Ed Sidey interview about journalism career [part 1], Iowa City, Iowa, April 8, 1998

              Section 1:
Q: We will have an initial interview that

will last about an hour. Then we will take a

break for about fifteen minutes and then we

will resume. It is up to Brian [to ask the

first question].



Q: You mentioned your brother, Hugh. I guess

the Sidey name comes from Time magazine, but,

of course, in Greenfield [Iowa], it is an

important name, too. I wonder, Ed, if you

could about your small town tradition. Both

you and Hugh came out of a small town,

Greenfield, working in a community newspaper

with your family's newspaper. Hugh went on to

Time and then you went on to an Omaha paper.

And then, of course, you came back to

Greenfield. What was it that provoked you to

come back to Greenfield and work at a country

newspaper and not go on to Time magazine?



A: Well, Hugh has more drive and talent than

I do, for one thing. But I won the coin toss.

My father was getting ready to slow down and

retire. This was in the 1950s. He had some

offers to sell the paper, so, one Sunday,

when he was visiting in Omaha and both of us

were there working on the World-Herald, he

told us that, if we were interested, the

paper could be either mine or Hugh's. If we

were not interested, he had some pretty good

offers from good people and he would consider

selling it. Hugh and I talked just very

briefly and he said, "Well, you are the

oldest. You get first choice." And, I thought

about five minutes and said, "I think we will

take it." We both, by that time, married

Omaha girls, both of them city products, and

I did have to check with my wife to see if

she thought she could live in a town of two

thousand. And she thought she could. So, we

came to Greenfield and I have never regretted

it.



Q: What year was that?



A: That was 1955. Eisenhower, Stephenson.

Things happening on the national front. But,

Greenfield looked good for a place to raise a

family. And Hugh has felt that way, too.





Q: If Hugh had gotten first choice, I wonder

if he would have chosen Greenfield.



A: He says he would have. I wonder whether he

would have. [laughter] We both envy each

other at times. I have been back to

Washington only three or four times, but it

is exciting when you are there. And, of

course, he opens doors to the hearings and

offices and the White House, once, and so on.

But he comes back as often as he can and he

calls once a week, or even more sometimes.

And his heart is still in Greenfield.



Q: Take us back to those days in 1955 when

you started working on the paper and some of

the lessons you may have learned about

journalism in the early days. Is there

something that...



A: Well, it wasn't a cultural shock, of

course, because we had grown up there. My

first job on the paper, I must have been

about eight years old, was sweeping the

floor. And then Hugh got that job away from

me when he was eight years old. Then he swept

the floor. But we did all those printer's

devil things, throwing in type after the

paper was printed and just, in general,

learning to feed the press and the folder and

stack newspapers, stuff newspapers, all of

those things. When I started working full

time on an hourly wage, it was wartime and

we'd lost several guys to the Army already. I

had learned to operate the linotype, so I

started filling in after high school classes,

more or less full time, for four or five

hours a night, setting type. Hugh, when he

came along, the situation had changed some

and he did more picture taking and reporting

work for the paper. But, we both were counted

on to fill in the manpower shortage while the

war was on.



Q: And you did the reporting yourself?



A: Yeah, we did some news writing and

photography ourselves. I went to the service

in 1943 when I graduated from high school. I

was overseas until after the war was over.

Hugh served in the enlisted cadre at West

Point. So, we ended up back home in

Greenfield about the same time.



Q: Do you remember any stories you worked on

that really stand out in your mind back in

the days when you were writing and taking

pictures?



A: Well, I don't think they trusted us with

the big stuff. The society editor would never

trust us with the wedding stories. I know

that. So, what we did was probably...what I

did, I remember, and that was mostly high

school sports and things like that. I didn't

do any city council or county supervisor

coverage or anything like that. My dad was

doing most of that kind of news coverage. As

it turned out, after college, and then our

jobs - I was in South Dakota and he was in

Council Bluffs [Iowa] for a while - and we

ended up on the World-Herald.  Greenfield had

a wave of three murders in less than a year's

time, I think. At least, not much more than a

year. My poor dad was covering murder stories

that were the talk of Iowa. All alone. And,

we never covered a murder story the whole

time - at least, I didn't and I don't think

Hugh did - in all the time we were in Omaha.

They had them, but other reporters were on

that beat. And, thank goodness, I say now, we

haven't had a murder since in Greenfield,

Iowa. So, I have never had to cover one. -- 




Section 2:
Q: Tell us about one or two of the most

important stories, in your mind, that you

have run in the paper. The stories with the

biggest impact. The stories that meant the

most to you.



A: Well, the most fun was that year in

Greenfield when Norman Lear and Tandem

Productions came to town to do the movie,

"Cold Turkey." That just set the whole town

on its ear for a whole summer. Really, they

came to Winterset first to do the shots in

the residential area. But, then, the big

climactic scene of "Cold Turkey" was this

scene on the square and Norman Lear liked the

Greenfield square for its photographic

impact. They did all of that action on the

square. He wanted two thousand extras. I

think they finally got that many. In a town

of two thousand, he had to drag them in from

all over the county and then some. We had

people from Des Moines, even, down there. And

they shot that scene and shot that scene.

With the summer waning and the leaves turning

color and everything, I thought they were

probably going to have to paste those leaves

back on the trees before they finally got

done. But, it was a great experience for all

of us. Our high school band was in it. The

kids were in the scenes at night and

everybody...well, those people were hard

working people and, most of them, very

serious film makers. There were a few

pot-smoking types, but mostly, these were

just good, steady people and we enjoyed the

experience a lot. And it pumped quite a bit

of money in the community, too. So, that

stands out in my memory. That was 1969. The

summer and fall of  '69.



Q: How did you cover the story?



A: Well, my wife and I, I had been married an

Omaha girl and she was working with me on the

paper, and we decided that we wanted to do

interviews with all the movie people, not

just the stars. Dick Van Dyke, Tom Posten,

Bob Newhart - were all in there. But, there

were also a lot of lesser known actors and we

wanted to cover them. Some of those people

turned out to be the later stars of

television. Jean Stapleton was one of them.

And Barnard Hughes and some of the others.

And then, we wanted to do an interview with

the head grip and the chief lighting man and

the head cameraman and on and on. We spent

all of that three months interviewing. It

started out, we tackled about one or two a

week and it wasn't going to work out. We

weren't going to get done. So, we had to step

up. I think, at the end, we were doing three

or four interviews apiece and trying to find

space. I brought some papers and I couldn't

find anything but this one old, ragged copy,

or one section, but this is the type of thing

we did. This was Van Dyke. And the shooting.

And, an interview with Clark Paylow, who was

production manager, and then some more

shooting. You can pass that around. But, we

covered that movie every week. And every

week, our circulation climbed and we

discovered that people like Clark Paylow, who

had been in the movies all his life and had

worked on westerns and swash-bucklers and all

these things, had never had an interview.

These people were buying two-three dozen

papers a week and sending them home to their

relatives. I think, on a circulation which

had started out about three thousand, it was

up over four thousand by the time the movie

went home.



Q: Did the town quite smoking,

then?



A: The town took it in kind of a good-natured

tongue-in-cheek way. The cancer people were

very dedicated to quit. That was two or three

hundred people. And then, there were some

other types that were really serious about

it. Our city council, and the rest of the

civic leaders, said we are never going to get

all the town to quit and we know it, but

let's have fun with it. Let's go through the

motions and send up the balloons and light

the bonfires. Throw the cigarettes on the

pile and make it a joke because, actually,

those of us who had tried to quit before, had

pretty well decided that was a better

approach than the "grim, got to do it"

approach, anyway.  I had quit the year

before, so I lost out on all this fun. But,

all five guys, good friends of mine that were

on the city council, had been heavy smokers.

In fact, I remember covering the council

meetings where the smoke would be so terrible

in there that, even when I was smoking

myself, I could hardly stand it. They all

said, "OK. We will quit. We will swear off." 

I said, "You know, you are going to be in the

spotlight all the time." In fact, another

series of feature interviews I did was those

that were quitting smoking and the trauma

that they were going through and whether they

had contracted Dutch Elm disease from

toothpick chewing, you know, and all of these

things. And how many fires in closets the

fire chief decided we had to put out. It was

a lot of fun. -- 




Section 3: 
Q: That was a fun story. Are there other

stories you recall that were...where you

changed anything?  Where, through the craft

of journalism, you actually were able to

affect some change?



A: Well, I think our campaigns for bond

issues really made a difference. We lost one

project, but the others, we really built up a

kind of, I think, a tradition of trust in the

information that was being put out and that

influenced people. It didn't work that way

early on because we lost a couple of school

bond issues by just a very narrow margin. But

then, when the thing started to roll,

Greenfield got a reputation of passing bond

issues like eighty-five/ninety percent. And,

in fact, I think the people got the idea that

it became so easy that all we had to do was

put a few stories in the Free Press and it

would go. And that was a mistake. That

doesn't work all the time. But, it did for a

while there. And we voted in the municipal

airport bond issue and the water tower bond

issue and the two school buildings and an

extensive paving program so, I think, we

ended up with almost every street in town

paved. No more rock roads. Let's see, what

were some of the other things? Buying an

industrial park site and improving it. I know

there are two or three others.



Q: You also had some strong feelings about

some state issues, too. Regarding hog lots

and some of the other things you have written

about.



A: That was current. Yeah. The "big pig."

Which is a terrible rip-off on the people.

