Walt Shotwell interview about journalism career, April 3, 1999

Section 1: Q: OK. Again you were talking about the fact that you had just come back from your advertising career and the fact that you wanted to well at the Tribune. A: I wanted to do well at the Register, yes, so I did. I really pitched in and worked really hard and I got off to a good start. About that time, the Tribune needed somebody to strengthen their staff, pardon the expression, and so I was transferred to the Tribune. I was asked to take a job on the Tribune. Of course I did it because my philosophy is that if somebody asks you to do something, and you're working for a good company you better do it. So I went over to the Tribune and I started producing a lot of local kind of stories that were very appropriate to the Tribune audience. So, Jim Gannon, who then was editor of the Register...no, he came along, he was managing editor. Anyway, he asked me to start doing a column called "Shotwell's City." So I did. And I wrote that column until the Tribune eventually folded and then Gannon said that he wanted to continue the column in the Register, but the Register being a statewide paper, they dropped the word "City" and made it just called "Shotwell." Q: Why do you think it was that he looked to you to write that column? A: Primarily because I had that background. I was born and reared in Des Moines, and it was...anytime they'd tear down a building, I could remember when it was built or I knew somebody who worked there. Or if somebody died, I very often would know something about them or when Riverview Park closed, I remembered the original Riverview Park. When Val Aire closed. I attended the first dance that was ever held at Val Aire. I was always able to take a current situation and relate it to some kind of history. So that was one of the things I did. And the other thing I did was just exercise the kinds of initiatives that reporters do. You know, reporters are a strange breed in that very often if anybody suggests a story to them, you can bet that's one they won't do because they don't want to do anything that wasn't their idea. I operated on the opposite principle. If anybody on the staff ever suggested a story to me, that is the next thing I'd do. And many times I developed some pretty bad stories that way because not every story you hear about, you get tipped on, is going to be that good. But I figured, anytime another reporter would give me a tip, just out of respect for the other reporter, I would attempt to develop it. And more often than not, I would get a good piece out of it. And so I liked to think that I was going kind of against the grain in that respect. Q: Can you give any examples of good stories that you developed from tips from other reporters? A: I wouldn't know now, but there were a lot of them because when you're writing a column like that, well, almost every week or so, a reporter will, some other reporter will for some reason will run across a story that he or she doesn't want to develop, so you do it for them. -- <br><br> Section 2: Q: Tell us the story about the coverage of the High School Band Festival in Mason City [IA] and Meredith Wilson. A: OK, that's one of my favorite stories. I flew up there with Don Ultang to cover this band festival and of course, part of that was the big parade. And Meredith Wilson, of course, led the parade and put on quite a show. But, by that time, the Broadway musical "The Music Man" was going great guns. Meredith Wilson, as you know, had a long history of musical activity on radio. He was a famous guy, even then, and everything had been written about him. I was watching this parade, and I was just tormented. You know, what can I do that could possibly be different. And so I'm in the airplane riding home and I'm still struggling with myself whether I should just come back and write a story about Meredith Wilson did this, Meredith Wilson did that and I finally was just running around in my head. I opened, I just thought, this line came to me. "Meredith Wilson's strode through the streets of town, his 76 trombones close at hand." And I thought, "Hey, I wonder if I can write this 76 trombone story and make it work?" So, I'm writing in the airplane as we were coming home, you know, and I'm writing this down. So by the time we landed, I was about half way through this thing. And you could actually sing this story to the tempo and melody and the beat of "76 Trombones." So I got back in the office and we're pushing deadline. I'm sitting at my typewriter and the first edition deadline is coming up, so I'm writing in "takes," which means I write a couple lines at a time and some editor would grab it and take it over and paste it up, and I'd write a couple more lines. So I'm writing in takes, and it finally got in the paper that way. And it ran, and I've had a lot of fun with that since. I've heard from Meredith Wilson every year after that. He'd write to me. We'd send Christmas cards. He always had something nice to say about that. About a year ago, I went up to, they had reunion Wallingham, so I went back up and Bob Ray was with me. And they had a tribute to Meredith Wilson and so I had an opportunity to refer to that again. Q: Is that how you visualized it would look in the paper? A: This is the story the way it came out. This is the picture of Meredith Wilson, of course. But that was a lot of fun. -- <br><br> Section 3: Q: Sure. Also, how