Ken Sullivan interview about journalism career, Iowa City, Iowa, September 29, 2004

Section 1: A: I was born in Charles City, Iowa. It’s about a 130 miles from here between Mason City and Cowel. It’s about 50 miles from Waterloo. [I was] born there on August 13, 1940, [and] left there, September 1, 1960. I graduated from high school up there, and had no clue what I wanted to do. A neighbor worked at the Oliver Corporation, the tractor manufacturing company said [to me], “What are you going to do with your life?” I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “Well, we got a job in the tool room here. You can make about $65 a week.” I wasn’t real keen on getting into the tractor business, and I saw an advertisement in the Charles City newspaper looking for a “news director” for KCJ radio. I went in and applied, and the guy says, “What can you do?” I said, “I can type.” “You’ve got the job.” [The salary was] $52.50 a week.” [I was] scared to death of microphones. I hated them. Still do. But I could type. So I got the job as news director. I covered city government. I covered county government. I used to ride around with the cops and the sheriff and the highway patrol, and I’d do lots of things. It was a wonderful training ground for learning a little about what news was. That was essentially community journalism because I don’t recall ever interviewing a political candidate. I don’t recall ever a government election in the 10 years I was there. I think maybe because elections were almost superfluous - the same people always ran and I think the same people always won. This was in September of ’58. I got married in April of ’59, and we had a child in March of ’60. And I decided $52 and a half bucks wasn’t enough, so I moved on. [I] got a job at the Moline Daily Register. I used to tell people “The Register” and they’d say, “That’s impressive.” And then I’d told them, “Moline Daily” and they didn’t think too much of that after that. But anyway, it was a or six-day vocation, five- day evening. Saturday was a tabloid printed and distributed at noon. Once again, I was the local reporter doing whatever I was told to do. Great opportunity. I [knew] some really good people [who] spent some time with me and helped me develop a certain amount of knowledge about what was news and how to write about news. And they just kind of turned me loose. I think I developed a certain affinity for the business. I was there three plus years, and by then we had two kids. I think I was up to about $80 bucks a week. And I called Skip [Webber at the Gazette] one day and said, “I’m desperate I need something.” So he called me back and said the Gazette was looking. [I went] down to the Gazette and they hired me at the magnificent salary of $100 bucks a week. I started there Sept 1963. I left there in March of 2000. I can’t think of any particular area [in print] I haven’t covered [over the years.] I’ve covered agriculture. I’ve been an outdoor writer. I was society editor - we didn’t call it that, but I was lifestyle editor at the Gazette. I covered politics for 20 odd years, I did. I was state editor. I was assistant metro editor. I was wire editor. I subbed for the Sunday desk. I went to scab school down at Oklahoma City a couple times when they thought there might be strikes in the composing room, and the company sent several of us down there to learn how to run the presses and composing process. I started with hot metal newspapers. I’m sure you’ve seen them in your history books. We had to fight the riggers of the linotype machines – I don’t know what the machines were called, but they had the cylinders that would slide on the presses. I ended up with totally electronic [equipment.] I covered a Republican cavalcade back in ’96. They had every Republican candidate – [including] Steve Forbes - they had back then. I was carrying a cell phone and a laptop. I typed my story on the laptop and I transmitted it on my cell phone, [from] right outside of Stevens. That’s a far cry from the days when we had to do everything on a typewriter and strips of paper, or even when I started covering legislature in the late ‘70s. I was the first of the batch to have radio shack – you can’t call them computers. They were word processors [on which] you could type six, eight lines and then send [them.] It’s been an enormous transition in the technology part of the business. -- <br><br> Section 2: Q: Let me ask you now, what is news? What is your definition of news? And how has that changed? A: My definition of news is something that occurs that has relevance to people. And I don’t know if it’s ever changed. I think the interpretation by some people has changed, but I think that government is news. I think the way [news] has come to be interpreted there’s a lot more interest in analyzing how other people may view it as opposed to what necessarily occurs. That’s one of the difficulties I had late in