That is my current...that, and the fact that

the governor kind of loaded that committee

that set the whole thing off, really. If you

are not familiar with the issue, the governor

appointed a study committee of his cronies

that came up with the finding that, to

encourage the hog lots, they had to abolish a

common law principle of nuisance suits that

had been standing, after centuries in

England, it had been transported to America

and been part of our common law ever since.

And, corporate agriculture now is exempted

from that provision of the law and only, to

my knowledge, corporate agriculture. Anyway,

that created the problem and I think we are

not nearly out of the woods yet. But, I have

editorialized on that for a couple of years

now without doing much good. I don't have the

ear of Des Moines and the legislature as well

as I have the ear of Greenfield.



Q: I know one of your favorite stories is

Wal-Mart. Do you want to talk about that?



A: [laughs] The merchant of death. Yes.



Q: Wal-Mart and a small town newspaper in

small town Iowa.



A: Yeah, well, I am an enemy of the big and

my observations are that the bigger they are,

the worse it is for ordinary people. And,

Wal-Mart, I think, has just come in and

devastated main streets all over the country.

As a matter of fact, I don't know how they

heard about it, but I had written some

editorials about Wal-Mart and its affect on

communities. And, Greenfield, Massachusetts

was being petitioned by Wal-Mart, who wanted

a change of zoning so that they could build

one of their stores out on the edge of

Greenfield, Massachusetts. It was bad news

for this kind of picturesque little town. It

was bigger than Greenfield by several

thousand people. Anyway, I got a call from

this gal who was heading the campaign against

Wal-Mart out there. So, I ended up submitting

a few comments and an editorial to their

paper. And, by George, Greenfield,

Massachusetts won the fight and kept Wal-Mart

out of their town. Which was encouraging. At

least some people could get it done, you

know.



Q: Were you able to get it done here?



A: Well, we have got a Wal-Mart in Creston,

that is only twenty miles away, and their

sphere of influence is felt in Greenfield

very definitely. As a matter of fact, I can

stand on our square and look around and count

the newer cars that are customers in our

stores. And I just know that if I would go to

Wal-Mart and looked at the parking lot, there

would be more Adair County cars down there at

any one time than there would be in the

Greenfield business district. So, it hurts.



Q: What is wrong with Wal-Mart? You have low

prices and one-stop shopping.



A: Yes, yes, I know. But, those merchants are

the backbone of the community. We have got

good farmers, too, but they have gotten

terribly busy. They have got to farm more and

more and more land. Some of those guys that I

know are farming a couple of thousand acres

and they push like crazy to get it planted

and harvested. But it is those people that

used to be our school board members and the

church elders and the druggist, the

grocer...the merchants around the square,

they not only bankrolled every fund drive

that comes through and sponsored all the 4-H

Club projects and everything, but they

furnish the leadership that makes a town go.

Greenfield has as many organizations as Des

Moines has. You stop to think about it. Two

thousand people. They are serving on the

planning commission, the city council, the

library board, the school board - all of

those positions that Des Moines has, we have

got just as many people trying to do that

work with only two thousand to pick from. So,

it really puts a strain on leadership. The

merchants that we lose, and we have lost a

lot of them, are missed. -- 




Section 4: 
Q: When you started out, how large

was the paper? What was the circulation? How

many people were there and what were they

doing?



A: Well, when I came back to Greenfield in

'55, there were about the same number that we

have now. That would be, part time and full

time, about eight or nine people. I would

have to count. It is about the same. In the

good old days, I was going to try to find a

photo of our back shop taken when my

grandfather was a young man and handset type

was the way they put a paper out. And, it was

a circle of women. There must have been two

dozen. But, they were picking those letters

out one at a time out of the California job

case, and then having to put it all back in

after the paper was printed. But, when the

linotype came in, that was that big

break-through of technology. When my father

did that, he bought the books, the manuals,

of the linotypes and studied them at home.

And became the expert on how linotype worked.

My dad. The other big improvement in

technology that he instituted, was the

photo...making photos for the newspaper, the

half-tones. That was a hobby of his when he

had been in high school in the early days of

photography.  And I can remember when I was a

kid, growing up and listening to him talk

about...he developed his own pictures and

that meant he made the glass plates and

coated them with sensitive solution and then

they had to be protected from too much

humidity or too much heat until he took the

photos. Then he would develop them and make

the prints. And he, and a friend, Carl

Caswell, f rom Clarinda, wanted to free the

next step to give them more flexibility.  And

that was to send them to an engraver and make

zinc etchings which were mounted on a type

high block of wood for printing in the old

days. He and Carl Caswell contacted

professional engravers and read books and

experimented. And I think those two

newspapers were among the first weekly papers

in Iowa to have their own engraving plants

and to make their own photos in-shop. So,

that he could take a picture today and have

it in the paper tomorrow. It took a lot of

time and a lot of effort, but it was really a

break-through for our paper. And, as a matter

of fact, like all those technology things, a

break-through became a curse, because the

public soon got the feeling that, if the

cameraman from the Free Press wasn't there,

it wasn't a news event. So, the editor jolly

well better show up at their event or there

would be hell to pay. They used to call me

and just chew me out. "Where were you when we

had this big party for so-and-so? He is just

devastated. How could you do this to us?"



Q: What did you tell them?



A: I would tell them that there was only one

of me and there were too many parties that

night.



Q: So, photographs played a

special role in your paper, then?



A: Yeah, it really does. Of course, offset

now makes it so much easier. And Linda Sidey

has arrived at that exalted state of making

half-tones on the Mac [Macintosh computer]. 

That is an art that I would never attempt

because I am carrying on a war with

computers. I am not winning the fight. -- 




Section 5: 
Q: Often, journalists are told that they have

to be objective and they cannot run for

election and they certainly can't sit on the

city council, they can't be on the planning

commission, because to do that would dilute

their objectivity. On the contrary, though,

you, Mr. Sidey, held many, many civic

positions. Talk about the role of the

community journalist and how the community

journalist stays objective, but still becomes

an important cog in that community?



A: Well, I suppose it is a challenge and a

problem in some ways. You can't avoid that

community involvement, because if you are the

editor and publisher of the paper, you have

got to be there, really, when the news is

made and that means school board meetings and

council meetings and county business and

everything. So, you are on the scene. And you

are always hit on to serve. "Since you are

here, Ed, you might as well be a member of

the school board. You have got to cover this

anyway."  And that's right. I guess my good

teachers in Iowa State in journalism would

roll over in their graves at some of the

things that I did. I was president of the

school board and served twelve years. I only

got off the hook when my sons graduated and I

could say I didn't want anything to do with

it anymore. But, that, in itself, was an

admission there was a potential conflict of

interest there, wasn't there? With them going

to school. But, I think it is possible to

cover it objectively and really do a better

job of covering when you are there and

affected by the decisions that you, as a

board, make. If you try to be fair. I have a

hard time getting off the hook on this, but I

do know that the people expect you to do

that. A farmer friend of mine from Winterset

was complaining about his paper. I said I had

always thought that was a pretty good paper.

They cover the news in a good way and

everything. Why did he object about it?  He

said, "People just want to see more of the

editor. They expect him to be there. They

want to see him running up and down the

sideline like you do at the football games.

They want to see him at the party with the

camera to get the picture that is so

important to them." Apparently, that wasn't

happening in that community. I don't know. It

is much, much different than a daily

newspaper, but I think the balancing thing

may be that you are so accessible to the

people that you are writing for that they can

tell you off and call you down whenever you

get out of line. And, if you take sides on a

bond issue and they don't agree with it, they

will let you know.



We had a marvelous plan for a city hall and

library and some other buildings combined.

The property came available just around the

corner from the little old city hall we

wanted to replace. And the library was small

and crumbling. So, we put that up to the

public in a bond issue vote and it was just

smashed. It didn't even get thirty-five

percent. Obviously, it was one of those deals

that the public needed more information and

more positive things about it and they

weren't going to let us get away with pulling

anything. But, just last month, we moved into

a new city hall and library, right across the

street from the old ones and less than a half

a block away from the one where it was voted

down. And it was taking a used store building

and re-modeling it. It was done with a fourth

of the cost of a new complex. I think the

people knew what they wanted and when the

plan was right and when we presented it

right, why, it went. Those folks, if there is

anything that keep me in line, is the fact

that they just walk in the office anytime

they want and tell me off. It happens now and

then and it's probably very good for editors.



Q: Specifically, did you ever get any

complaints from leaders who, while you were

sitting on the school board, you were, at the

same, covering the meetings?





A: Well, I don't think they ever criticized

my news coverage of the school board

meetings. It was mainly when it affected

their pocketbook and that would be in the

bond issues for the new school buildings.

Greenfield built a new elementary building

and then a junior high, we built a new junior

high. And then, most lately, a new high

school. And, those things had no votes. The

first time around, the plan was defeated by a

few votes. Most of the time, the criticism

was aimed at the way we presented the bond

issue vote. Rock Schaefer, a barber in

Greenfield, said, "God damn it, Ed. Doesn't

the Free Press ever oppose anything? Do you

always have to be pro-bond issue?" He was

speaking for a disgruntled group of people,

and most of them were barbers or that type,

that are always against things. And you can

be sure that they were out there voting "no."



Q: And your response to the barber?



A: I would say, "Rock, we will oppose one

when we think it is a good idea. But, until

then, I am not on your side." -- 




Section 6: 
Q: Do you think you cover things

differently than, say, in 1969, or do you

still cover the same type of stories?