about your conversation with Harry Truman? That was before you were at the Register, but you were a radio reporter back then. You had a half-hour with him. A: Yes, I did. It was in 1948 and the Truman campaign train was coming through Iowa, and they were going to make a stop at Oxford, Iowa, which is kind of a suburb of Iowa City [IA]. So the train did indeed stop and I had an engineer with me. So I got the microphone up to the observation car and Harry Truman came out on the observation deck and made a few remarks. And then I handed the microphone to the engineer who was going to get in the car and drive home and I ran around and I boarded the Truman campaign train to ride back with the national press and just cover whatever happened, you know. Well, as I was getting on the train, Jake Boore recognized me and met me. Jake Boore was the Democratic state chairman at that time. And he said, "Would you like to meet the president?" He recognized that KRNT was a local, powerful station. And I said, "Boy, would I like to meet the president." So he said, come with me. So I went back to Harry Truman's personal car and the only other guy there was Carroll Sweitzer who was running for governor on the Democratic ticket and some big overweight guy who I never did find out who he was. So I'm sitting there all alone, in effect, with Harry Truman. Well, understand this is 1948. I'm just a kid. I didn't know anything about politics or Harry Truman particularly. I was just a dumb...it wasn't just as if I was George Mills. I didn't know anything about anything really. So here I am sitting with the President of the United States (laughs) and of course it is in late summer, early fall. And so I, we said hello and all that kind of thing and in desperation, I just said, "Well, the corn sure looks good, doesn't it?" (laughs) He said, oh yes. And I said, "You know Henry Wallace had a lot to do with that..." because Henry Wallace is the guy who developed hybrid seed corn and Henry Wallace had been a competitor. He was seeking the presidential nomination too, you know. So Harry Truman kind of laughed and said, "Well, Henry Wallace should have stayed with something he knew something about. He knew something about corn, but he didn't know much about being president." So we chatted and chatted and I'm there for thirty minutes with the president. So I come out of there finally and, when all the guys in the national press realize that I was a local guy, they jumped over me and wanted to know what Harry Truman had said and everything. So I told them about what Harry Truman had said about Harry Wallace. And that made the national wires. So I'm an overnight hero. I didn't even know what I was doing. I didn't even know what to talk to Harry Truman about. But I lucked out. Q: Did a story come out of it? A: Oh yes, it made the national wires, Harry Truman's remarks about Henry Wallace. And then the national press asked me if I thought that Harry Truman had a chance to carry Iowa. And I said, "Sure." (laughs) I didn't know. But he did. That was especially interesting because the very next day Tom Dewey came to town. And Tom Dewey had no feel at all for the press or anything else. And they put him in the Hotel Fort Des Moines and they wouldn't let anybody get to him. And I was there. We tried, but his spokesman came out and said, "We know that Tom Dewey has Iowa sewed up, so Mr. Dewey is going to relax while he's here in Iowa and is not really going to do a whole lot." And that evening he went out to, Tom Dewey that is, went out to the Drake Field House and made a speech. And I remember one of the lines from the speech was a real profound remark, "Our future is before us." (laughs) And so the contrast between Harry Truman, his charisma and his casual way with the press and everything, was such a contrast to the rigid nature of Tom Dewey. -- <br><br> Section 4: Q: And back to the kind of the inner workings of the Register. Were you able to participate in any civic groups, or have membership and organizations? Maybe you could talk about that and what the policy was for the Register and the Tribune. A: Yes, we were discouraged from belonging to anything. A lot of guys used to joke, say, "Hey, I don't even belong to church." The idea being that if you belonged to an organization, you couldn't be objective about your reporting. And so, no, I was not a joiner. Q: What did you think of that idea? A: Well, I think it's exaggerated a little bit. I think the occasions on which anybody might try to influence a member of the press because of his membership or in an organization or accepting favors is a little bit overblown. My good friend George Mills, for example, had an iron clad rule. He wouldn't even accept a cup of coffee from anybody, you know. That's OK, you know. I think that's overdoing it a little bit. I mean nobody's going to buy me for a cup of coffee. And nobody's going to buy me because I'm a member of some organization, I don't think. But the Register's policy was that it's better if you don't join. When I was...after I got out of the advertising business and I went back into reporting, one of the first things that came along was Bob Ray's reelection. And I had been given an honorary colonelship in the governor's staff, you know. Normally all those such people would march in with the governor when he gave his inaugural speech. And Jim Gannon told me I couldn't do that. And so, I didn't. But