't my baby - the appearance of the page
at that time, that was all in the art
department. So, I just went with it.
Q: What was it that offended you?
A: The appearance of the page. The
illustration that went with it.
Q: Can you describe it for me?
A: All I remember is some jagged thing
coming down the middle of the page. I don't
know what it showed.
Q: It was probably meant to illustrate.
A: I suppose it was meant to illustrate
some of the abuses in the abortion clinics.
I don't know. I would rather of had a blank
page, just a page of type, than to have an
illustration like that. But the morning that
that was printed up, they hang down in the
composing room, they used to hang up the page
booths over the chases where they were
working. And when I came in, a reporter who
was very much pro-choice, was objecting to
this to the news editor.
Q: The story?
A: Yes, trying to get him to kill it,
really. And they stuck by me. The news
editor stuck by me. I had pretty strong
backing even higher than that. Jim Gannon
was very much in favor of the story. But
this is an ethical thing that's hard to cope
with something like that. Out of fairness to
the paper and to the management, there was
never any pressure put on me to do it either
way, one way or the other. And there could
have been. There could have been a lot of
pressure for me to put pro-choice or
pro-life. I don't think they would have done
that, but pro-choice, they could have, but
they did not. Nobody ever did.
Q: It sounds to me like you had
established a reputation for taking stories,
writing stories, in a balanced way.
A: I think so. On that score, my
predecessor, Larry Hutchinson, asked me about
something similar. It wasn't quite the same
situation but he wanted to know if he was
presenting a balanced story. And although I
didn't agree with everything that was in the
story, I thought he did (present a balanced
story) and he ran it.
Q: Do you remember what the issue was?
A: I don't. I rather think it had to do
with birth control or something like that.
But you get into these areas and they are
sensitive areas and differences of opinion
are rampant. I didn't want to abuse my
position as editor by citing with one side or
the other.
Q: So when you come across a dilemma like
that, where you have some very strong
feelings politically, what are the things
that you look for in a story, before you make
the decision to go with it? I guess
newsworthiness would be one.
A: Now, I think that that last story that
I told you about, I think the news story was
overriding anything, whether I was on one
side or the other. I think the importance of
the news story did override the issue.
Conceivably, I could have been on the other
side, too. Well, I did. I think I did on
occasion run stories that were against my own
personal beliefs. --
Section 7:
Q: Now, the changes in technology - I'm
sure you've seen plenty of those.
[inaudible].
A: I tell my kids I've been through three
revolutions in technology. When I first went
to the Register, we worked with big, fat
yellow pencils and paper. At that time, we
were using hot type, that is hot metal in big
chases.
Q: Big what?
A: Chases, they called them. They were a
framework for the page. And the hot metal
slabs were locked into that big framework.
Then, they went to cold type, which does away
with that metal. They were just thin pieces.
I think the first ones were actually
aluminum or something like that. I don't
want to get into all the technical aspect of
it, but that was a big change. Then we went
to computers. The first computers really
were horrible. The commands that you had to
give for a headline, say, would be like
[gestures] six inches long and a lot of
gibberish, just full of gibberish, that the
text had introduced. But then we got the
second wave of computers, with a big
improvement. You could say, if you wanted a
two-head, you just punched in a number two
and you'd get a two-head.
Q: Two inch head or what?
A: They called them two-heads. They were
two lines of a certain sized type, 30 point
or something like that.
Q: A two-line head headline, right?
A: Yes. Or 2-24 was two lines of 24 point
type and two columns. But they had
simplified it. Dick Klein was very
anti-computer. He didn't want computers in
the newsroom at all.
Q: That was Dick Klein?
A: Dick Klein. He's dead now. He was
with the Tribune. Frank Eyerly put him in
charge of the next generation of computers.
And he got rid of all that gobbly-gook, all
that long commands and made sense of a lot of
stuff. Then the third generation was better
still, far better. I don't know how many
generations I've had since then, but there
were a lot of changes.
Q: [inaudible]
A: Oh yes. One day I went down to the
composing room after we went from hot type to
cold type to see if I could get some of those
old slugs, that's what they called the little
column-wide pieces of type. And all that
stuff had been cleaned out, every single bit
of it. There wasn't anything in sight. None
of that was kept for memorabilia or anything
like that.
Q: Where did it go?
A: I don't know.
Q: A museum, hopefully.
A: I don't think so. I think it was just
trashed. I really do. Some of it should
have been saved for a museum because the
difference between the invention of the
printing press and that time was pretty much
always the same. It stayed the same all that
time, until the cold type. They should have
saved a lot of it, but I don't think they
did. --
Section 8:
Q: During the interview, you've brought up
several newspaper terms and I'm wondering if
you can remember more terms like that - the
rim, the things that we don't hear any more.
A: The rim, of course, was the copy editor
sat around the rim.