A: We still try to do the same type of

stories.



Q: What kind of stories are they?



A: Well, we cover all the main news beats. It

seems like the county and city governments

and school are busier than ever and they have

more meetings and it involves more dollars

and everything. The one thing I regret, and

maybe it is just a change in times, we used

to cover the small, personal things much

better than we do now. I am talking about a

birthday party for the ten-year-old and

things like that. I still think that is the

grist of the news and we ought to be doing a

better job of it. People want to know, in

Greenfield, Iowa, why that cluster of cars

was out in front of Mrs. Jones' house last

week. And, that's news. It is probably a

bunch of neighbors that were giving a party

for her, you know, or something like that. We

used to have, for years, we had marvelous,

old gals that covered the news for us until

they were ninety-some years old. Mamie Lynam

first and them Mrs. Oltrogge.  And they

called those people and got that news for us.

You would have to track them down because

they are not going to volunteer it. I would

like to see that kind of reporting still

done, but I don't have time to do it and my

son, now, is not doing it either. It keeps me

busy just attending some of the meetings that

have to be covered. My father, when he was a

young man, I don't know whether this was...he

was in World War I, whether it was before or

after he served in World War I, he became a

reporter and he had to go down to the train

station when every train came in. And, at

that time, there were three trains a day

coming up to Greenfield. His assignment from

his father was to ask every stranger that got

off that train what his name was and what his

business in Greenfield was. And, by George,

if he didn't do that, it was bad reporting.

But it made the paper. When the Democrat was

founded, there were two other papers in town

and well established. And, the Democrat

became the Free Press and bought out the

other two. In other words, the survivor was

the paper that covered the news the best.



Q: You talked a little bit about

some of the old ladies covering the whatever,

but can you talk about, were there women in

the news room when you were down in Omaha at

the World-Herald and what did they do? What

was their role? Were they treated

differently?



A: We had women in the news room, but, you

see, I was there in the '50's. They covered,

primarily, the women's slant on news. Molly

Simpson would go out on a story to get the

women's angle. I didn't call her a "sob

sister," but a lot of those papers in those

days, and prior to it, the old Hearst

tradition was that you had some "Front Page"

character like Hildy Johnson [referring to a

play by Don Hecht] doing the murder or the

suspect, keeping him under lock and key, and

then you had a "sob sister" who would go out

and do the women's angle. That was kind of

the way it worked at that time.



Q: What is the women's angle?



A: Well, I suppose, if it was a woman, that

was abused or the girlfriend of the criminal,

why, you would do the interview with the

woman to...I don't know. On the World-Herald,

my assignments, I was just kind of a general

assignment reporter doing interviews with

politicians. I covered central police station

for about a year. And, my brother, Hugh, his

beat was city hall. Then we would all get

roped in on traumatic events like the

Ak-Sar-Ben coronation where all the rich

people in town put on funny clothes and

crowned a king.



Q: I want to go back to the

women's angle again. When you were growing

up, and your dad and your grandfather were

running the newspaper, were there women in

the newsroom in Greenfield? And, did they do

just about everything, too?



A: Oh, yeah. Yeah, just about. Those two, I

mentioned, Mamie Lynam and Clara Oltrogge

were covering primarily the weddings, the

anniversaries, the social events, but they

also would write any news that happened. But,

I think, they would turn things like

accidents and fires and that type of thing

over to my father or myself or the men who

were writing the news. And, they didn't use a

camera. But, that, I think, was just an

accident of training. If they wanted to, I am

sure they would have been good at it. -- 




Section 7:
Q: Tell me why you carry on a war with

computers?



A: Because I am old and I resent change

[laughs]. And my typewriter, my wonderful,

Royal, manual typewriter, that my dear wife

bought for me at a church sale just two years

ago, works so smoothly and so efficiently and

saves me so much time that I ditched that

laptop that always gave me trouble. I can do

a lot more work on the Royal

typewriter...now, I acknowledge that the gals

that have to take my copy and set it are

doing some of my work, but I can edit my

piece of hard copy and scratch and change

very quickly compared with scrolling up and

scrolling down and doing all that stuff on

the computer that I tried to do, and it hangs

together better for me to be able to do that

and then send it back. And they can set it so

much faster than I can. And my Royal

typewriter is going to last longer than I

will. I was fearful, because my old Remington

that I had before was giving out. And, I

couldn't find repairs. I had three old

Remingtons in the basement.



Q: Did you use the laptop before

you went to went to the Royal?



A: I used it about a year. It was one of

those early Radio Shack Tandy laptops. It

worked all right. I could take it home and

sit in my easy chair and write something. And

sometimes, I even miss that. But, something

happened to it and they couldn't fix it. Each

time they tried to fix it, it got worse. -- 




Section 8:
Q: I have got a question. I want to jog back

in the interview. You are a newspaperman with

a long tradition in your family. Going back

to the topic of the Wal-Mart-ization of small

town Iowa, what do you think about the new

newspaper chain-owning companies, such as

Gannett, and what do you think their impact

is on the small-town Iowa as well as the

state of Iowa in general?



A: I think it is too bad. That has been a

trend all through my career, of chain

ownership. And, we are going to miss, I

think, that flavor of independent owners. We

were just talking about that tonight at

supper. If the Free Press is ever sold,

probably the only buyer is going to be a

chain. I am guessing probably the Shaw chain

down at Creston would be about the only one

we could sell to. They bring publishers in.

Not all publishers work this way and Shaw is

better than most, but they bring people up

through the ranks and come into Greenfield

and, if you do well, you will be there about

four or five years at the most and they have

got a spot in the bigger town with a daily

paper that is waiting for you. I don't blame

the young people. If you want to move up the

ladder, I suppose, that is where you go. But

it is too bad because I feel like I am still

learning the "in's and out's" of Greenfield.

There are lots of people there that I would

like to interview that I haven't got around

to. There are lots of stories there that, and

my brother is threatening he is going to

write a book, but I don't think he is going

to make it, age is going to catch him, about

the characters we knew in the thirties

growing up in Greenfield. And, they are still

around, but they are going fast. Boy, what a

shame. We have got to get to Heiny Benson and

Rock Schaefer and all those characters. I

think we miss that in the town, too. The

business people, in the old days, used to

stand around when business was slow, which it

often was, and try to figure out gags they

could pull on each other. So, the clothier

over here would call somebody in the store

down the street and report a fictitious fire

or something, you know, just to see what he

would do. They had a lot of fun. We miss that

kind of slap-stick humor. But, when it comes

to newspaper people, we miss that knowledge

of a town and what you can do if you know the

people. Well, you can almost write stories

that quote them without even being there

because you know what they are going to say.

[laughs]



I wrote a story once...our clothing merchant,

Cliff Welcher, had a gang of cronies that

always came in for coffee. And they would sit

on the shoe trying-on benches in the back and

drink coffee and exchange gossip. They were

the same guys. I knew them so well when this

story happened - somehow, somebody had

flipped a cigarette up on the canvas awning

of that store, just about coffee time. His

friends were coming in and Cliff was back

there getting the coffee ready. Louie ??

said, "You have got a fire in your awning."

Just casually, passing through. "Dad gum.

Don't try to pull me into that." Somebody

else came in. "Hey, Cliff, you have got a

fire in the awning." "Aw, forget it."

Finally, somebody that Cliff believed came in

and said, "Mr. Welcher. There is a fire in

your awning."  Ah, it is really a fire. So,

then, Cliff is running back and forth with

his coffee pot to the sink getting water and

going out and his friends are standing there.

And Louie was saying, "It will come right

back down on his face."  Sure enough, it ran

down the awning right on him. Finally, they

did get the fire out. The awning was

half-burned and he was mad as could be. I

heard about this just about a half an hour

later. I got the names of the guys and I

wrote, this is a journalism violation of the

first water, I wrote quotes of all of these

people. I knew they were accurate and

everybody in town knew they were accurate. In

fact, I had people come in and laugh at me

and tell me, "Gee, you must have been right

there, taking notes all the time."  Well, if

you know the people well enough, you can do

that.



Q: Who was Heiny Benson?



A: Heiny was a free spirit. A bootlegger and

a trapper of furs and an odd job, handyman

who had this love-hate relationship with the

banker, and the banker's wife, mainly. Heine

would do their windows and mow the grass and

things like that, but never when they wanted

him to. He just didn't want to take orders.

He wanted to be free, and he was free. There

is a whole set of stories. The banker and his

wife had one kid and he was the orneriest kid

in town. So, all through this relationship of

trying to do the handiwork of the house with

this ornery kid pestering you, you see, and

Heine would have a run-in. Mrs. Foster would

get Jack all ready to go to a very dress-up

occasion and Heine would be out there washing

the windows. And Jack would see the hose and

say, "Aha!" You wet down Heiny. And Heiny

would say, "Don't do that, Jack." And Jack

would persist. And Heiny would soak him down

to the underwear. And then, of course, Mrs.

Foster would blow up and insist that her

husband fire that man. Except that Doc knew

they couldn't get anybody else to work for

them. That Heiny would be the only one they

could get to do the windows. It was

marvelous. -- 




Section 9:
Q: Mr. Sidey, can you tell us what

your opinion is on the changes in the Des

Moines Register?