my career. Frequently there were efforts [to get me to not] tell what happened but to relate how people interpreted what happened, or what people felt about what’s happened. And I was uncomfortable with that because I thought imparting developments to people and letting them make their own judgments on these developments or these incidents was news. I didn’t necessarily feel it was important to tell them how other people necessarily felt about it. Q: So you’re saying you were doing react stories? A: Well, yeah. There was an increasing amount of that late in my career. I resisted to an extent. I don’t know if it was react, but it was interpretive stuff. Maybe it was react, I don’t know. But it was how other people interpreted what they saw. I didn’t think those people were necessarily [unbiased.] If I was in a political arena and heard somebody say something, and then walked over and asked, “Well, what do you think?” If they were a partisan they’d think it was wonderful. If they were partisan on the other side, they’d hate it. That didn’t mean anything. So I thought it was more important - I still think it’s more important - to present what we see. I don��t necessarily want to interpret for other people what I see. Q: Do you believe in objectivity? A: Yeah. Totally. Bottom line, bottom line. Q: Talk about that. A: Which one of you asked me the question – what my greatest accomplishment was? I think my greatest accomplishment in 40-odd years in this business was maintaining a commitment to the objectivity of what I wrote and what I presented. I think that’s the greatest service we can give. Readers, viewers, listeners, you name it, as long as we’re in the business of presenting news, I think that’s fundamental. And I’ve been accused of being not objective, which I think I’ve told you. I’ve been accused of being not objective by both sides of being democrat, republican, whatever. And if everybody hates you, you must be doing something right. I think that if you can’t be objective, then you better find some other venue for your talents. -- <br><br> Section 3: Q: When we were talking to your friend Dale, he told us about the changes in dynamics in the newsroom - you could here that constant clacking and people would yell back and forth at each other, and you could smell the ink. A: Managing editors. Q: You said that now with computers in newsrooms, it’s a little more quiet and a different feeling and atmosphere. I was just wondering how you felt about that. A: You know when I started at the Gazette, 20-plus years before any of you were born, [the newsroom was] a half-block long, and probably 60 feet wide on the second floor of the building. It has morphed over these last 41 years. It has undergone at least four major overhauls. But when I first started there, as I say, we had hotmail in the back - the entire back of the building was linotypes, turtles, chases, melting furnaces and all that fun stuff. We had pneumatic tubes right by the city, state and the wire desks. You’ve been to drive-in banks? And you put your junk into them? Well that’s what we had to send them up to the composing room. We’d send out strings of rolled up paper and shove them out there. And those things would come swooping back and they’d bang down, just like somebody dropping a book from six feet onto the desk and bang. [There were] all sorts of goofy noises. Now it’s kind of like a bank. Unless somebody starts yelling. Jack was city editor - our news room was from here maybe to the end of the hall - and if [he] wanted you, he’d stand up and yell, “Get the hell up here. Bring that damn…” That kind of thing. And you’re right, [we had] typewriters. And [we] didn’t have the nice cutesy little phone rings and all that stuff. There was a lot of noise then. I don’t know if it’s any better [today.] We all managed to get by. I ended my career in an office down on the other end of the building, so I got out of [the newsroom] the last eight, nine years. I was out of the newsroom completely. You get used to ignoring distractions, used to ignoring other people. Unless you hear your name: “Sullivan, get over here!” -- <br><br> Section 4: Q: You told us about the difficulty interviewing politicians and their habit of ducking your questions. Tell us how you got through to them, and how you pulled something out of the muster that they said. A: I used to do a voters’ guide. I think Gazette still does it. Every election year, every biannual, we’d do a voters’ guide, and I’d send out questionnaires to a 120 or so legislative candidates, governor candidates, congressional candidates, senate candidates and whomever [depending on] the election cycle happen to be running. And the one guy in particular, Mike Isely, was elected to the legislature in the early ‘70s for one reason: he hated taxes. He was down there solely to try to repeal as many taxes as he could. He was a coarse old farmer, and I never could, in