again, nobody was going to bribe me by just by giving me an opportunity to march in someplace. So I guess I'm in favor of it, but I think maybe it's OK to soften it a little bit. Q: Did you notice "sacred cows" at the Register, stuff that you just couldn't touch? A: Usually the things that the, were things that they wanted to, like the whooping crane. Frank Eyerly was for saving the whooping crane. The whooping crane was an endangered species. I think at one point there were only three or four in the whole country and when that went up to six, well, we had a story. And he was like that. And sometimes the local political situations would get to the point, a little bit one-sided, let's say. But, by and large, I would have to say that there were no really "sacred cows." Q: One-sided toward what? A: Well, there was one period for example when the Connolly-McGowen era when the city government was, we thought, shot through with corruption and this kind of thing. And I think the paper kind of went overboard and maybe hurt some people by the manner in which we reported that whole thing. I don't think those guys were as guilty of the shenanigans as the paper would make you think. Q: What year was this? Or era? A: You had to ask, didn't you? (laughs) It would have been the 50s. Q: And what did the paper do, do you think, that made them look they went overboard? A: Just, we would snipe at them for the least little thing. Again, I can't remember any specific examples. But comparable to, you know...if we catch them doing anything, a policeman would make a mistake and we would just all over the council. Somebody spit on the sidewalk, you know, something like that. Always just picking away at them. As I said, I don't think Bob Connolly and those guys really did anything that bad. They were aided and abetted by some guys on radio. Russ Levine, for example, who was on radio at the time and he was attacking the Register daily. He'd attack the Register and the Register would attack him for attacking us. You know, it got to be almost childish. Q: Attacking the Register for the coverage of the scandal? A: Yes. Q: Russ Levine was attacking the Register for the coverage of the scandal? A: Yes, Russ Levine would attack the Register and then we'd attack back. And I think a lot of that was due to Frank Eyerly himself, as managing editor. Of course, he was in a very strong position and Frank was known to have a few prejudices of his own. But that's really about the only example of personal journalism that I can remember. -- <br><br> Section 5: Q: How was Frank Eyerly to work with? You have brought him up a number of times. A: I never had any problem with him, because he generally would not discuss things with a reporter. When he would get on his charger, he would usually go after on an editor. The city editor was the guy who really took from Frank Eyerly. He was merciless. He drove some good people away from the Register. He drove away Knox Craig, who was a city editor, he drove away Chuck Reynolds, who went to New Jersey and eventually, would up as publisher of that paper out there. What is it? Atlantic City, I can't name the paper. And Eyerly made a nervous wreck out of Ray Wright, who was a news editor. He just, as I say, he was merciless. Q: In what way, what made him merciless? A: Just his personal manner. There's a big joke about, don't drive up the driveway. And the background of that is that, at one point the Register hired a guy by the name of the Nick Lamberto (?) who grew up in Italy and was probably the most cultured individual that ever worked for the Register. He spoke at least two languages and knew all about opera and literature and everything. He was a true intellectual. And Nick Lamberto and his wife were invited to the Eyerly home one night. They didn't have a car at that time, so they called a cab. And the cab driver would not drive up the driveway to Eyerly's home. Everybody thought that was very strange. Well, the reason was that this cab driver would not drive up the driveway was this--every night when first edition came out, Eyerly demanded that two copies of the first edition be sent to him by cab. Mrs. Eyerly had a rock garden that ran along side the driveway to their house. So the cab driver, one time, went up there and in backing out, he knocked over one of the rocks. So Eyerly laid down a rule that he had to have a first edition delivered by cab every morning, but the driver was not to drive up the driveway because he might knock over a rock. So on the cab slip that the city editor personally filled out every night for Eyerly to get a first edition, said, "Do not drive up the driveway." That's the kind of thing that Eyerly was famous for. He'd sit home, wait until the cab delivered the first edition. Then he would call the city editor and just raise Cain about something. There was always something that he, you know, a wrong headline, a misleading headline or bad lead. He would find something and the city editors just dreaded that phone call which was sure to come. After Eyerly had delivered a cab that wouldn't drive up the driveway, you know. (laughs) Q: Was this token criticism or was it was it justified, I mean, did he have a point when he called? A: Most of the time it seemed to be pointless. But Eyerly, many times he would do it when he had guests in his home. And people were suspicious that he was really just showing off, you know, that he would, he made life miserable for those guys. And if that sounds disrespectful, I'm sorry, but that's the way it is and you can ask anybody. (laughs) -- <br><br> Section 6: Q: You mentioned the pay, too. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the pay when you first started and then as you went along, how was it for you? Was the Register paying you fairly? A: Yes, I think so. When I first started there, I don't remember the pay was all that much. I don't remember what it was. I think it was just a few bucks less than a hundred bucks a week. Q: As a reporter. A: As a reporter. And then as time went one, it got better. And when I went back in 1978, I don't know how my pay stacked up against others, I was making more than $40,000 a year. But I don't know how much. I tell you, I was so glad to get back on the paper, that I didn't, the pay really became kind of immaterial to me. Q: How about your hours when you first started in '48 and '49. Were you working a lot of overtime? A: Occasionally, but not often. My beat when I started out, I worked the basic hours from two in the afternoon to eleven at night. That changed that a little bit...I covered the courthouse for three consecutive years. I changed those hours. I'd usually go in around 12:30 or one (PM) and get through by ten. But I didn't do an awful lot of hours. The nice thing about working for the Register as compared with many papers that are unionized, is the fact that a newspaper reporter at the Register could do as little or as much as he wanted to. And you could drift along and not do much and nobody would say a whole lot to you, as long as you were doing the routine stuff and getting the stuff off the beats and everything. But if you wanted to spend an afternoon doing something on your own, you could do that. Now that is unlike a paper like say the San Francisco Chronicle. I know a kid who works out there, my daughter's husband. That's a union paper, and he works in the newsroom. He answers phones. Now he could stumble across the greatest story in the world, but he couldn't write it for the San Francisco Chronicle because he's the telephone answerer. He's not a reporter. That's not, never was true at the Register. If you wanted to do stuff on your own, you could. When Herb Kelly was news editor, he came to me one day, he said, "Walt, you just don't seem to be producing much." Well, I was kind of shocked because I didn't know I was supposed to be more than I was doing. So I sat down and made a list of, if I remember, thirteen stories that I did in addition to covering my beat. I just went out and did them. Out of the thirteen, nine of them got on page one. And that's kind of thing that you could do as a reporter for the Register. That's the kind of the thing they encouraged. I don't know what the point is except to say that when you work for a paper like the Register, you are rewarded for, you know, going that extra step. Q: What do you think of the paper today as compared to what it was when you working there as compared to the old ownership? A: I don't want to be unkind, but I'm going to. The paper isn't anything like it was. They have inexperienced people. There have been many instances where guys almost literally get out of journalism school, go down to the Register, and a week later, they are running the city desk. That "background" I talked about earlier is missing and doesn't seem, not much value seems to be placed on it. Things don't get developed. Things don't get edited. There was a story in the paper this morning about a young woman who had, an athlete, who'd had surgery on her shoulder. I read the story three times and couldn't find out what kind of surgery the person had. You know, that's the kind of editing that doesn't get reported. Nobody seems to ask any questions of the reporters so that they, they don't fill out, they don't answer the questions that would surely come up. There was one, there was a sports stories yesterday in the paper about the Cubs have signed a new pitcher, a Japanese kid. They talked about the fact that last year, this pitcher didn't have a good year. But nowhere in the story did it say what his record was. It's that kind of thing that's missing, you see. You don't have the curious editor that's coming around asking the reporter to clarify this or to add that. Q: Why is that do you think, I mean, people really haven't changed that much in fifty years (laughs) I mean they still have the same kind of ambition I would think? A: I can't explain it. I can't explain it. I blame the journalism schools for not producing the kinds of editors that require reporters to do those things. I just think it is a shame. It shows up all the time. In fact, my good friend Gene Raffensperger and I get on the telephone almost every week and have something to say about that. I think it is a shame. Of course, I think, I don't think there was any reason for the Tribune to fold. That was a decision that was based obviously on economics. But that decision was made and they folded the Tribune. I think the Tribune could be kept alive and I think that's been proved by Connie Wymer who runs that little business paper here in Des Moines where she is at least making an effort to fill in some of the gaps. And I think that could still be done. And, of course, I was just absolutely devastated when the Register elected to pull in its horns and not try to serve the whole state because again, while that was an