A: [laughs] The Register had a very bad

period, in my estimation. A great newspaper,

but it had that woman editor that I just

thought darn near destroyed the paper, Geneva

Overholser, but she has moved on. I grew

up...the Register was a great newspaper. And

now, under the new publisher, who is also a

woman, they are coming back to that. I think

it is much improved, again. They are starting

to be the old Register again with, really,

better coverage of outlying parts of Iowa. I

don't think they will ever be the statewide

paper that they were in the old days. But,

just think, that was a real achievement for

that newspaper to become a statewide

newspaper. It really unified Iowa. But, I

suppose the times were ripe. The trains ran

on time and there were lots of trains

running. I mentioned that we had three trains

a day in Greenfield, Iowa, on a branch track.

Not even a main line. But, those papers

printed in Des Moines got out and were

delivered by six o'clock in the morning where

you could sit down and read them with

breakfast coffee. And, that was all over the

state. I have talked to editors and

publishers all over, clear up in northwest

Iowa, that relied on the Register.



Q: Was it Geneva Overholser's fault?



A: She changed the whole tone of news.

Farming dropped off the front page and we had

gay rights marches and things. They were

legitimate news, but it was just a matter of

the way they were played and, I think, it was

out of touch with the people of Iowa as to

what was important. Now, you and I...I will

welcome disagreement on that. But, in my

judgement, she did not relate to the state or

the kind of people that she was writing for.

And she is now with the Washington Post and I

read a couple of things that she had written

and got re-printed back here and I think she

is still out of touch. I don't know what my

brother thinks of her.



Q: What do you think about the

changes in reporting today? I wouldn't call

it negative journalism, but all the things

that are written, the Clinton sex scandals.

Reporters didn't cover that before.



A: I am old, but I think things are better

when we didn't feel a compulsion to tell all.

There are things that you just, and there

again, I am probably violating the journalism

ethics all to pieces, but stories left untold

because of community sentiment, you have got

to pick and choose and do it carefully and

not let your personal feelings interfere. For

instance, there are things that I don't write

in funeral stories that, probably, in another

community, might need to be written. But, if

I know my people well enough, maybe I don't

have to say that...well, you have got to say

that it is a suicide, but maybe a story like

that can be softened. You see what I am...I

am stumbling for words, here. But, those are

people that I know personally. If they live

in Greenfield, I know them. And I don't barge

into the funeral service and tell them that,

"Your son was really a rotter and deserved

what he got." There are certain polite,

civilized things that you can do in the news

business to avoid that, and I am kind of

appalled by what the networks have done to

the Clintons here. Even though he asked for

the job and he is a role model and, if he has

been womanizing to the extent we are led to

believe, that he deserves some kind of

punishment. But, maybe it isn't the news

media's business to punish in this case. Let

the people do that at the polls. I don't

know.  I am not answering your question, I

guess.



Q: Has there ever been a story, or maybe a

situation, on your newspaper where you

decided not to publish or not to write in the

paper? A good friend called, maybe, and said

his son got arrested and he would appreciate

it if you kept it out of the paper. Something

like that.





A: I get those all the time. I don't do it.

Very early on, in about 1956, I had a tearful

mother whose son was picked up for OWI, as I

recall, or something, and really was

innocent. Or maybe it was he that was

innocent and it would break his mother's

heart. Anyway, I left one of those out and,

boy, did that word get around. I said, "Never

again would we omit." So, if it goes in the

District Court proceedings, it goes in the

paper. We won't make a big deal out of  it,

but everybody gets listed. But, believe it or

not, I still, just about every month, get a

request from somebody who says, "Can't you

leave this one out?" And I say, "No, I can't,

because if you do it for one, you do it for

everybody. You just quit covering the court."



Q: Now that it is legal, do you

put juveniles' names in the paper when they

are arrested?



A: No, I don't now. But, I don't know what I

would do if it was a major crime. I probably

would. I haven't had to face that yet, but

you couldn't avoid it if it was a case like a

murder. I would think you would have to. But,

I haven't had to face that hurdle yet.








Section 10:
Q: I have got a general question. Do you have

anything to say about the printed word? The

newspaper that has so totally captivated you

and your father and your grandfather for all

these years, what is it about this whole

thing?



A: Darned if I know. [laughs] We were cursed!

 We could have gone into electronics and made

a mint. You see, Hugh and I both went to Iowa

State after the Army thinking that there has

got to be a better way of earning a living.

We both took engineering. I thought maybe it

would be noble to design a building or a

bridge or something that would stand forever

as a monument. We took engineering for one

year and that is the god-awfullest, boring

profession for us that you could ask for.

Drawing threads on bolts. Trusses and things.

It just...we both looked at each other after

that year and said, "I think we better go

into the newspaper business." And we went

Section 1:
Q: We will have an initial interview that

will last about an hour. Then we will take a

break for about fifteen minutes and then we

will resume. It is up to Brian [to ask the

first question].



Q: You mentioned your brother, Hugh. I guess

the Sidey name comes from Time magazine, but,

of course, in Greenfield [Iowa], it is an

important name, too. I wonder, Ed, if you

could about your small town tradition. Both

you and Hugh came out of a small town,

Greenfield, working in a community newspaper

with your family's newspaper. Hugh went on to

Time and then you went on to an Omaha paper.

And then, of course, you came back to

Greenfield. What was it that provoked you to

come back to Greenfield and work at a country

newspaper and not go on to Time magazine?



A: Well, Hugh has more drive and talent than

I do, for one thing. But I won the coin toss.

My father was getting ready to slow down and

retire. This was in the 1950s. He had some

offers to sell the paper, so, one Sunday,

when he was visiting in Omaha and both of us

were there working on the World-Herald, he

told us that, if we were interested, the

paper could be either mine or Hugh's. If we

were not interested, he had some pretty good

offers from good people and he would consider

selling it. Hugh and I talked just very

briefly and he said, "Well, you are the

oldest. You get first choice." And, I thought

about five minutes and said, "I think we will

take it." We both, by that time, married

Omaha girls, both of them city products, and

I did have to check with my wife to see if

she thought she could live in a town of two

thousand. And she thought she could. So, we

came to Greenfield and I have never regretted

it.



Q: What year was that?



A: That was 1955. Eisenhower, Stephenson.

Things happening on the national front. But,

Greenfield looked good for a place to raise a

family. And Hugh has felt that way, too.





Q: If Hugh had gotten first choice, I wonder

if he would have chosen Greenfield.



A: He says he would have. I wonder whether he

would have. [laughter] We both envy each

other at times. I have been back to

Washington only three or four times, but it

is exciting when you are there. And, of

course, he opens doors to the hearings and

offices and the White House, once, and so on.

But he comes back as often as he can and he

calls once a week, or even more sometimes.

And his heart is still in Greenfield.



Q: Take us back to those days in 1955 when

you started working on the paper and some of

the lessons you may have learned about

journalism in the early days. Is there

something that...



A: Well, it wasn't a cultural shock, of

course, because we had grown up there. My

first job on the paper, I must have been

about eight years old, was sweeping the

floor. And then Hugh got that job away from

me when he was eight years old. Then he swept

the floor. But we did all those printer's

devil things, throwing in type after the

paper was printed and just, in general,

learning to feed the press and the folder and

stack newspapers, stuff newspapers, all of

those things. When I started working full

time on an hourly wage, it was wartime and

we'd lost several guys to the Army already. I

had learned to operate the linotype, so I

started filling in after high school classes,

more or less full time, for four or five

hours a night, setting type. Hugh, when he

came along, the situation had changed some

and he did more picture taking and reporting

work for the paper. But, we both were counted

on to fill in the manpower shortage while the

war was on.



Q: And you did the reporting yourself?



A: Yeah, we did some news writing and

photography ourselves. I went to the service

in 1943 when I graduated from high school. I

was overseas until after the war was over.

Hugh served in the enlisted cadre at West

Point. So, we ended up back home in

Greenfield about the same time.



Q: Do you remember any stories you worked on

that really stand out in your mind back in

the days when you were writing and taking

pictures?



A: Well, I don't think they trusted us with

the big stuff. The society editor would never

trust us with the wedding stories. I know

that. So, what we did was probably...what I

did, I remember, and that was mostly high

school sports and things like that. I didn't

do any city council or county supervisor

coverage or anything like that. My dad was

doing most of that kind of news coverage. As

it turned out, after college, and then our

jobs - I was in South Dakota and he was in

Council Bluffs [Iowa] for a while - and we

ended up on the World-Herald.  Greenfield had

a wave of three murders in less than a year's

time, I think. At least, not much more than a

year. My poor dad was covering murder stories

that were the talk of Iowa. All alone. And,

we never covered a murder story the whole

time - at least, I didn't and I don't think

Hugh did - in all the time we were in Omaha.

They had them, but other reporters were on

that beat. And, thank goodness, I say now, we

haven't had a murder since in Greenfield,

Iowa. So, I have never had to cover one. -- 




Section 2:
Q: Tell us about one or two of the most

important stories, in your mind, that you

have run in the paper. The stories with the

biggest impact. The stories that meant the

most to you.



A: Well, the most fun was that year in

Greenfield when Norman Lear and Tandem

Productions came to town to do the movie,

"Cold Turkey." That just set the whole town

on its ear for a whole summer. Really, they

came to Winterset first to do the shots in

the residential area. But, then, the big

climactic scene of "Cold Turkey" was this

scene on the square and Norman Lear liked the

Greenfield square for its photographic

impact. They did all of that action on the

square. He wanted two thousand extras. I

think they finally got that many. In a town

of two thousand, he had to drag them in from

all over the county and then some. We had

people from Des Moines, even, down there. And

they shot that scene and shot that scene.