Q: The desk?
A: The desk. It was a rim-shaped desk.
The news editor sat in the middle of it and
he would dole out the stories to the copy
editors on the rim. That's one of them.
Thirty is a term that I thought of that is no
longer used, I don't think. It used to be at
the end of a story, you would type in "30" at
the bottom of a page. I don't think they use
that anymore, I don't know. I don't know
whether they do or not, but I don't think so.
Q: To signify the end of a story?
A: Yes. But I don't think so. Leads.
They must use that still. The first part of
a story is the lead.
Q: [inaudible]
A: Cameras. Sub-heads. I don't know
whether they use that anymore. Maybe they
do. Sub-heads are little heads in the middle
of a story that tell you what is going to
come in the next couple paragraphs. I don't
know as I can think of anything else right
off the top of my head. I might later, but I
can't think of any others right now. --
Section 9:
Q: We've alluded to, several times, to the
change in leadership, from Cowles to Gannett.
What do you think of the paper today?
A: I don't think it is as good a paper as
it was then. I mentioned proofreading and I
don't think the proofreading is as good as it
used to be. The editing. I see more AP
stories today, which that's what they are
for, but they are so easy to get. They are
easier to get than sending out a reporter to
get your own version, especially out of town.
I don't believe we have as many bureaus out
of town as we used to. When Gannett came in,
they said that, in emphasizing the way to
pronounce to Gannett, was that the emphasis
was on the "net." I think that's true. I
think the emphasis is on the net rather than
on the quality of the paper. It's hard to
compare them unless you put today's paper
next to -well, if I took today's paper, I
would very gladly show you. I think today's
paper - I don't think of it as a paper.
Q: What was wrong with it?
A: The metro section had, I believe, four
or five stories about teenagers doing well
today. There is nothing wrong with having a
story about a teenager doing well today. I
think that's a good idea. I think they
should put an emphasis on young people. That
was a hard thing for me to do. I wanted to
and I don't think I succeeded as well as I
should have, but put more emphasis on youth
in the papers. And not in a derogatory way,
but in a positive way, show young people in a
positive light. But I don't see half a dozen
stories in one section doing that. There
wasn't much else in there except that.
Q: Why do you think we're getting a paper
like that? What's the problem?
A: I think probably the economics of it,
for one thing. It's cheaper to hire new,
inexperienced reporters than to keep old
hands, well paid. I think that there is a
matter of space. They cut back on space so
that you don't have as much room to print
full scale stories. Those are a few of the
things I think about.
Q: Is that just a sign of the times? Or
have we lost something?
A: I think it's a sign of the times AND we
have lost something. I think it's rampant
across the country. I don't think it's just
this paper. I think every paper published is
doing the same thing. Well, maybe not. But
many of them. Corporations, businesses are
doing this. They are cutting back and it
shows. When I was in the Home and Family
section, I think we had a staff of about
eight people. My understanding is that two
people are doing that now. Well, you can't
have the quality of product with that few
people. And it all goes back to the
economics of it. I don't think it's just
newspapers. I think it's probably radio and
television do the same thing. The
television. It seems like you get more
commercials now. So I think part of whole
economy, the way the economy is running, the
bottom line, the net.
Q: But as for newspapers, is there
something fundamental that we should have
that we don't have because of the way the
marketplace is? I mean, it's survival of the
fittest. The best will rise to the top. Is
that what's happening?
A: That's a good question. We're in such
a different world now with television and
instant communications across the world, that
maybe it's harder to be outstanding now. I
don't know, I really don't know. I'm not an
economist.
Q: Did you enjoy your work at the paper?
A: Oh, I loved it! I really loved it.
Especially, I loved the Home and Family
section. I really did love that. I told you
once - I don't know whether it was on tape or
not, about wondering about the satisfaction,
of writing a Great American Novel versus
working for a newspaper. As an editor or
writing for a paper even, I thought it was
not possible to have personal satisfaction of
putting out a good section. And I found out
in the Home and Family section that there was
a lot of personal satisfaction. I loved
that, I really did. I loved it a lot better
than the farm department. The farm
department was too complaining, too limited.
But home and family, that was nice. Plenty
of subject matter to deal with. And you
could do something positive about it. You
know, they talk about newspapers printing
only negative news. I think that's a good
criticism. I think negative news is just
stock and trade, for the news side, anyway.
But in the Home and Family sections, you had
a chance to put before the readers, something
that will have a positive effect. You could
improve parent and child relationships or you
could improve husband and wife relationships
or you could improve understanding of
minorities better. You could do anything and
we tried to. I don't know whether we
succeeded or not, but I think we did.
Q: Jim, it was good talking to you. Those
are my questions. Is there anything else
that you wanted to add that we haven't talked
about?
A: No, I think we pretty much covered the
whole ground.
Q: Thank you.
