Pat Jensen interview about journalism career, Iowa City, Iowa, February 19, 2000

Section 1: Q: We're with Pat Jensen at her home at - what is your home address, Pat? A: 13 Lakeview Drive, Northeast. Q: Today is February 19, 2000, and we're talking about the time that you were with the Register and the Tribune. Pat, maybe you could just describe some of the process of you coming from the University of Iowa, where you graduated in 1955, to your hiring at the Des Moines Register, because first of all, you were hired as not the editor, but you were a writer and reporter in the women's section? A: That's right. Q: What was it? You were sending out resumes? A: No, I have to back up and tell you a little story, actually. When we were in our senior year at the University in the School of Journalism, a whole group of people - as I recall, from the Daily Iowan, had a field trip to the Register. We were divided into different groups and met with different editors and so forth. I was in a group of three or four people when we met with Frank Eyerly. And in the course of him talking to us and our asking questions and so forth, he held up the morning newspaper. As I recall, we were with people who had been working on the Rim, you know, and doing the editing and so forth. And I remember he held up the Register and he said, "Would you have played this story the same way we did this morning?" Everybody else kind of looked and yeah, yes, they thought so. I hadn't spoken and he said, "How about you?" I said, "No, I wouldn't have. I would have played number one and number two differently. I would have played the number two" - you know, you always do the banner and this was the main story and the second story was on the left hand side. I said I would have reversed them. And he smiled and said, "So would I!" So I thought, oh, okay, that's interesting to know. But just in the way of background. Q: At the time though, you had been at the DI? A: Yes, right. In fact, it may have been the time we were still editing the DI or it may have been the second semester. I'm not sure. Q: What was your position at the DI? A: News editor. I was news editor, which was like second in command, kind of thing, and oversaw mostly the work - all of the editing and the layout and the publishing, when it went to bed and that kind of thing. So when Dwight went to work for the Register - Q: Dwight is your husband? A: Dwight is my husband, yes. In April of 1956, I was not working. We came from the university and he left graduate school for us to go to work. I was looking for work and I had also, as a minor, gotten a degree in education, a minor in education. So, I thought well, maybe I can get a teaching job more readily because the Register is the only place to work here. I actually had an interview lined up with the Carlisle School District and I got a call the day before my interview and it was Frank Eyerly's secretary. She said, "Mr. Eyerly wonders if you could come in tomorrow. He'd like to talk to you." I thought, hmmm. So I put off my school interview until the next week, went into see Mr. Eyerly, sat down and he offered me a job. I had not talked to him about a job at the Register at all at that point. But I think - the reason I told you the other story - he knew me and he hired Dwight. But I think he remembered me and I think that, because it struck him as a positive. So anyway, he offered me the job and I started in May of 1956. Q: He wasn't your immediate supervisor, though? A: No. Q: Who was that? A: Russ Schoch, as I recall, was his name. It was in the women's department and I remember at the time I always thought, I will never go to work in a women's department. I want to be a reporter! A real journalist. It's a goal, certainly more than the women's department, but the reality was, and there we were. It was the only newspaper in town and I much preferred doing a newspaper job, even if it wasn't the one I had, than going and doing something else. So I went to the women's department. -- <br><br> Section 2: Q: What were your duties? A: Initially, I did some editing of - in those days, they called it "society writing." I did some editing of that but I also did some feature work. I would go out and do - I'm trying to remember some stories. I did one on Women in the Civil Air Patrol and Dizzy Dean came to town and I went and interviewed his wife and that kind of feature sorts of writing. Q: But everything you wrote, then, ended up in the women's section? A: Yes. It was all in the women's section. I did that for - let's see, I went to work in May, I think it was about November when the woman who was editor of the Sunday women's section left and then I moved into that position. At that time, the Register - well, they had a society page or women's page in the Register and in the Tribune, as I recall, daily. And then we had a Sunday section which was 8-12 pages. The other thing I did when I was writing was wedding, engagement announcements, all that sort of thing. Then, when I moved to do the editing of the Sunday section, then essentially, that's what I did. All of the editing. Other people would write and I would do the editing and the layout and the production work for that. Q: For younger members of our audience, what is society reporting? A: Well, at that time, there would be a lot of stories on engagements and weddings and they weren't just what people handed in, necessarily, although you took that, too. But there were certain families who were considered - well, I guess you'd say society. And they would get maybe better coverage and you'd try and get more information. There were also columns and there were several people who wrote columns and it would be "The Goings On." Some of it you will still see in papers today, it's just not called the same thing. Special parties or affairs or fundraisers or civic kinds of activities or the theatre and so on. We had one column that was from Washington, D.C., written by Elizabeth "Beanie" Zwart. That was one we didn't edit. But she lived in Washington and