economic decision, essentially, to me, there were other majors that could have been taken to preserve the unique status of the Register as a statewide paper. Q: Why is it important that the Register be a statewide paper when you have the Cedar Rapids Gazette or the Burlington newspaper? A: Hey, when the Cedar Rapids Gazette was going against the Register, the Register, we used to go in and pull stories out from underneath the Cedar Rapids Gazette every week. And of course Gene Raffensperger was based over in Davenport [IA] and he was pulling, scooping out from under the Davenport, the Quad Cities papers, all the time. So, that has been lost. And with the technology that exists today where papers can be printed...you know, they do USA Today is able to fill a need. The Register could have done that, in my view. Of course I'm not an expert on the economics of newspapers and I suspect a lot of people would disagree with me, but I just think it's a pity that the Register has been allowed to deteriorate to that extent? Q: What do you think we are missing? What do you think has suffered because of that? The closing of the Bureau's and such? A: Well, the thing that suffered is timeliness, completeness. There's just, initiative. I think all those things have suffered. But they do...I have kind of a corny way of judging the value of news story. And that is, how many people are going to clip it and put it in their scrapbook? And when the Register was going great guns back in the 50s, you can bet that people all over the state were clipping stories out of the Register for their scrapbook. And here, Date Book came the other day, and the picture on the cover was an Easter egg. And who's going to cut out a picture of an Easter egg? One Thanksgiving recently they ran a picture of a turkey. Well, a journalist would say, hey if you are going to run a picture of a turkey, get three little kids with the turkey. Tape One, Side Two A: As I said, if news stories were judged on the basis of the number of people that they would interest, I think that would be a step forward. You see, I have this theory that, among the things that the Register doesn't cover anymore, it used to be that the city editor everyday would have a few little clippings in his folder and he would hand it to some reporter and he'd be going, "These were all the conventions that were being held today in Des Moines." So the reporter would have to go around to these conventions until he found something convention that you could write something about. I remember Jack Magaral, former reporter, wrote a story one time about, they were having a convention of people who collect pigeons. He got a great little story out of that, you know. Now they would never go to that convention. Among the things we don't cover, we don't cover the country clubs. Yet the country clubs are the center of social activity for a large part of Des Moines. And it's not just a matter of covering the social event, but when you cover a social event of everybody that attends the country club, for example, you get to know the people who are functioning out in the economies. We don't cover on a regular basis, the suburbs. You know-Windsor Heights, Clive, all these other communities that have regularly scheduled council meetings and this kind of thing, you know. Now it's not the council meeting that is so important, but it's going to the counsel meeting and finding out that way what else is going on in that community, you see. And the Register doesn't do that kind of thing. The Register, Bob Ray's daughter got married. The church was standing room only. There wasn't a line in the paper about it. This is the governor's daughter, you know. We don't cover weddings. We run a little listing, but we don't cover weddings and talk about who caught the bouquet and what the bride wore and what the bridesmaids wore and all that kind of thing. I'm not saying we should cover every wedding, but we should cover them once in a while. We don't cover funerals and yet if we covered funerals and if we quoted from the eulogy occasionally, not everyone, but you judge those on the same basis as you judge any news story. You know, what is the interest level? And don't tell me that a lot of people wouldn't be clipping out those funeral stories and saving them for posterity. These are just some of the examples of things that the Register used to do but they don't do it anymore. And then they wonder why interest in subscriptions is declining. It's declining because we aren't writing. The Register in fact, I think local print journalism generally is not writing the kind of stories that people want to read. You have to remember that journalism had a basis in little old ladies who run around in small towns and reported what the ladies society was doing. Everybody in town knew what the society was doing. But that's not the point. They want to read about it in the paper, you know. The highest readership among people who go to sports events is among people who were at the sports events, you see. And this is something that gets overlooked. I just think that somebody needs to take a step backward to daily print journalism, daily local print journalism. And take a look at what it ought to be doing. -- <br><br> Section 7: Q: You talked about sources there are going to the city council meetings and the meetings and such and getting ideas and such. And you also talked earlier about the tips that