all the years I covered him, I never heard him talk on the floor. He’d get in the committee meetings and he had more obscenities than most of the committee people had ever heard. But I never heard him talk on the floor. I’d send out the questionnaires, and I’d start putting this together [mid-October.] And all the questionnaires had rolled in that I was going to get in except one. [A questionnaire] came in from Mike and it was blank. So I called in and I said, “Mike, what are you going do about this?” He said, “Oh, hell, Ken, you know what I think. Just fill it in.” [I said,] “I can’t do that Mike.” “Well, O.K., I’ll fill them in.” Another time, same guy. He had a guy who was county recorder. And Mike had the county recorder call me. He said, “Ken, Mike wants me to send this in. What do you want me to put on it?” [I told him,] “I don’t care.” It was that sort of stuff. The higher you go on the food chain, as far as politics, the easier it was to get information from them. I see by [a Gazette story] last week that a significant number are not responding to not only Gazette surveys, but the national survey. I had reasonably good success on a lot of candidates. Some of them were pretty bizarre. [I interviewed] Jack Kemp one time in a hotel room in Chicago, or in Waterloo. He walked in and took his shirt off and his shoes, and he was there in his t-shirt and his stocking feet. And he wanted to talk about his kid playing football out in California. That’s what he wanted to talk about. One of my most bizarre, and forgettable interviews, was [with Gary Hart.] You guys remember Monkey Business, the ship? And his girlfriend? Well I interviewed Heart on a Friday night in Des Moines. The legislature was still in session and Heart was in town campaigning. They said I could have a half- an-hour with him at the Des Moines airport. So I went out to the Des Moines airport and talked to him. He was having difficulty paying campaign bills, and that’s what my questioning was all about. So I did my story for the Gazette, and the next morning, Saturday morning, the wires said Gary Heart had withdrawn from the race because of this disclosure by the Miami Herald or whomever that he’d been seen on the Monkey Business with his bimbo friend. I’m asking dumb things about money and he’s shacking up with this doll. Little did I know. I should have asked. Q: Did you end up writing a story about him, about your interview? A: I think I did write a column about it after that. I wrote a story about the interview. I mean that was pretty basic. I mean, Gary Heart owes this money – “But I’ll pay it back. I’m a nice guy.” I was dumber than a board. -- <br><br> Section 5: Q: Can you tell us a little bit about you relationship with Jack Hjillion? A: Greatest thing that ever happened to me. Keiter told you that didn’t he? Dale Keiter is my youngest daughter���s godfather. He came to the Gazette in ’65. He retired a year or two before I did. He was diagnosed about a year and a half ago with they thought was leukemia. They thought it was leukemia. He came down here to UI hospitals, [and] they have removed [cancer] stem cells, sent them to California were they were experimented with and found the proper medication that kills the cancer, sent back here and reinserted. He is one of like 40 people in the country who has gone through this procedure. O.K., that’s enough about Bill Keiter. Jack Hjillion is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. He was the city editor there when I started in ’63. He was the Lou Grant of real life, as far as I was concerned. I mean he was hard-nosed, he been-there-done-that. He’d covered executions; he’d covered virtually everything. I think he sinned one time and went to work for senate campaign – [for] Bert Kekenberker – and left the Gazette for a while. For somebody who was as green as I was – I thought five years in the news business I was qualified for the New York Times – he was so tolerant and so patient and so obnoxious. He’d chew you out on doing something stupid and then pat you on the back when you did something [well.] He accepted dumb mistakes. He taught me a great deal. He’s what made me want to stay with what I was doing. He made me want to stay with the Gazette for those formative years, at least. I think, most of what I learned as far as significant knowledge about writing and journalism is directly a result of his tutelage. I mean, he was one of the guys [who would yell] at you from one end of the building to the other. Q: What kind of things did he teach you? What kinds of things did he teach you about journalism that made your career? A: Getting information, being accurate, being timely, being persistent, don’t quit until you’re done with your work. He used to keep in the bottom of his right drawer of his desk name plagues from city officials, county officials, who, basically we caused to lose their jobs. The last one I can recall