she would report back on the people, the Iowa people, usually, connected with the congressional delegations. Q: Why wouldn't you edit that? A: She didn't want you to edit. She didn't like being edited. I learned that you had to be careful with her stuff but initially, I just thought if it was bad, I edited it. And she called me a couple times from Washington and said, "You're not supposed to change my copy." Q: Was that a condition of you taking the column? A: No, I think it was because she was kind of a favored columnist and some kind of arrangement she had with, I suppose, with Eyerly, because at the time, I thought, now wait a minute! As I recall, I talked to Russ and he said, no, you just leave it. Q: After the fact or before you had edited it? A: I think the first time I actually edited it and ran it and that's when she called me. Because I had changed some things. Q: Is that when Russ talked to you? Or she was just calling you directly and saying - A: She called me directly. She called me directly and told me. And I don't remember all the particulars, but I remember at the time thinking, nobody is so good that they can't be edited! Q: Society being the well-to-do folks, in your coverage area, did you ever have a problem with that? Did you ever think back, saying, we're excluding people or these people are getting coverage because of the amount of money they make or because of their standing in the society? A: I don't know that I did. I'm trying to remember. Some of it, I remember thinking some of them were a little phony, you know. I had more problems, and certainly in retrospect, with how the women at the newspaper were treated than I did with that. I mean, that was a different situation. But it's an interesting question, because I don't remember that I did react that way, particularly. Q: Because part of the way you recorded this was you went to these benefits and galas and things. A: Not really. Not really very much. We had one woman who was kind of - I won't call it a gossip column - or you might call it a gossip column. She usually put that sort of thing in. With the fancier weddings and things, we didn't go any of those. We just got more information about them. I really can't remember how we made the decisions as to how much you would run, but some of them got larger pictures, you know, and so forth. But I honestly don't remember just what it was that determined that. -- <br><br> Section 3: Q: How did you get your information? Was it from people who had attended these things? A: Well, or just when we got information from the families, we would ask more questions and get more out of them to put in, into the detail of the kind of wedding cake or the kind of flowers. I never did like that sort of thing, honestly, because I thought it wasn't particularly necessary and I preferred doing what we called the feature stories. We did cooking stories off and on. We had Jean Tallman, who was the food editor. She did all of our editing in that field and we ran that kind of thing and stories about children. But the "society" stuff was there, too, to a greater degree than it is now. Q: But there was a heck of a readership for that, even though you didn't particularly like all of that. A: Yes, there was. Q: Did you get feedback, positive or negative, from the families? Or just readers in general? A: Gosh, it's been such a long time. I don't remember getting any negative feedback. I'm sure we must have gotten some. But in retrospect, I think we did a pretty good job of what we did. I don't recall that we had a lot of negative feedback. Q: Talk a little bit about those human interest feature stories that you said you enjoyed doing. What were some of your more memorable stories? And what was the process of the assignment, the story selection and you going out and actually covering some of this stuff. A: I'm trying to remember because there weren't that many that I did because I only did the writing for about six months or so. And as I recall, Russ made the assignments. I remember the Dizzy Dean thing because, growing up, I knew the name Dizzy Dean. I knew who he was. I don't remember why he and his wife were in town, but I went to the hotel, to their suite, and went in and interviewed. This was a big deal to me because I hadn't done these kinds of people before. I remember he was just a real old shoe, a real old shoe. His wife was very nice. I enjoyed doing that. I should have looked in my files. It's been so many years. Q: Was it a kind of profile? A: Yes, it was just, 'what's it like, being the wife of a famous man' kind of story, as well as, 'why are you here' kind of thing. I honestly can't remember other stories. I do remember the one on the Civil Air Patrol because I was impressed with these young women who were flying. And because when I was kid during World War II, I wanted to fly. So, I remember thinking, "Gee, these are neat ladies." Q: Where was that? Where did you go to get that story? Did the story come to you or you went? A: No, I did, because I remember a photographer going along and getting some pictures. I don't remember if Fort Des Moines was still operating then and there was still a unit of some kind there. Boy, way back in the memory. I just don't recall, Brian. -- <br><br> Section 4: Q: As for your hiring, what did they hire you at? What was your pay? A: Sixty-five dollars a week. Q: And did it increase later when you became editor? A: What they did at that time was, if you were satisfactory, you got a $5 a week raise. This is one thing that I didn't care for. On the news side, I think most of the men, including Dwight, got a $5 raise after three months. In the women's department, we got it after six months. So, after six months you got $5 and in other six months, you got $5 raise and that was your - you were doing better and that was it. A little side story. Jean Tallman, who was the food editor, her husband was an editor on the Tribune, in fact, an assistant news editor or something, and I remember over coffee one day her talking about