you got, the story ideas that you got from other reporters. Could you expand more on the tips that you got and how you used sources in getting story ideas, not necessarily just from other reporters, but from the contacts you'd made throughout the state. A: I'm not sure I understand the question. Q: How did you develop story ideas from some of the ideas that you had gotten from other sources and from the contacts you had made from going to meetings and going to these functions. Where did you come up with, how did you get going on those ideas? A: Well, most of the stories that I'd get would be, most of the ideas that I'd get were things that I'd lift right out of the paper; where I would see something in the paper, I mentioned for example a building. Well, I remembered the Equitable Building for example, got sold. I remembered when my mother used to take me to the Equitable Building to have my teeth straightened, you know. That triggered a thing that I got into the history of the Equitable Building. I found a former elevator operator. I found a former janitor and all this and that. I just did it. Lots of times, I would get, I would just think of things. Like for example, Ronald Reagan. I was around when Ronald Reagan was around and that triggered a number of things. I found the guy who helped him when he fell off his horse. I found a woman who had been rescued by him when he was a lifeguard at Camp Dodge. I found his, was it his tailor or his barber, one or the other you know. And each one of these was a story. Q: I guess I made an assumption that some of the people that you talked to gave you story ideas. The contacts you made. A: As I say, I don't really remember any reporter coming to me. When I worked for the Tribune briefly between the stint on the Register and the time the Tribune folded, Larry Fruhling was writing for the Tribune. He was doing a column called "Fruhling's Iowa" and I was the counterpart doing "Shotwell's City." And so between the two of us, he was out in the state and I was local. Reporters were always, every reporter, I wish I could think of some specific examples. Maybe if I thumbed through some of my stuff, I could. Reporters were also grabbing lines saying, "Hey, did you hear about so-and-so?" Well, I hadn't, but I'd look into it. And I always would. Q: You know we talked about the downside of what the Register is now. Is there a good thing? Is there anything good about what's happening, maybe with new technology and the fact that they can do things faster? A: Yes, I like the brevity. some of the thing they're doing. I think that they are doing a good job. I think they include the religion reporting for example. I really, I think they do a good job with national news by and large, you know. I think the writing is generally pretty clear, and sometimes very good. I think they have a strong sports page, Mark Hanson, for example, I think is really good. Q: Now we are losing "The Big Peach." A: Well. Q: There is some history. A: I don't that it is going to be a great loss. (laughs) -- <br><br> Section 8: Q: I don't know if you feel comfortable talking about it, but there was a time that you wrote about your depression and your anxiety attacks. Do you want to talk about that? A: Yes, I don't have any problem with that. I just "cracked up." And I... Q: Just the stress level of the Register? A: I don't know. I think that had something to do with it. I think that in many times people who become clinically depressed have a propensity for it. And I think, they just get into it...it hits you before you know what is going on. And at the time that I wrote about it, I'm a little disappointed. I know at one time they were considering submitting that for a Pulitzer and they decided not to, which kind of hurt me here, but because at that time, nobody had done it. This was before Mike Wallace went public with his problems and certain other celebrities have since done what I did in the newspaper. And that was just lay it all out while I became depressed and how I overcame it. At that time, since it hadn't been discussed in public before, I thought I might have had a shot at the Pulitzer. But it didn't work out that way. But I was incapacitated for many, many weeks. Q: This was in the mid-80s, I think, '87? A: Actually I had two major bouts with it. One time I was laid up for three months and the other time it was a matter of several weeks. The problem with depression is that nobody can ever say, "I'm depressed because of this," or somebody did this and that caused me to have this reaction. It's never that clear cut. It's kind of mystery. Fortunately I used some appropriate medications and I got over it and I'm fine. Have been for years. Q: What was the idea behind writing that? What was your motivation? A: In the first place, it helped me. It was a kind of cleansing, I suppose. Secondly, before I submitted it to the paper for publication, I ran it past a couple of friends of mine, Knox, the late Knox Kregan Francis, and they thought it was exceptional. So that plus, I can't remember ever having a motive. I don't know. Maybe I was seeking glory or something, I don't know. (laughs) Q: You got a heck of lot of feedback. A: Yes, I think Phyllis Wolf kind of kept track of that. In fact she had it made up in this special package because it triggered so much response that she needed something to send out to people. I think we had something like 800 responses to