With the summer waning and the leaves turning

color and everything, I thought they were

probably going to have to paste those leaves

back on the trees before they finally got

done. But, it was a great experience for all

of us. Our high school band was in it. The

kids were in the scenes at night and

everybody...well, those people were hard

working people and, most of them, very

serious film makers. There were a few

pot-smoking types, but mostly, these were

just good, steady people and we enjoyed the

experience a lot. And it pumped quite a bit

of money in the community, too. So, that

stands out in my memory. That was 1969. The

summer and fall of  '69.



Q: How did you cover the story?



A: Well, my wife and I, I had been married an

Omaha girl and she was working with me on the

paper, and we decided that we wanted to do

interviews with all the movie people, not

just the stars. Dick Van Dyke, Tom Posten,

Bob Newhart - were all in there. But, there

were also a lot of lesser known actors and we

wanted to cover them. Some of those people

turned out to be the later stars of

television. Jean Stapleton was one of them.

And Barnard Hughes and some of the others.

And then, we wanted to do an interview with

the head grip and the chief lighting man and

the head cameraman and on and on. We spent

all of that three months interviewing. It

started out, we tackled about one or two a

week and it wasn't going to work out. We

weren't going to get done. So, we had to step

up. I think, at the end, we were doing three

or four interviews apiece and trying to find

space. I brought some papers and I couldn't

find anything but this one old, ragged copy,

or one section, but this is the type of thing

we did. This was Van Dyke. And the shooting.

And, an interview with Clark Paylow, who was

production manager, and then some more

shooting. You can pass that around. But, we

covered that movie every week. And every

week, our circulation climbed and we

discovered that people like Clark Paylow, who

had been in the movies all his life and had

worked on westerns and swash-bucklers and all

these things, had never had an interview.

These people were buying two-three dozen

papers a week and sending them home to their

relatives. I think, on a circulation which

had started out about three thousand, it was

up over four thousand by the time the movie

went home.



Q: Did the town quite smoking,

then?



A: The town took it in kind of a good-natured

tongue-in-cheek way. The cancer people were

very dedicated to quit. That was two or three

hundred people. And then, there were some

other types that were really serious about

it. Our city council, and the rest of the

civic leaders, said we are never going to get

all the town to quit and we know it, but

let's have fun with it. Let's go through the

motions and send up the balloons and light

the bonfires. Throw the cigarettes on the

pile and make it a joke because, actually,

those of us who had tried to quit before, had

pretty well decided that was a better

approach than the "grim, got to do it"

approach, anyway.  I had quit the year

before, so I lost out on all this fun. But,

all five guys, good friends of mine that were

on the city council, had been heavy smokers.

In fact, I remember covering the council

meetings where the smoke would be so terrible

in there that, even when I was smoking

myself, I could hardly stand it. They all

said, "OK. We will quit. We will swear off." 

I said, "You know, you are going to be in the

spotlight all the time." In fact, another

series of feature interviews I did was those

that were quitting smoking and the trauma

that they were going through and whether they

had contracted Dutch Elm disease from

toothpick chewing, you know, and all of these

things. And how many fires in closets the

fire chief decided we had to put out. It was

a lot of fun. -- 




Section 3: 
Q: That was a fun story. Are there other

stories you recall that were...where you

changed anything?  Where, through the craft

of journalism, you actually were able to

affect some change?



A: Well, I think our campaigns for bond

issues really made a difference. We lost one

project, but the others, we really built up a

kind of, I think, a tradition of trust in the

information that was being put out and that

influenced people. It didn't work that way

early on because we lost a couple of school

bond issues by just a very narrow margin. But

then, when the thing started to roll,

Greenfield got a reputation of passing bond

issues like eighty-five/ninety percent. And,

in fact, I think the people got the idea that

it became so easy that all we had to do was

put a few stories in the Free Press and it

would go. And that was a mistake. That

doesn't work all the time. But, it did for a

while there. And we voted in the municipal

airport bond issue and the water tower bond

issue and the two school buildings and an

extensive paving program so, I think, we

ended up with almost every street in town

paved. No more rock roads. Let's see, what

were some of the other things? Buying an

industrial park site and improving it. I know

there are two or three others.



Q: You also had some strong feelings about

some state issues, too. Regarding hog lots

and some of the other things you have written

about.



A: That was current. Yeah. The "big pig."

Which is a terrible rip-off on the people.

That is my current...that, and the fact that

the governor kind of loaded that committee

that set the whole thing off, really. If you

are not familiar with the issue, the governor

appointed a study committee of his cronies

that came up with the finding that, to

encourage the hog lots, they had to abolish a

common law principle of nuisance suits that

had been standing, after centuries in

England, it had been transported to America

and been part of our common law ever since.

And, corporate agriculture now is exempted

from that provision of the law and only, to

my knowledge, corporate agriculture. Anyway,

that created the problem and I think we are

not nearly out of the woods yet. But, I have

editorialized on that for a couple of years

now without doing much good. I don't have the

ear of Des Moines and the legislature as well

as I have the ear of Greenfield.



Q: I know one of your favorite stories is

Wal-Mart. Do you want to talk about that?



A: [laughs] The merchant of death. Yes.



Q: Wal-Mart and a small town newspaper in

small town Iowa.



A: Yeah, well, I am an enemy of the big and

my observations are that the bigger they are,

the worse it is for ordinary people. And,

Wal-Mart, I think, has just come in and

devastated main streets all over the country.

As a matter of fact, I don't know how they

heard about it, but I had written some

editorials about Wal-Mart and its affect on

communities. And, Greenfield, Massachusetts

was being petitioned by Wal-Mart, who wanted

a change of zoning so that they could build

one of their stores out on the edge of

Greenfield, Massachusetts. It was bad news

for this kind of picturesque little town. It

was bigger than Greenfield by several

thousand people. Anyway, I got a call from

this gal who was heading the campaign against

Wal-Mart out there. So, I ended up submitting

a few comments and an editorial to their

paper. And, by George, Greenfield,

Massachusetts won the fight and kept Wal-Mart

out of their town. Which was encouraging. At

least some people could get it done, you

know.



Q: Were you able to get it done here?



A: Well, we have got a Wal-Mart in Creston,

that is only twenty miles away, and their

sphere of influence is felt in Greenfield

very definitely. As a matter of fact, I can

stand on our square and look around and count

the newer cars that are customers in our

stores. And I just know that if I would go to

Wal-Mart and looked at the parking lot, there

would be more Adair County cars down there at

any one time than there would be in the

Greenfield business district. So, it hurts.



Q: What is wrong with Wal-Mart? You have low

prices and one-stop shopping.



A: Yes, yes, I know. But, those merchants are

the backbone of the community. We have got

good farmers, too, but they have gotten

terribly busy. They have got to farm more and

more and more land. Some of those guys that I

know are farming a couple of thousand acres

and they push like crazy to get it planted

and harvested. But it is those people that

used to be our school board members and the

church elders and the druggist, the

grocer...the merchants around the square,

they not only bankrolled every fund drive

that comes through and sponsored all the 4-H

Club projects and everything, but they

furnish the leadership that makes a town go.

Greenfield has as many organizations as Des

Moines has. You stop to think about it. Two

thousand people. They are serving on the

planning commission, the city council, the

library board, the school board - all of

those positions that Des Moines has, we have

got just as many people trying to do that

work with only two thousand to pick from. So,

it really puts a strain on leadership. The

merchants that we lose, and we have lost a

lot of them, are missed. -- 




Section 4: 
Q: When you started out, how large

was the paper? What was the circulation? How

many people were there and what were they

doing?



A: Well, when I came back to Greenfield in

'55, there were about the same number that we

have now. That would be, part time and full

time, about eight or nine people. I would

have to count. It is about the same. In the

good old days, I was going to try to find a

photo of our back shop taken when my

grandfather was a young man and handset type

was the way they put a paper out. And, it was

a circle of women. There must have been two

dozen. But, they were picking those letters

out one at a time out of the California job

case, and then having to put it all back in

after the paper was printed. But, when the

linotype came in, that was that big

break-through of technology. When my father

did that, he bought the books, the manuals,

of the linotypes and studied them at home.

And became the expert on how linotype worked.

My dad. The other big improvement in

technology that he instituted, was the

photo...making photos for the newspaper, the

half-tones. That was a hobby of his when he

had been in high school in the early days of

photography.  And I can remember when I was a

kid, growing up and listening to him talk

about...he developed his own pictures and

that meant he made the glass plates and

coated them with sensitive solution and then

they had to be protected from too much

humidity or too much heat until he took the

photos. Then he would develop them and make

the prints. And he, and a friend, Carl

Caswell, f rom Clarinda, wanted to free the

next step to give them more flexibility.  And

that was to send them to an engraver and make

zinc etchings which were mounted on a type

high block of wood for printing in the old

days. He and Carl Caswell contacted

professional engravers and read books and

experimented. And I think those two

newspapers were among the first weekly papers

in Iowa to have their own engraving plants

and to make their own photos in-shop. So,

that he could take a picture today and have

it in the paper tomorrow. It took a lot of

time and a lot of effort, but it was really a

break-through for our paper. And, as a matter

of fact, like all those technology things, a

break-through became a curse, because the

public soon got the feeling that, if the

cameraman from the Free Press wasn't there,

it wasn't a news event. So, the editor jolly

well better show up at their event or there

would be hell to pay. They used to call me

and just chew me out. "Where were you when we

had this big party for so-and-so? He is just

devastated. How could you do this to us?"