how decisions on how women were paid where, if there were couples, and there were the Brysons, the Tallmans, us - I can't remember who else, but there were several couples - that Frank Eyerly looked at the total income of what the family made and that the men certainly would make more than the women regardless of the positions. I had not faced that kind of thing before, so it was kind of surprising. But then, as I watched it evolve, I was aware that indeed, that's the way it went. Q: Then you had an opinion about that? A: Yes, I did! You know, it was not as unusual. You know, we didn't have equal pay or anything. I think that women were more inclined to accept the discrimination. I would not today, not in any stretch of the imagination. But things were very different in the sixties and before that. Q: How about working conditions? How were they for you or other women? A: I think the conditions were pretty good. I think that - I'm trying to remember how many women - most of the women were in the news department. There were several female reporters, but not many. In fact, I remember - Q: General assignment? A: General assignment reporters, yes. Lula Mae Coe was, I believe, in the Tribune. There was a younger woman, Julie Zelenka, I think, was her last name, and I may be wrong. She was a general assignment reporter and Lula Mae did, as I recall, more feature kinds of things. But I don't recall that there were any women in editor's positions at that time or on the Rim - any of that sort of thing. Most of us were in the women's department. So there were a lot more men. I don't remember specific, any kind of what you would call sexual harassment and that kind of thing. But I might not have been sensitized to it at that time, either. Generally, I think the work environment was a good one. I worked - I had Sundays and Mondays off. I worked Monday through Saturday because of putting the Sunday edition out. I do remember on Saturdays, when the Sunday section would be finished and I would sign off on the final proof, of going down one or more times to the composing room and the union guys up there not wanting me down there. But the men that I worked directly with said it was all right. I don't know if there was a rule or if it was because I was a woman or whatever it was, but they didn't want me to come down there and it was on like a deadline situation or something. But generally, I think that the work environment was rather pleasant. A lot of smoke, retrospect. (Laughing) A lot of smoke! Everybody smoked in those days. Q: As for the women in the newsroom, do you know hearsay or from what they told you, how much they were getting paid? Was it more than what you were getting? A: I don't know. No, I don't know because I did not talk to them about that. I think that maybe some of us within the women's department, talked about it and we were all in the same kind of range and we all thought that we deserved more, of course. But I don't remember ever talking to the others about that. Q: Did you socialize with the women news reporters? A: Yes. Overall, I think there was quite a lot of socialization in the news end of things. Of course, with Dwight being a reporter on the Register, we knew people from the Register, the Tribune, some of them from the university, contacts. There was, I think, a fair amount of socialization. In fact, probably most of our social activity was with those people, initially, when we moved to Des Moines. I had grown up in Des Moines, but really didn't go back to those friends as much as socialized with the news people. -- <br><br> Section 5: Q: I'm going to ask you to take us back here to the newsroom. Can you describe the physical configuration of what it looked like? The newsroom, editorial department, women's department. Was it separate? What did it look like at that time? A: We were all in one huge, huge room or floor. From the south, the old morgue, or library was at the front, which would have been the east side. The editorial writers would have been at the front of the building on the west side. The sports department, then, was kind of in between those. The women's department was next to the sports department. We didn't have cubicles or anything like you have now. We had desks and file cabinets and so forth and you kind of cordoned off, but still, you were open to everybody. The women's department was directly outside of Frank Eyerly and Ken MacDonald's offices. In fact, I remember my desk looked at right at where their secretaries were. They were along what would have been 8th Street on the west side, with a secretary outside of each office as I recall. Then, as you moved north into the room, at that time, as I recall, the Tribune and Register people were kind of clustered. The Tribune people closer to us and to Eyerly's office and then the Register people beyond them toward the north. The Rim, where the copy editing was done, was generally in the center of the room. And I'm trying to remember if there was something more along the east side and I can't recall. I just can't recall for sure, but I can visualize seeing certain people working at certain places. The city editor's desks were kind of along the - as you looked to the north from the women's department, the Tribune city editors, the Register's city editors and then the Rim, as I recall. I think there were some photographers, some layout people along that north wall. Gosh, I hadn't thought about it for so long. I think maybe they were, but I can't remember for sure where the photographers were. They were over there. They probably told you where they were. Q: Okay, that's fascinating. You can kind of get a picture of what this whole place looked like. And there are several floors in the Register building, too. A: Yes. This was the fourth floor we were on. Of course, it was the manual typewriters, carried the copy over. Nothing was not only computerized, we didn't have electric typewriters, so all the editing was done by hand - in fact, I still like it best - a sheet of paper with a pencil - so there was a lot of racket. And at certain times, because the deadlines were different for the Tribune and the Register, the Tribune people would be in there writing in the morning and then be gone by mid-afternoon. The Register folks would come in later and be still going. We had a situation where I worked, as I said, Monday through Saturday. Dwight worked - and I worked like 8 to 5, generally, except sometimes it would be a little later. Dwight worked Monday through Friday but he worked 2:00 p.m. to midnight. And we had one child, so we had a situation like a lot of people do today, where he'd be with her in the morning and then he would take her to my folks and she would stay with my mother in the afternoon, then I would pick her up and have her in the evening and this kind of thing. So, the hours were different, but it wasn't that long that I worked before we had our second child and I stopped working at that time. Q: What did they do on the other floors? I don't know if the terms are right - where was the copy, the layout and pasting? A: The advertising, I think, was on one floor. Hmm, actually, all the big presses at the Register were on the ground floor. You could look in off the street and I think they actually went up to the second floor. Then - I can't remember for sure if advertising was on the third - where people would go in and do their ads. They did the layout. I honestly can't recall. I can tell you what the hallway looked like where we went into work because you got off the elevator and it curved around and they had all those old, they had framed pictures of some of the major stories of the century, framed from the Register coverage of them. Because that's the way we went in all the time. Q: When you wrote a piece of copy, what happened to it? Did it just go to the Rim? A: It did not. We handled all of that ourselves. When a story would be written - for instance, if I would write a story, and then give it to Norma if it was for the Sunday paper. Q: Who is Norma? A: Norma Matthews was the woman who had been the Sunday editor, Sunday women's section editor before I was. Then it went directly down to the typeset, as I recall. Then we would get the galley proofs back up to read and we did the reading of the galley proofs and then those go down and you'd do the layout. Of course, the layout - you'd do all the layout design by hand. Then it would go down and then you'd get the page proofs, the final page proofs, and that was the way we handled it. I think that we had - I'm trying to remember if we had chutes that we sent the copy down. Yes! I can't remember for sure now. Or if we had copy people that actually took it. I'm just drawing a blank as to how we did it. I remember sitting and editing, but I don't remember for sure. But we did not go through the main Rim for the news stuff. Ours was all separate. Q: Even for the features? A: Yes. -- <br><br> Section 6: Q: Did you ever have a desire to write hard news? Did you ever want to get into the newsroom? A: Yes, yes. Q: And did you try? A: No. I didn't. Mainly because - or did I? Wait a minute. I may have talked to Frank Eyerly a time or two about it, but situations were different then. As I said, we accepted some things and I also knew that we wanted to have more family and that I was not going to be working that long. So, while I wasn't always satisfied with it, I thought, well, you know, for this amount of time. And I knew if I got into the news side, it would make it more complicated in terms of hours and coverage and all that sort of thing. So, I did not fight it, no. I did, at one point, and this may have been - maybe it was before I became the Sunday editor. I applied for a job at Better Homes and Gardens. Q: Oh, you did? A: Just kind of out of curiosity. One of the questions I was asked was, do you intend to have more family and when, which was a question nobody would get by asking today. But I very honestly said, "Yes, I do intend to have more family and probably in the next several years." Well, then they were not interested in me and they told me that just straight out. I mean, its pure discrimination but it existed and I didn't like it. But that's the way it was. Q: Had you considered that they might ask that question and had you considered saying something else? A: No. I really hadn't thought about it. I mean, it hadn't occurred to me because I was focusing on the position and that I was capable of doing the position and it never occurred to me that they would ask me that at the time. But I'm quite blunt and honest and so I answered and there I was. Which is all right, because I ended up, you know, for the time, at the Register, which I think I probably liked better than I might have at the Better Homes and Gardens. Q: Given the circumstances, did you have in mind a career after your family in journalism? A: I really don't think I had thought it through that far. And I ended up not working for a good many years, just doing volunteer work, but I'm sure I always kind of had it in the back of my mind that if I did something, I would prefer going back to newspaper work because I liked the environment very much of the newsroom. It was a very comfortable environment to me. Q: The newsroom? A: The newsroom - any newsroom. But I liked the environment at the Register, too, in terms of being where the news is being covered and knowing what is going on and having the excitement of different stories all the time and that kind of thing. Q: Because you had that at the Daily Iowan, but you really didn't have it - A: Yes. I didn't have that in the same way, although because you're there, you can hear what's going on, you know what's going on, you're talking to people so that you're connected, but you're still a little removed from it in the women's department. Needless to say, I'm just as glad they don't have them anymore. -- <br><br> Section 7: Q: Did you realize at the time that you were hired, or at the time that you were working at the Register, that it was one of the most - it was one