that story. As I say, nobody had done it before for publication. Since I've learned, any number of people on the paper and otherwise have suffered depression, so it seems to be kind of an occupational hazard. But I don't know. Q: An occupational hazard in so far as what, was something happening? Something different from any other workplace? A: I don't know. I think by nature reporters take themselves more seriously perhaps than other people. I think reporters are bothered by things--conditions, society. And I think reporters have a need to succeed, a need to expound, express themselves. Again I can't explain it. Who was it, H. L. Mencken or somebody who referred to reporters as "paid eccentrics." (laughs) Have I got that right? Q: (laughs) Sounds right. A: I think any newsroom is full of a bunch of "paid eccentrics." People, employees who take themselves very seriously, take their work very seriously. -- <br><br> Section 9: Q: Did you ever come across any ethical dilemmas when you were coming up with a story idea or when you were actually out on the story and trying to decide whether this is something to talk to about or not or write about? A: Gee, I don't know. Reporters always faced with the ethical standards regarding so- called "off the record" interviews. And the way I handled that was that I would not listen to anybody off the record. If I'm interviewing somebody, any kind of subject that is the least bit controversial, and they say, "Well, off the record so-and-so," I say, "No, I don't want you to tell me off the record. Let me ask you everything else that I'm going to have to ask you and then after we get through with everything I need, then if you want to tell me something off the record, I'll listen to it." Nine times out of ten, that person will eventually tell me whatever it is that they didn't want to tell me. But if I listen to something off the record, then I'm obligated to not divulge it. That's I would try to get everything out of the way first and then if somebody wants to volunteer something off the record, I'll listen to it. But then, let's say it is something really provocative, but I'm obliged to not use it because it's off the record. So what I would do then, is I'd do an end run. I'd go around that person and try to get that same information some place else without violating the confidence of the person I was talking to. That really doesn't happen that often. When people would tell me something off the record, that's the way I'd handle it and it would usually work it's way out. As far as any ethical considerations, I can't recall ever being in a bind over that. I've worked on some tough stuff and as far as violating any ethics is concerned, I just can't remember ever having to deal with that. Q: Over your long career you've seen the civil rights movement and such, in the '60s and '70s with both African Americans and women. Could you talk about minorities, and the way minorities were covered back in the '40s as opposed to when you came later in the '70s? A: When I was covering the courthouse, I became acquainted with some people who were active in the NAACP. And again, on my own, I decided I would start covering the NAACP meetings. Nobody was covering NAACP at that time. They were just like so many of the suburbs, they were meeting in secret, so to speak. So I started going to the NAACP meetings. It was very enlightening. I learned a lot. I don't think I ever did anything particularly profound, but I attempted to present the black position on various issues around Des Moines and it was difficult to do because Des Moines doesn't, at least in those days, and I think even today, does not really have a black spokesman or spokesperson. The black community has always been divided. They've been unable to concentrate their efforts in any effective way, you know. The Wrights and Sims and some of the other people whose names were associated with the black community in Des Moines, they occasionally were recorded on this or that you know, but there has never been any unified leadership so far as anybody knows in the black community. Which meant that when the blacks were attempting to assert themselves in the South and they were having sit-ins and all this and that, what happened in Des Moines was pretty meager, you know. I remember when they had a freedom march along Keosock Way one time. It turned out to be just a few individuals, kind of a scraggly group, who wandered down. Most of them were kids. The whole thing was lost. As far as women are concerned, the women on the Register have a pretty distinguished heritage. Florence Swihart, for example, covered the school board. And at that time the school board meetings, if you can believe it, were held in secret. And Florence Swihart dug in her heels and got the backing of Frank Eyerly and she, by-God, was not going to let them meet in secret. And she broke open the school board meetings. Today, kids with cameras will take TV shots of these open meetings and all this and that, but they never realize it was Florence Swihart that made all that possible. Lula Mae Coe was the same way. She was tough. Boy she was tough. When she went out to do a story, she'd come back with a story every time. So there were some fine women reporters and I think some of them are doing well. Q: And what made you want to cover those NAACP meetings way back when? A: Well, just because nobody was doing it. I looked at it as an