Q: What did you tell them?



A: I would tell them that there was only one

of me and there were too many parties that

night.



Q: So, photographs played a

special role in your paper, then?



A: Yeah, it really does. Of course, offset

now makes it so much easier. And Linda Sidey

has arrived at that exalted state of making

half-tones on the Mac [Macintosh computer]. 

That is an art that I would never attempt

because I am carrying on a war with

computers. I am not winning the fight. -- 




Section 5: 
Q: Often, journalists are told that they have

to be objective and they cannot run for

election and they certainly can't sit on the

city council, they can't be on the planning

commission, because to do that would dilute

their objectivity. On the contrary, though,

you, Mr. Sidey, held many, many civic

positions. Talk about the role of the

community journalist and how the community

journalist stays objective, but still becomes

an important cog in that community?



A: Well, I suppose it is a challenge and a

problem in some ways. You can't avoid that

community involvement, because if you are the

editor and publisher of the paper, you have

got to be there, really, when the news is

made and that means school board meetings and

council meetings and county business and

everything. So, you are on the scene. And you

are always hit on to serve. "Since you are

here, Ed, you might as well be a member of

the school board. You have got to cover this

anyway."  And that's right. I guess my good

teachers in Iowa State in journalism would

roll over in their graves at some of the

things that I did. I was president of the

school board and served twelve years. I only

got off the hook when my sons graduated and I

could say I didn't want anything to do with

it anymore. But, that, in itself, was an

admission there was a potential conflict of

interest there, wasn't there? With them going

to school. But, I think it is possible to

cover it objectively and really do a better

job of covering when you are there and

affected by the decisions that you, as a

board, make. If you try to be fair. I have a

hard time getting off the hook on this, but I

do know that the people expect you to do

that. A farmer friend of mine from Winterset

was complaining about his paper. I said I had

always thought that was a pretty good paper.

They cover the news in a good way and

everything. Why did he object about it?  He

said, "People just want to see more of the

editor. They expect him to be there. They

want to see him running up and down the

sideline like you do at the football games.

They want to see him at the party with the

camera to get the picture that is so

important to them." Apparently, that wasn't

happening in that community. I don't know. It

is much, much different than a daily

newspaper, but I think the balancing thing

may be that you are so accessible to the

people that you are writing for that they can

tell you off and call you down whenever you

get out of line. And, if you take sides on a

bond issue and they don't agree with it, they

will let you know.



We had a marvelous plan for a city hall and

library and some other buildings combined.

The property came available just around the

corner from the little old city hall we

wanted to replace. And the library was small

and crumbling. So, we put that up to the

public in a bond issue vote and it was just

smashed. It didn't even get thirty-five

percent. Obviously, it was one of those deals

that the public needed more information and

more positive things about it and they

weren't going to let us get away with pulling

anything. But, just last month, we moved into

a new city hall and library, right across the

street from the old ones and less than a half

a block away from the one where it was voted

down. And it was taking a used store building

and re-modeling it. It was done with a fourth

of the cost of a new complex. I think the

people knew what they wanted and when the

plan was right and when we presented it

right, why, it went. Those folks, if there is

anything that keep me in line, is the fact

that they just walk in the office anytime

they want and tell me off. It happens now and

then and it's probably very good for editors.



Q: Specifically, did you ever get any

complaints from leaders who, while you were

sitting on the school board, you were, at the

same, covering the meetings?





A: Well, I don't think they ever criticized

my news coverage of the school board

meetings. It was mainly when it affected

their pocketbook and that would be in the

bond issues for the new school buildings.

Greenfield built a new elementary building

and then a junior high, we built a new junior

high. And then, most lately, a new high

school. And, those things had no votes. The

first time around, the plan was defeated by a

few votes. Most of the time, the criticism

was aimed at the way we presented the bond

issue vote. Rock Schaefer, a barber in

Greenfield, said, "God damn it, Ed. Doesn't

the Free Press ever oppose anything? Do you

always have to be pro-bond issue?" He was

speaking for a disgruntled group of people,

and most of them were barbers or that type,

that are always against things. And you can

be sure that they were out there voting "no."



Q: And your response to the barber?



A: I would say, "Rock, we will oppose one

when we think it is a good idea. But, until

then, I am not on your side." -- 




Section 6: 
Q: Do you think you cover things

differently than, say, in 1969, or do you

still cover the same type of stories?



A: We still try to do the same type of

stories.



Q: What kind of stories are they?



A: Well, we cover all the main news beats. It

seems like the county and city governments

and school are busier than ever and they have

more meetings and it involves more dollars

and everything. The one thing I regret, and

maybe it is just a change in times, we used

to cover the small, personal things much

better than we do now. I am talking about a

birthday party for the ten-year-old and

things like that. I still think that is the

grist of the news and we ought to be doing a

better job of it. People want to know, in

Greenfield, Iowa, why that cluster of cars

was out in front of Mrs. Jones' house last

week. And, that's news. It is probably a

bunch of neighbors that were giving a party

for her, you know, or something like that. We

used to have, for years, we had marvelous,

old gals that covered the news for us until

they were ninety-some years old. Mamie Lynam

first and them Mrs. Oltrogge.  And they

called those people and got that news for us.

You would have to track them down because

they are not going to volunteer it. I would

like to see that kind of reporting still

done, but I don't have time to do it and my

son, now, is not doing it either. It keeps me

busy just attending some of the meetings that

have to be covered. My father, when he was a

young man, I don't know whether this was...he

was in World War I, whether it was before or

after he served in World War I, he became a

reporter and he had to go down to the train

station when every train came in. And, at

that time, there were three trains a day

coming up to Greenfield. His assignment from

his father was to ask every stranger that got

off that train what his name was and what his

business in Greenfield was. And, by George,

if he didn't do that, it was bad reporting.

But it made the paper. When the Democrat was

founded, there were two other papers in town

and well established. And, the Democrat

became the Free Press and bought out the

other two. In other words, the survivor was

the paper that covered the news the best.



Q: You talked a little bit about

some of the old ladies covering the whatever,

but can you talk about, were there women in

the news room when you were down in Omaha at

the World-Herald and what did they do? What

was their role? Were they treated

differently?



A: We had women in the news room, but, you

see, I was there in the '50's. They covered,

primarily, the women's slant on news. Molly

Simpson would go out on a story to get the

women's angle. I didn't call her a "sob

sister," but a lot of those papers in those

days, and prior to it, the old Hearst

tradition was that you had some "Front Page"

character like Hildy Johnson [referring to a

play by Don Hecht] doing the murder or the

suspect, keeping him under lock and key, and

then you had a "sob sister" who would go out

and do the women's angle. That was kind of

the way it worked at that time.



Q: What is the women's angle?



A: Well, I suppose, if it was a woman, that

was abused or the girlfriend of the criminal,

why, you would do the interview with the

woman to...I don't know. On the World-Herald,

my assignments, I was just kind of a general

assignment reporter doing interviews with

politicians. I covered central police station

for about a year. And, my brother, Hugh, his

beat was city hall. Then we would all get

roped in on traumatic events like the

Ak-Sar-Ben coronation where all the rich

people in town put on funny clothes and

crowned a king.



Q: I want to go back to the

women's angle again. When you were growing

up, and your dad and your grandfather were

running the newspaper, were there women in

the newsroom in Greenfield? And, did they do

just about everything, too?



A: Oh, yeah. Yeah, just about. Those two, I

mentioned, Mamie Lynam and Clara Oltrogge

were covering primarily the weddings, the

anniversaries, the social events, but they

also would write any news that happened. But,

I think, they would turn things like

accidents and fires and that type of thing

over to my father or myself or the men who

were writing the news. And, they didn't use a

camera. But, that, I think, was just an

accident of training. If they wanted to, I am

sure they would have been good at it. -- 




Section 7:
Q: Tell me why you carry on a war with

computers?



A: Because I am old and I resent change

[laughs]. And my typewriter, my wonderful,

Royal, manual typewriter, that my dear wife

bought for me at a church sale just two years

ago, works so smoothly and so efficiently and

saves me so much time that I ditched that

laptop that always gave me trouble. I can do

a lot more work on the Royal

typewriter...now, I acknowledge that the gals

that have to take my copy and set it are

doing some of my work, but I can edit my

piece of hard copy and scratch and change

very quickly compared with scrolling up and

scrolling down and doing all that stuff on

the computer that I tried to do, and it hangs

together better for me to be able to do that

and then send it back. And they can set it so

much faster than I can. And my Royal

typewriter is going to last longer than I

will. I was fearful, because my old Remington

that I had before was giving out. And, I

couldn't find repairs. I had three old

Remingtons in the basement.



Q: Did you use the laptop before

you went to went to the Royal?



A: I used it about a year. It was one of

those early Radio Shack Tandy laptops. It

worked all right. I could take it home and

sit in my easy chair and write something. And

sometimes, I even miss that. But, something

happened to it and they couldn't fix it. Each

time they tried to fix it, it got worse. -- 




Section 8:
Q: I have got a question. I want to jog back

in the interview. You are a newspaperman with

a long tradition in your family. Going back

to the topic of the Wal-Mart-ization of small

town Iowa, what do you think about the new

newspaper chain-owning companies, such as

Gannett, and what do you think their impact

is on the small-town Iowa as well as the

state of Iowa in general?