was guy by the name of Woody Stobel. He delegated his street department to pave an alley behind a bar on a Sunday morning, and we found out about it. Jack said, “Get him”. And we got him. Friendships didn’t mean didaly as far as he was concerned. Woody was a nice guy from Cedar Rapids, but he messed up. He did something he shouldn’t have done. He caused several thousand dollars of tax payers’ money to be spent in a way it shouldn’t have been spent. He didn’t belong there. And that’s what I learned from [Jack.] But we also became very good friends. I hunted with him, I fished with him. He’d send gifts home for my kids. Chew the hell out of me and then call me into his office and say, “Take this to Doug.” Anyhow, that was the relationship we had. -- <br><br> Section 6: Q: What significant stories have you covered that caused controversies? Also – especially being a political reporter – have you ever been not allowed to cover a certain issue or topic, anything dealing with the government or politicians? A: Caused controversy? I covered a lot of things that resulted in controversy. I covered the Clinton impeachment in ’99. Q: Did you ever break a story that caused heads to roll? A: Outside of the city government stuff, I don’t think I ever did. Q: Have you ever been told you can’t write this, you can publish [this?] A: No, that was never an issue. I’m trying to think if there was anything. Yeah, I know there have been things that have been controversial, [but] I don’t know if causing controversy is the right term. I know there have been things, but I can’t think of them. I know I’ve won my fair share of angry letters over stuff I’ve written. I can’t think of anything that caused anyone to jump off a roof. Q: What about the guy that threatened to kill you? A: That was way back when I was the city editor. Part of my job was Saturdays, and a guy named Andy Gull [came in.] There were three of us in the newsroom at the time. I was at the desk, and he stormed back to the desk, and said, “You in charge?” And I said, “Well, yes.” He said, “I want you to put a story in the paper.” And I said, “What is it?” He said, “I want you to write that I’m dead.” “No, we can’t do that. You’re not dead, you’re right here.” He said, “No, I got to write that I jumped off the bridge, and I’m dead.” This went on and on. I said, “I can’t do it. Clearly I’d lose my job.” And he said, “You’re going to lose something else if you don’t do it.” “What do you mean?” “You ain’t gonna get home.” I said “Well that may be, but I can’t do it.” [He] stormed out and said, “I’ll see you.” So I called the police chief then, [who was] a guy by the name of George Mathias. I called him at his home and asked, “What the hell am I going to do, George?” He said, “Where do you live?” We had cops circling our house for three days until they finally arrested him. He had a knife like that [gestures.] But I don’t know if he ever would have done it. He was a lunatic. He ended up being killed by his brother. Some of those people are very strange. Who wants to work with the criminal element? Right on. Right on. They’re strange people. Q: Did he say why he wanted his death in the newspaper? A: I don’t know. He may have. I recall that he was trying to avoid somebody. Q: Maybe his brother. A: I lived next door at that point to a guy who had grown up in what they call the time-check area of Cedar Rapids. [It was a] pretty rough area back in the ‘40s. He said one of the Gull boys’ wife set fire to her husband in their bed. It’s just that kind of an environment that they were from. Nothing would have surprised me. [Gull] may have been drunk. He may have been stoned. I wasn’t going to take any chances – at that point I had three kids. -- <br><br> Section 7: Q: Forty years as a journalist, what story [is] most memorable? What story [do you] look back on and say I’m glad I wrote that? A: You know, there’s a lot of them. Q: Well, what are two? A: Well, for different reasons I think the gratification I got was covering the pope twice. Personally, I think it was the greatest opportunity in the world, for me as a Catholic, and as a journalist. We spent a lot of time at his first visit in ’79. And then I covered him separately in St. Louis in ’99. Q: What was so gratifying as a journalist and a Catholic? About covering the pope? A: I’m going to contradict myself a little bit, but we were among basically a quarter million people and we were getting the react for these people who were out seeing the Holy Father, and what it meant to them. I was from here to [gestures] when he got on the helicopter, it was an even trade. As far as professionally, or non-papal, in a way the most exciting thing – because of the historic significance of it – was the impeachment. I wasn’t there to cover the impeachment, again, I was there to cover the sidebar story. I didn’t cover the hours of debate. I was there when Livingstone you know, stood up