of the best papers in the country? A: Oh, yes! Q: What were your feelings about that? A: I was - Q: In fact, was it the best paper? A: No, I didn't think it was the best, but I thought it was one of the best, certainly. I think you had the feeling - there was a feeling of pride, I think, working at that paper, even if it was in the women's section. Still, it was better than anything else, certainly, around. I think there was a general feeling of camaraderie, with the people that worked there, of being proud of being connected with that newspaper. So, all in all, yes I did know that it was - I don't believe it is today, but it was at that time, yes. Q: Now, from the time before you were hired, and then after you were hired, were your feelings the same? I mean, did you see something different after you got there? A: I think my observation, generally, was that it was a still a very good newspaper. The people that worked there - there were all kinds of personalities, but they were very professional, demanded quality work, that it was a good place. There was no - you didn't do things in a slipshod way, you tried to achieve the best you could and I think the people that worked there were that way. I liked that. Q: Anything else that made that a good newspaper? I mean, it was different in the sense that it covered the entire state of Iowa. A: It was very different. In fact, now that you mention that, we did two editions of the Sunday section. I had forgotten about one - one was out and one was the Des Moines area. I had forgotten that we did that, so we had two versions of it. I guess I came out of the university and journalism school thinking that newspaper work was a high calling and journalism was a noble profession and while, certainly, you know, there were things that maybe you saw that you didn't like as well. I don't believe when I left that I felt any different about it in terms of having served at the Register, been at the Register. In fact, I still think that. I mean, I still think journalism is a high calling. Q: What makes journalism a high calling? Why is journalism so important? A: It's the old Fourth Estate. I'm very interested in government and politics and in societal life and what happens and all of that kind of thing. Journalists and quality journalists play an important role in the whole aspect of government and people understanding the government. Now, with the Internet, everything is changing, so I don't know what's going to happen there. But I think it's directly that journalists have played a very important role and right now, with what's going on in the political arena, in the Republican primaries, it's very significant. I think that the way the play is right now between [Senator] John McCain and George [W.] Bush and with the press coverage and so forth, but if there were no people in journalism who believed that you must report with as much objectivity as you can manage, and they try to honestly pursue that, I think we'd be in a real - it would be much more difficult in this country. I think that, for the most part, people who are in journalism, particularly those who go up the ladder and work for the best papers and have the best beats and so forth, are good people and they care. They're involved and they try and do a good job. To me, it's better than selling shirts or whatever you might do. I just think it still is. Q: You cited the Republican primaries in South Carolina and the role the media may be playing. What is your opinion about that? I mean, it is stepping over the bounds or is it doing what it should be doing? A: Both. Because John McCain has provided such access to the media. I think that there is a certain pack mentality with the political coverage at the national level. Because of the access and because of the way he has managed his campaign, the press right now is particularly smitten with him and they see the contrast between a McCain who is very open and a [George W.] Bush who is very programmed or a [Vice President Al] Gore who is, I think, also very programmed, or a [Senator Benjamin] Bradley, who is not as open to them. So, they like that because they can get the news, they can be part of it. I think there is an excitement for a lot of them to cover all of it, of course. You know, you get to know all the big players. I pay a lot of attention to - you know, our favorite news program is the "NewsHour with..." Jim Lehrer's "NewsHour" and other news stations like CNN with stories about politics and so forth. And there is a lot of discussion now about has the media gone overboard for John McCain and I think maybe it has a little bit, but at the same time, part of it, he's created, because of the way he handles things. But I think it's played a lot of - in fact, I heard the other night, Geneva Overholser saying, "Well the media would not be following him if the public...if the people, weren't listening to him, the media wouldn't be doing the same thing." Because Bradley is saying a lot of things, too, and he's off in the wilderness over here right now. But, yes, it's not all perfect by any means and I sometimes get very mad at some of the people in the press. Sometimes when you here them talking like on "Washington Week" or something like that, you can pick up where the biases are, certainly. But they are human beings. I think for the most part, it's a good thing. Q: So journalism looks good to you, still? A: Actually, I tend to relate more to the print, to listen to a David Broder or a Jack Germond or the NPR people, Elizabeth Arnold. Some of those people I think are really very good. David Broder is somebody - in fact, he's a friend of ours. We've known him for years and he's at the top of the list, almost, in terms of objectivity. The print people I tend to listen to a little more than the broadcasts, because, well, I'm biased. -- <br><br> Section 8: Q: You touched on it a little bit ago, about what the Register has become. So, here's your soap box! Compared to what it was. A: Compared to what it was, I think that - I