opportunity to do myself some good by volunteering to cover it and possibly airing some of the issues that were prominent at the time. I don't know if I did any good, but I did it. (laughs) -- <br><br> Section 10: Q: And to wrap up Walt, is there anything that you would have done differently in your career over the years, the fifty years? A: Yes, I would have chased fewer rainbows. I would have been more satisfied to stay where I was at the Register. If I had, I think my whole life would have been a lot different. Leaving to go into television wasn't too bad because I wasn't gone from the Register long enough to make that much difference. But from a personal standpoint, quitting to go into the advertising business was a real, real mistake because, I don't know, people who have a newspapering mentality just don't do well in advertising as a general rule. You have to, there's a certain phoniness about the advertising business that is unacceptable. Q: But on the other hand, you mentioned, you said you had learned a lot about journalism as in public relations and the things you were doing with Bob Ray. A: Yes, that's true, but balancing the two, I think I would have been better off staying at the Register. I was, by the time I left the Register in 1962, I was pretty well established as a good journeyman reporter. I was looked upon as a good all around workman-like reporter. I didn't have a whole lot to look forward to. I don't know if I ever would have qualified to go on up into the editing chain of command. But the nice thing about being a reporter is that it is as close as to being in business for yourself as you can be without actually being in business for yourself. Because you can do as much or as little as you want to. And, as I say, once you are established, you are in total control of your own future and I like that. Q: What do you think makes a good columnist? A: Initiative, imagination, the ability to develop a story. I was a columnist in the sense that I think that really that my columns were more like feature stories. I would deal with a thing. Occasionally I would write an item column. Sometimes you just collect stuff, you know, and I would do just a series of items like Gordan Gammack used to do. But by and large, I regarded my columns more as feature stories than as columns. Occasionally I would express opinions, but mostly I would just call on my personal experiences and experiences of others. Columnists like Don Kaul, you know, were few and far between. He's got a knack for being editorial and amusing at the same time and that's pretty hard to do. I couldn't do that. I wrote about situations by and large -- and people. Q: And we talked about a number of people at the Register and the Tribune. Don Kaul and Don Ultang and Frank Eyerly. George Mills. Anybody else that really stands out in your mind that had an influence over you? That really left their mark? A: There were many, I mentioned Florence Swihart and Lula Mae Coe. George Shane, you know, was an artist, a working artist and a writer, a good one. He was the guy that wrote the lead story the day that the guy by the name of Sodequist commandeered an airplane and buzzed Des Moines for hours. Shane wrote a story and the lead had something to do with "Death Rode the Wingtip." And Shane, Shane's suicide. And, of course, Bob Hollohan whose bio reads "the greatest writer," one of the greatest writers who ever went through the paper. He was a funny guy. (laughs) He told a story about, he was out doing a story one time and as he approached his news source, he explained to the news source who he was. He said, "I'm Bob Hollohan and I'm doing a story and I'm the guy who wrote such-and-such the story." And the news source says, "Oh yes, I read part of that. Hollohan suicided and took his wife and daughter with him." But he was great. And of course my friend Gene Raffensperger, the son of Lynn Raffensperger who used to be the Iowa football couch. And if you haven't talked to him yet, you ought to. Q: He's on our list. A: He's a dear friend and excellent reporter. A good writer, good writer. So I think of him. Don Ultang. He and I went out to cover that story when the two Boy Scouts were missing out in the Arizona desert. That was an exciting story to work on. There are so many. Of course George Mills, you can't even talk about the Register without mentioning him. And Cy Clifton who was George Mills' counterpart. And Cy covered the senate and Mills covered the Iowa house. Q: This was C.C. Clifton? A: C.C. Clifton, yes. Those guys used to get mad at each other. In fact, they had a little cubbyhole up in the library when they worked in the state house where they typed their stories on an old-fashioned machines. And Cy was real gruff, you know, he never thought anything was a story. And of course "Lefty" was the opposite. He thought everything was a story. They came to blows one day. They got mad at each other and stood up and they squared off and I'm sitting there open-mouthed, you know. Q: This was in the newsroom? A: No, this was up in the library of the state house. (laughs) That's what I mean. Reporters take things very seriously and I think...and Ultang was one of them. Of course, George Yates was the dean of the photographers. He was the stately gentleman, you know. Well, there are just so many, so many people. Every one of them has a memory connected with it. Q: All right. Those are my questions, Walt. A: OK.