A: I think it is too bad. That has been a

trend all through my career, of chain

ownership. And, we are going to miss, I

think, that flavor of independent owners. We

were just talking about that tonight at

supper. If the Free Press is ever sold,

probably the only buyer is going to be a

chain. I am guessing probably the Shaw chain

down at Creston would be about the only one

we could sell to. They bring publishers in.

Not all publishers work this way and Shaw is

better than most, but they bring people up

through the ranks and come into Greenfield

and, if you do well, you will be there about

four or five years at the most and they have

got a spot in the bigger town with a daily

paper that is waiting for you. I don't blame

the young people. If you want to move up the

ladder, I suppose, that is where you go. But

it is too bad because I feel like I am still

learning the "in's and out's" of Greenfield.

There are lots of people there that I would

like to interview that I haven't got around

to. There are lots of stories there that, and

my brother is threatening he is going to

write a book, but I don't think he is going

to make it, age is going to catch him, about

the characters we knew in the thirties

growing up in Greenfield. And, they are still

around, but they are going fast. Boy, what a

shame. We have got to get to Heiny Benson and

Rock Schaefer and all those characters. I

think we miss that in the town, too. The

business people, in the old days, used to

stand around when business was slow, which it

often was, and try to figure out gags they

could pull on each other. So, the clothier

over here would call somebody in the store

down the street and report a fictitious fire

or something, you know, just to see what he

would do. They had a lot of fun. We miss that

kind of slap-stick humor. But, when it comes

to newspaper people, we miss that knowledge

of a town and what you can do if you know the

people. Well, you can almost write stories

that quote them without even being there

because you know what they are going to say.

[laughs]



I wrote a story once...our clothing merchant,

Cliff Welcher, had a gang of cronies that

always came in for coffee. And they would sit

on the shoe trying-on benches in the back and

drink coffee and exchange gossip. They were

the same guys. I knew them so well when this

story happened - somehow, somebody had

flipped a cigarette up on the canvas awning

of that store, just about coffee time. His

friends were coming in and Cliff was back

there getting the coffee ready. Louie ??

said, "You have got a fire in your awning."

Just casually, passing through. "Dad gum.

Don't try to pull me into that." Somebody

else came in. "Hey, Cliff, you have got a

fire in the awning." "Aw, forget it."

Finally, somebody that Cliff believed came in

and said, "Mr. Welcher. There is a fire in

your awning."  Ah, it is really a fire. So,

then, Cliff is running back and forth with

his coffee pot to the sink getting water and

going out and his friends are standing there.

And Louie was saying, "It will come right

back down on his face."  Sure enough, it ran

down the awning right on him. Finally, they

did get the fire out. The awning was

half-burned and he was mad as could be. I

heard about this just about a half an hour

later. I got the names of the guys and I

wrote, this is a journalism violation of the

first water, I wrote quotes of all of these

people. I knew they were accurate and

everybody in town knew they were accurate. In

fact, I had people come in and laugh at me

and tell me, "Gee, you must have been right

there, taking notes all the time."  Well, if

you know the people well enough, you can do

that.



Q: Who was Heiny Benson?



A: Heiny was a free spirit. A bootlegger and

a trapper of furs and an odd job, handyman

who had this love-hate relationship with the

banker, and the banker's wife, mainly. Heine

would do their windows and mow the grass and

things like that, but never when they wanted

him to. He just didn't want to take orders.

He wanted to be free, and he was free. There

is a whole set of stories. The banker and his

wife had one kid and he was the orneriest kid

in town. So, all through this relationship of

trying to do the handiwork of the house with

this ornery kid pestering you, you see, and

Heine would have a run-in. Mrs. Foster would

get Jack all ready to go to a very dress-up

occasion and Heine would be out there washing

the windows. And Jack would see the hose and

say, "Aha!" You wet down Heiny. And Heiny

would say, "Don't do that, Jack." And Jack

would persist. And Heiny would soak him down

to the underwear. And then, of course, Mrs.

Foster would blow up and insist that her

husband fire that man. Except that Doc knew

they couldn't get anybody else to work for

them. That Heiny would be the only one they

could get to do the windows. It was

marvelous. -- 




Section 9:
Q: Mr. Sidey, can you tell us what

your opinion is on the changes in the Des

Moines Register?



A: [laughs] The Register had a very bad

period, in my estimation. A great newspaper,

but it had that woman editor that I just

thought darn near destroyed the paper, Geneva

Overholser, but she has moved on. I grew

up...the Register was a great newspaper. And

now, under the new publisher, who is also a

woman, they are coming back to that. I think

it is much improved, again. They are starting

to be the old Register again with, really,

better coverage of outlying parts of Iowa. I

don't think they will ever be the statewide

paper that they were in the old days. But,

just think, that was a real achievement for

that newspaper to become a statewide

newspaper. It really unified Iowa. But, I

suppose the times were ripe. The trains ran

on time and there were lots of trains

running. I mentioned that we had three trains

a day in Greenfield, Iowa, on a branch track.

Not even a main line. But, those papers

printed in Des Moines got out and were

delivered by six o'clock in the morning where

you could sit down and read them with

breakfast coffee. And, that was all over the

state. I have talked to editors and

publishers all over, clear up in northwest

Iowa, that relied on the Register.



Q: Was it Geneva Overholser's fault?



A: She changed the whole tone of news.

Farming dropped off the front page and we had

gay rights marches and things. They were

legitimate news, but it was just a matter of

the way they were played and, I think, it was

out of touch with the people of Iowa as to

what was important. Now, you and I...I will

welcome disagreement on that. But, in my

judgement, she did not relate to the state or

the kind of people that she was writing for.

And she is now with the Washington Post and I

read a couple of things that she had written

and got re-printed back here and I think she

is still out of touch. I don't know what my

brother thinks of her.



Q: What do you think about the

changes in reporting today? I wouldn't call

it negative journalism, but all the things

that are written, the Clinton sex scandals.

Reporters didn't cover that before.



A: I am old, but I think things are better

when we didn't feel a compulsion to tell all.

There are things that you just, and there

again, I am probably violating the journalism

ethics all to pieces, but stories left untold

because of community sentiment, you have got

to pick and choose and do it carefully and

not let your personal feelings interfere. For

instance, there are things that I don't write

in funeral stories that, probably, in another

community, might need to be written. But, if

I know my people well enough, maybe I don't

have to say that...well, you have got to say

that it is a suicide, but maybe a story like

that can be softened. You see what I am...I

am stumbling for words, here. But, those are

people that I know personally. If they live

in Greenfield, I know them. And I don't barge

into the funeral service and tell them that,

"Your son was really a rotter and deserved

what he got." There are certain polite,

civilized things that you can do in the news

business to avoid that, and I am kind of

appalled by what the networks have done to

the Clintons here. Even though he asked for

the job and he is a role model and, if he has

been womanizing to the extent we are led to

believe, that he deserves some kind of

punishment. But, maybe it isn't the news

media's business to punish in this case. Let

the people do that at the polls. I don't

know.  I am not answering your question, I

guess.



Q: Has there ever been a story, or maybe a

situation, on your newspaper where you

decided not to publish or not to write in the

paper? A good friend called, maybe, and said

his son got arrested and he would appreciate

it if you kept it out of the paper. Something

like that.





A: I get those all the time. I don't do it.

Very early on, in about 1956, I had a tearful

mother whose son was picked up for OWI, as I

recall, or something, and really was

innocent. Or maybe it was he that was

innocent and it would break his mother's

heart. Anyway, I left one of those out and,

boy, did that word get around. I said, "Never

again would we omit." So, if it goes in the

District Court proceedings, it goes in the

paper. We won't make a big deal out of  it,

but everybody gets listed. But, believe it or

not, I still, just about every month, get a

request from somebody who says, "Can't you

leave this one out?" And I say, "No, I can't,

because if you do it for one, you do it for

everybody. You just quit covering the court."



Q: Now that it is legal, do you

put juveniles' names in the paper when they

are arrested?



A: No, I don't now. But, I don't know what I

would do if it was a major crime. I probably

would. I haven't had to face that yet, but

you couldn't avoid it if it was a case like a

murder. I would think you would have to. But,

I haven't had to face that hurdle yet.








Section 10:
Q: I have got a general question. Do you have

anything to say about the printed word? The

newspaper that has so totally captivated you

and your father and your grandfather for all

these years, what is it about this whole

thing?



A: Darned if I know. [laughs] We were cursed!

 We could have gone into electronics and made

a mint. You see, Hugh and I both went to Iowa

State after the Army thinking that there has

got to be a better way of earning a living.

We both took engineering. I thought maybe it

would be noble to design a building or a

bridge or something that would stand forever

as a monument. We took engineering for one

year and that is the god-awfullest, boring

profession for us that you could ask for.

Drawing threads on bolts. Trusses and things.

It just...we both looked at each other after

that year and said, "I think we better go

into the newspaper business." And we went

across campus to the Journalism Department

and have been happy ever since. But, what

colored our thinking, I think, was the fact

that we both saw my father having to dash out

after the fire engine in the middle of a cold

winter night to get a picture of the fire. Or

sweating with the bulky machinery or those

photo-engravings that he had to make in the

middle of the night. The hours were terrible

and the pay was not all that great. So, we

were going to do something different. But, it

didn't work. I don't like all phases of the

business. I was never much of a picture man.

Hugh was a great...photo-journalism. He had

the eye for pictures. I like the writing and

the expression of opinion. My forte' is the

editorial page.



Q: Did you ever have conversations with your

grandfather or your great-grandfather about

the newspaper business?