mean I understand that the selling to Gannett, but I think that is when it started really going downhill. And it is a Gannett newspaper, like the Press Citizen is a Gannett newspaper, was good and bad, the Iowa City Press Citizen, but they made the decision to stop trying to cover the state and went to being the "golden circle," a central Iowa newspaper. And what we in other parts of the state get in terms of coverage from the Register, I think, is very scant. We can get legislative coverage. They have a good editorial page still, I think. But the kind of coverage compared to what it used to be in terms of to get a feel for the whole state, it is just not there at all anymore. I don't think that their political coverage is as good as it used to be, either. You know, I don't necessarily disagree with them editorially at all, because I think they are probably the best editorial - well, I wouldn't say the best editorial page in the state. But then I don't read all of them. I don't read the Sioux City and so forth. But it's just a shadow of its former self, I think. The daily Register used to be a nice, thick newspaper with some in-depth news. There is almost no national news in the Register anymore. In fact, often the Iowa City Press Citizen has picked up a piece out of the Washington Post or the LA Times that is far superior to something you can get in the Register, which I thought I would never say. But I just think the coverage is very narrow compared to what it was. Q: Defenders might say as we have more and more competition of other media outlets and we've seen a decline in the circulation of print newspapers, it's an absolute necessity. How would you answer that? A: They may be right. They may very well be right. But I don't know. I haven't focused, in terms of sitting down and looking at the Register every day and evaluating how would I have done something different, but I personally could do with a lot fewer of the stories about somebody's murder. I know they cover that and the local television stations cover this kind of stuff, too, and I guess most people like it. It's not what I like. I want hard news, I want political news, I want governmental news, I want to know what's going on in the country. And it's harder to get from these sources. Q: We also touched on this a little bit ago, but could you talk a little bit about the way the Register saw Iowa as its entire news coverage area, because that really was rare, back in the fifties and sixties. A: It was, and they had stringers all over the state. In fact, when we were at the university, I think Dwight did some stringing for the Register for a period, as I recall. Because they wanted the news stories from all of the communities in the different areas of the state and they covered them as news. It wasn't just some poor farmer's problem with the hog lot at a certain place or some child runaway or whatever it may be. You would know what was going on in Sioux City or Mason City or Ames or whatever. Well, you still can get Ames, because Ames is part of the "golden circle," you get a little more of it there. But you really had more of a feel for what was going on overall in those communities because there were people out there reporting back to the Register and they were running it. I can understand the corporate decisions. I've heard discussions about if the print media even going to exist not far down the road and maybe it won't. But if it doesn't, it's too bad, because there are a lot of us who still like to feel the newspaper and read it. But we're disappearing, I know that. Q: Okay, we talked about the importance of having a paper like that, that serves Iowa and now all the closing of these bureaus and the lack of stringers and all. What have we lost? I mean, we've got the Internet, and we've got small town newspapers. In fact, if you wanted to go find out what the news was there. What's wrong with that? A: That's a good question, because maybe it's just that some of who liked it the old way don't like to see the change. That's always a possibility we have to admit to. But we are - within the state of Iowa, we all are Iowans. We're not just eastern Iowans, we're not just central Iowans. I think that part of what has happened in the Register is that the people, the journalists, the management, the editors, the decision-makers there, have tended to begin to think that central Iowa is Iowa. They focus so strongly on the greater Des Moines metropolitan area and all that goes on there that they tend to think that what they've got is, central Iowa and then some farmers out there. And they have lost the perspective of the total entity of Iowa, if that makes sense. Their focus has just become too narrow in their perspective. I think, has gotten a little bit lost. Q: You start reading the editorials. A: You might find that the editorials are nowhere in scope, that they developed a position, an editorial position, based on something that is more narrowly focused on the Des Moines metropolitan area than it if they had the broader state perspective. I don't know, for instance, if very many of the reporters at the Register go out in the state and do much, travel around and get more of a feel, other than like during political campaigns or for some certain big story that may develop. I'm not sure how much they go out. Q: I'm still trying to get a feel for how you think why that is important, because are Iowans something different that a Missourian or a Minnesotan and do they need to be covered differently than someone else? You know, central Iowa is just a defined news area. They changed the coverage area. What makes it an Iowa news story? A: I don't know. I guess you raise an interesting question because maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it doesn't make any difference at all to most people. I guess those of us who used read the old Register that covered more were more personal with it. Maybe it's a reaction, but I still think that the Register would be a better newspaper if it had a broader