A: I never knew my great-grandfather. He was

a cobbler and a shoe-maker. He was just a

political nut and he needed that Democratic

newspaper because he was so ardent in

politics. My grandfather was a great

character. He had a marvelous sense of humor.

His writing, he would sprinkle in little

items that, I think, sometimes were

imagination. Sometimes, just good jokes. But

he just loved to kid people. And, then, in

politics, of course, he was of that school

where you lambasted your opponents. You smote

the Philistines hip and thigh with the word.

"So-and-so is a scallywag and not to be

trusted. We hope that the voters will see it

our way next November." I think they all,

everybody had fun at it. And I still do, but

I think things are changing. I don't know

about you guys. Can you still have fun?



Q: I don't know. I haven't done it

yet. [laughs]



A: I think you should and I think, maybe, we

take ourselves too seriously now. Did that

happen with Watergate when Bernstein changed

the whole glamour of journalism into the big,

big story. The bringing down of a President.



Q: Do you think that was a change for the

better?



A: Well, I think Nixon deserved it, but,

maybe, we shouldn't be all that powerful in

the news business. I don't know. Now, Linda

is a Nixon hater, so she is... [laughs]



Q: One other thing. Where would you say where

you would draw the line personally as far as

the ethics and objectivity go?



A: For instance, on the sex scandal in the

White House currently. How would I draw the

line? I think I would just leave some of that

uncovered. And I bet you I would hear from a

lot of readers saying, "Why are you covering

up for him?" But I don't have to, in the Free

Press, I am not expected to...I have

commented a little bit on the Clinton

troubles and Ken Starr's inability to bring

him to earth if that is what should be done.



Q: Do you consider the Free Press the

watchdog of Greenfield?



A: No, I don't want to be that. We have a

duty, if something is malfunctioning, to

point it out. And let the public correct it.

But, I guess the closest I got in recent time

to that row was with our police chief and

mayor fight. The mayor at the time was not

all that popular, but he was doing his job

and was decent man. And we had a police chief

that, apparently, just irritated the mayor. I

don't know if it was specific pieces of

things he did or did not do. But, when the

time came to re-appoint the police chief,

Mayor Bert [Robert Donnellan] said, "I just

can't do that." And he didn't. He told the

police chief he was out and he had another

man. And he appointed the other man. Well,

the police chief had enough popularity, it

just pretty much split the town fifty-fifty.

There were petitions and long council

meetings and harangues about both sides.

Finally, it got real bad and I wrote some

editorials saying that the mayor was right in

not appointing if he didn't want to. That the

law specifically said that that was the

mayor's job. The council couldn't overturn

it. If he felt the chief should go and

another one be appointed, that was his duty

to do that. And, further, the police chief,

in trying to overturn the mayor's decision by

a petition drive and presenting names to the

council and trying to get them to re-instate

him, that government by petition was not a

good way to run a city. And that pretty well

settled the thing down. Fortunately, one of

the councilmen stepped forward and was a

peace-maker. He said, "We can't strap the

city for two more years here with this fight.

We have got things to do. We have to sign a

peace agreement." They had councilmen on both

sides. The council agreed to that and signed

a peace document of questionable legal

quality, but it took care of the problem.

And, I think, part of it was just that the

people were fed up with that fight. They

wanted the city to work and it had been

working well.





Section 11:
Q: What do you see for the future

of the newspaper?  Retain ownership? And the

trend, the tell-all trend, the tabloid kind

of thing.  Are there others covering more

important things going on in other areas of

the world. How do you perceive those things?



A: Gee, I don't know. They have counted the

newspaper dead so many times when other means

of communication came in. Radio was going to

be the end of newspapers. Television news was

going to be the end of newspapers. I can

remember reading articles about the fax

machine was going to be the end of newspapers

because everybody would have a fax and it

would just spit out your morning paper. And,

yet, we still sell as many of these as we

ever did and they are still cheap by any

measure. We have a Free Press traffic jam on

Wednesday afternoon. When the paper gets

there, there are people lined up and double

parked in front of the office. And our police

chief occasionally has to even come down and

sort out the double parkers and get things

moving. And when the paper is late...  I

think newspapers still have a future.



Q: What about the headlines?  Do

you see that changing? Not as much reporting

about world affairs?  More about the things

that are happening here.?



A: We don't do any reporting of world

affairs. I can send some of these around. You

can see what...I don't need to take them

home. This is a kind of a souvenir edition of

the Adair County Democrat, which was printed

three years after the founding of the paper

with these wood-cut illustrations. And we

re-did it. We just shot those pages and

printed copies of them. But, it gives a

little history of the town and that sort of

thing. Don't you think the daily papers are

already doing that? Instead of doing those

nightly news things, you can find it in the

daily paper. What Tom Brokaw says that night

would be somewhere in the Register the next

morning. But the Register, if it is doing a

good job, would have more detail or sidebars

to give those of us who wanted to really know

more about it a chance to catch up on that.



Q: When you started out, how much money were

you making?  Do you remember?



A: Yeah, when I think back to Greenfield, I

was making two hundred, no - a few hundred,

no - a hundred dollars a week was my salary.

Now, I make a little bit more than that. One

hundred and seventy-five a week. But I have

had to take a pay cut because I am supposed

to be retired. So, I get Social Security.



Q: Going back, you said you had nine people

on the staff, what did these people do?  What

did they cover? How was it divided as far as

portfolio and advertising and whatever?



A: Linda is my ad manager now, just recently.

She has been in and out of that slot.

Currently, she has two other people helping

her with ad sales. But, those are

part-timers. There is a chance, if we find

the right person, to put another part-timer

on to cover territory outside of Greenfield

in other towns. Then, we have my, myself -

mainly news. We have one lady that does a

little bit of news writing, is just kind of

learning the business. Then we have, help me

out here, Linda. We have one bookkeeper that

is pretty much a full time employee. We have

two part-time people. Patsy and... Denna. She

works on the printing end of it plus

proof-reading. Then Denna does a little bit

of a lot of things. These are not full time

people. They are part-time, mostly.



LS: That, basically, is one full time person

basically.



A: Besides the family with Kenneth and you

and I.



Q: You have two people on the news side.



A: Yeah. My son and myself are the news side.

Then we have country correspondents. They get

paid, yeah. It used to be by the inch, but we

quit that because they tend to write just for

the length of the story if you do that. For

years, that didn't bother us. But people

change. There again, it is a sign of the

times. We had country correspondents that

would never stretch a story. They wrote

faithfully for fifty years and finally

dropped dead writing the last "News Note"

from Washington Township. But you don't find

people like that anymore. You just can't.





Section 12:
Q: You mentioned that you certainly don't

want to have the role of being a watchdog.

Looking at your paper, it seems that part of

your job, or perhaps the majority of your

job, is to boost Greenfield. To serve as a

boosterism product for the city. Is that the

role of country newspapers?



A: One of the roles. I will plead guilty. I

have always felt that the newspaper is one of

those...boosterism is a nasty word. Couldn't

we find a better one than that? I always said

it was "community building." And, if a

newspaper isn't going to build a community,

who is going to?



Q: I was looking at this headline: "All for

one, one for all, for a better Greenfield."



A: That was a Chamber of Commerce event. That

was the theme they had. It was just a report

of their annual meeting and the...



Q: You were the secretary of the Chamber,

right?



A: I was, for a while.



Q: This was not a traditional headline for a

daily. I guess what I am getting at, what is

the difference between a daily like the

Register, which reports and acts as a

watchdog, and a daily which would have a

headline, "All for one, one for all, for a

better Greenfield," not on the editorial

page, but above the fold on page one.



A: But that, more or less, is the only way

you could cover that story. I will say the

headline is probably bad writing on my part.

But it was the Main Street and the

development corporation and the Chamber of

Commerce had their annual meeting as a

combined meeting. The Three Musketeers was

the theme of that meeting. And the whole

program was attempting to unify and put

together a program that said, "Our three

organizations are building the town in these

sectors. Retail business, industrial

development, and face-lifting of business

firms." So, maybe it is a bad head, and it

does boost the community. I will plead guilty

to that. And that's going to be our function.

If Greenfield doesn't survive, the Free Press

sure won't. And if we don't help those

organizations, then I don't think the town

would survive.



Q: A question kind of similar. What do you

feel, especially for past issues since your

family has owned a newspaper, what are some

other roles for a community newspaper? Can

you talk about how the paper fell into the

dispute between the mayor and the police

chief so it was the voice of the town and

pulled the community together. Was that one

of the roles of the paper?



A: Our Letters to the Editor is in great

shape. We have got a lot of people writing

and I love it. That is really doing better,

more letters lately, than I have seen in a

long time. And it is a voice of the community

in that respect. Plus, my friends keep

telling me, "Why don't you write about this?

Why don't you say something about that?" So,

we really...if we are functioning well, the

public has input and they appreciate it, I

think.



Q: When you had coverage of these meetings,

like the school board, regular coverage, that

is a form of being a watchdog, is it not?



A: I think so. I don't want to. In fact, I

don't like to get out at night at all on

those council meetings in the cold of winter.

I was going to quit that when I got to be

sixty-five, but I never got it done. And

then, every now and then, somebody is saying,

"I am sure glad you came to that meeting

tonight because you explained it and I was

afraid that so-and-so was going to do

something." I guess there is no end to what

you are expected to do if you are

conscientious.



Q: We are twenty minutes over. Why don't we

take a break. We will resume in fifteen

minutes.