perspective than it has. I guess that's the best way to describe it. I read the Cedar Rapids Gazette now, because it covers eastern Iowa and I can get things here that I don't get in the Register. And I think the Gazette, today, gives the Des Moines Register a run for its money certainly in terms of news coverage. -- <br><br> Section 9: Q: Getting back to the day-to-day stuff at the Register when you worked, did you come across any 'sacred cows' or ethical dilemmas, as in stories you might want to cover but you kind of got the feeling maybe you shouldn't because you'd offend editors or even clients of the Register? A: I don't recall that. The only thing, as I mentioned before was the one columnist that was 'don't bother her stuff.' But other than that, no, I don't remember running into that at all. Q: We talked about the Rim. Give me some more of the lingo that was used back then. A: Oh, gosh! Q: A lot of that is kind of forgotten. A: It's all gone. It's gone now. Gosh! I can't think of the lingo, but I can think of things that have changed in terms of how we used to handle things. I think the whole design of newspapers certainly has changed. I mentioned that we were taught you have one banner headline and the main story is on the right hand side and the other one, the second one, is on the left and you go from there. I think that has pretty much gone out the window by now. We used to very carefully when we wrote, headlines had to be very careful and not put a preposition at the end of a line and all that. I mean, all sorts of things like that - you could do it, but that wasn't a good one if you did it that way. You could always re-write it and come up with a headline that made more sense than that. But the lingo, gosh. It will probably come popping out and I can't think of anything at this stage. The Rim was - I've explained it to so many people over the years, of what it used to be like. But I'm just drawing a blank. Q: I know Dwight is just bubbling over there. A: Are you trying to get into the lingo? You can do it when it's your turn! Q: What are some those? Maybe you can jog her memory. DJ: I was making a list as you were talking. A: That's not fair! [Laughter]. DJ: You are talking about the Rim, how about slots? A: Oh, yes! Yes, you're right. The slug in the line. Q: What was it? A: It was the spacing between lines of type. Now you just run it out automatically. Then you'd set the type and if the story wasn't long enough, you'd put extra space in the slugs. The matrix, which was a hot tub, the lettering that came from the linotype machine and all that stuff. We had to learn how to do some of that when we were at the university. We had to take at least one course - I can't think of what it was called - where we learned to set type, we learned to do the pages, put the slugs in, the headlines, the whole thing. That was part of what you learned how to do, so you would understand what was going on in the composing room. And all of that is gone, as well as I think the editors have all disappeared today. As far as I know, it looks like a reporter goes in, writes a story and it goes it, period, sometimes without even a spell check. Q: I was going to bring that up. It seems like we can increase our efficiency, but there might be a downside too, where you lost the checks and balances. A: I've always believed that even the very best writer can stand an editor. Everybody can. Often, something will happen now, when you read in the paper. In fact, I saw one this morning, where the writer started to write something and changed their mind, but they forgot to take out a word. So all of the sudden, you've got a word in there that doesn't belong. Then you have a word that they typed in, and I do this myself on the computer, that is still a word, but it's the wrong word. You know, it's "that" instead of "than" or something. Q: So spell check doesn't do that. A: Spell check doesn't catch it. We had editors really working the stories. When you wrote a story, you could expect that whoever edited it would come back with some questions, probably, or some changes or some rearrangement of something and it was just a natural process and it usually improved the story. I think they could use more of that now. -- <br><br> Section 10: Q: Do you read the paper today? A: Oh, yes. Q: With an eye to story selection and the in-depth reporting, or lack of, and how they are actually written, what is your impression of what you are seeing compared to what your experience was when you were there? A: It's a little bit hard, because the Register we get is not the local edition, so we don't get the local news. So it's hard to measure. When we were there, we were seeing everything from the courthouse to City Hall to the local school system and all the rest of it, none of which we see in the papers that we get, so it's hard to measure that. I had the feeling in terms of legislative coverage and coverage out of the state house in general, that it's brief. That they've taken a story and cut it down to half or a third of what the story might be if we were looking at the Des Moines edition. It's generally superficial, I think. The editorial pages are the one reason that I still like to read the Register. The rest of it I can get as much or more news -we read the Iowa City Press Citizen and the Cedar Rapids Gazette and the Des Moines Register every day and I can get more hard news and probably just as good political coverage out of the other two as I can out of the Register. But the editorial page is still a gem, to me. Q: What do you like about the editorial page? You're speaking about the Register, right? A: Yes. I like their selection of columnists for the most part. Q: You mean national? A: National columnists. Well, I like their local columnists, too. I like Don Kaul. We've known Don Kaul for years. He's kind of a character, but I like him. But I like the editorials. I mostly agree with their editorials and, of course, you're comfortable when you read an editorial that you like and you agree with. But just this morning, they had a couple very good columns, I thought. I think it's more to my political liking and leaning. Q: Who were some of your influences in journalism? Was it at the university? Or was it once you were at the Register? A: At the university, there were several different people, I guess, at the university. Charlie Barnett, is that right, Dwight? DJ: Barnum. A: Barnum was one of our professors. He had come, as I recall, from Northwestern, but I liked him very much. He was a good teacher and I just thought, a quality individual. They had one professor that was a lot of fun, named Walt Steigleman. I don't know if you've heard of Walt Steigleman? He used to, when you joined the class, if you answered a question, he'd give you a candy bar. So that's what I remember about Steigleman. But he taught history of journalism and journalism law, as I recall. Then, Virginia Coverdale was one that I think probably was as good, as much an influence as anybody. Her name later was Mather, here. She's been dead for quite a few years, but she taught reporting. You wrote your stories and then she told you what was wrong with them and she was a real taskmaster. I think I probably learned as much about how to write and be accurate and so forth, from her, as from anybody. Then, when we got to the Daily Iowan, Bill Zima was the advisor. But I don't remember learning as much from him as I did maybe, from the others, but I could be wrong. But I know Bill, so. Q: Do you still write? A: Well, I do, but mainly my volunteer work. I'm active in the League of Women Voters, so I'll do writing and maybe pieces or reports from research that we've done and that kind of thing. Yes, I do a fair amount of writing, but not a lot. Q: Locally? Is that freelance? A: No, locally maybe for the Press Citizen or the Gazette. A lot of the writing is done internally, you know, for our membership. Back-grounding kind of reports. And then we've been very active in studying county government for the last five years and we've written reports that we have presented to the Board of Supervisors and that kind of thing. So it's nothing grand, but I still do some. -- <br><br> Section 11: Q: We'll get to that, but I do want to ask you one other question first. Why did you leave the Register? A: Because I got pregnant with our second child and in those days, not very many women worked up through pregnancy and because - I mean, it was something to work with one child. We had one little child. Not very many women worked after they had any children in the fifties. You tended not to do it. And so when I got pregnant with our second child, then I stopped working. Q: Obviously, the arrival of a new child is going to be very exciting. But as for your career, was this was a struggle for you to make that decision to leave? A: No, it wasn't, at that time. If I had faced it maybe fifteen or twenty years later, it would have been a major struggle for me because I got very active in women's rights when we lived in the east and did lobbying of legislature and tried to get the ERA passed in Virginia and all sort of things like that. So it would have been. Had I been at a different point in my life in terms of feminist issues and so forth, it would have been a real struggle for me, I think. Q: If you were further along. A: Further along in my development, I guess, yes. But at that time, no, and I really thought that children needed to have the home influence the first years of their life, so I always thought that I would be home when children were small, until they went to school, anyway. So at that point, that was not a struggle for me. -- <br><br> Section 12: Q: Any final comments you'd like to make about the field of journalism or your time at the Register? Or speculate about what's different or what's ahead? A: I don't know. I worry sometimes about what's ahead. I worry about the fact that more people do not read the print media now. I think that is very unfortunate because there is no way that you can get much depth in the broadcast or Internet. I mean, you can get it on the Internet, but I guess I'm maybe old fashioned enough that I don't trust the Internet to the same degree that I trust the Register or the Washington Post or whatever. I hate to see what may be happening to some of these newspapers. They may be gone. I think it would be a real loss to the country as a whole, if that happened. And I hope it doesn't. But I do see real problems looming on the horizon with the Internet and with the changes and with how fast everything moves. You can't print that fast, I mean, not in the kind of print medium that we used to. It's going to be a struggle. Q: You suggested that some of the Register reporting and coverage may be superficial. Are there any papers that you see that do provide what the citizens, the readers, should need? A: When we lived in the Washington, D.C. area, I read the Washington Post and I got spoiled. I really enjoyed the Washington Post and the New York Times, too, which I don't read regularly. We do take the Washington Post Magazine, so we can odd bit pieces and so forth, that are broader. But I really was spoiled, I think, with that newspaper every day. I think it would be wonderful if everybody could have access to that kind of a publication. Of course, being in the Washington area, you got a larger dose of the political and governmental arena, which was I am most interested in. Q: With that in mind, is there hope? Are there papers? A: I think, that as newspapers begin to disappear, the last ones to go would probably be the ones out of major metropolitan areas, the Post, the New York Times, the LA. And I really think that you would still have at least one major paper, probably in each state. You still need to have coverage of state government someplace by somebody. And in all the states, they have at least one "major" paper that covers things. But I don't know what's ahead. It's beyond me, that's all I have to say. Q: All right, Pat, thanks very much. A: Well, you're very welcome.