and said, “Mea Culpa. I’m a bad guy too.” I think that was, in a lot of ways, the pinnacle of as far as newsworthy events. I can’t think of anything that jumps out at me more profound than that particular activity. Q: Do you feel that you were objective being Catholic and covering the pope? A: No. But I was honest. Q: Was the story more of interviewing people and ask for their reactions? A: Yeah. It wasn’t necessarily covering. It was covering the aura of the thing, the event. I had a daughter at the time [who] was in the clerical order signers, this was in ’79, and I was covering all the activities. We spent three days down there covering the thing and then we put together an eight or 16 page tab afterward, with pictures and stories and such. Q: Stories of what people in the audience thought of it? A: Yeah, things that happened. I never have had that chance if I lived in Moline, for example. Q: Clinton’s impeachment was kind of really a polarizing thing. How did you cover that? Did you try and stay very objective? A: No, was just a reactive, interpretive thing type thing. I didn’t cover the debate, the arguments or anything, I covered how the various people from Iowa, congress people from Iowa felt about it. It was so predictable, unfortunately. But that’s what the boss wanted, so that’s what I did. But as far as the substance of the event, that has to stand out. What’s it happened, twice in history? -- <br><br> Section 8: Q: Would you talk a little bit about the Register, the Des Moines Register? You worked for the second largest paper in the state, and the Des Moines Register, really for the lack of a better description, is sort of the 800-lbs. gorilla. It was the paper of record. It was the paper that was known particularly in the ‘50s, ‘60s and early ‘70s as really an extraordinary paper. Did you feel that you number one, lost people to the Register, always playing catch-up with the Register’s larger bank account in sense of they could cover a story, you could send one, they would send three? What was it like to compete against the Register? A: I’ll back into this. One time, Mike Holms, who at that point was the Associated House reporter at Des Moines, and I were covering a session. As they tend to do, it dragged on and on and on, and we decided to get some coffee. And starting to, as reporters tend to do again, bitch about our plight. We decided to count the number – at that point the Register and Tribune, both were operating – had like 27 people covering state government. And Roger Munse and I and were covering for the Gazette. The AP had two people assigned to legislature. So yeah, there’s always a little bit of resentment. Almost a hatred. Or an envy. Until the Gazette changed to a morning newspaper, in the early ‘80s, competing with the Register was just a bizarre no-win situation. Covering the state government, I’d have my stories filed for final by 2:00 p.m. Well, these people don’t wake up until 2:00. They don’t have any idea what’s going on in the world until 2:00. So I was always writing 24 hours later [than the Register.] Then you don’t do hard news stories. You do, “What does this mean?” [stories], or “What’s coming up?”, or “What’s the next step?” But you don’t have any substance of real significance in [the paper.] When we went to the morning cycle, it became a lot more fun because we were competitive. The hours changed dramatically. You could stay in there and write until 11:00 at night and still get something in the first edition. That was most fun. I think the Register has been, institutionally and historically, has been a wonderful asset for Iowa. I cringe when I hear the politicians, the national politicians, leaning toward the Register as the voice of Iowa political opinion because it is reflecting an accurate reflection. But that’s the framework by which the process has been known for a lot of years. Dave Epson is a talented person. Jimmy Gainsburg before him was a very qualified person. The network people don’t particularly care if you’re partial or impartial. They just want somebody who’s ready to express an emphatic opinion. And Dave particularly with this years in Iowa press is very, very comfortable with off the cuff speaking. Q: What do you think of the Register after Gannett bought it? A: I don’t think it necessarily started when Gannett bought it. Geography, economics, etc. has changed the Register’s impact significantly. I think they are no longer the state newspaper. I think it’s just impossible for them to distribute timely news to Decorah or down to Adams County or wherever. I don’t know. When I was a kid I delivered the Register in Charles City, the Register and Tribune. I carried 12 Tribs. People wanted the afternoon paper. I just don’t think economically they can afford to do it. I know the Gazette has changed its scope of service because of economics. You can’t maintain the expanse of circulation. We’d like to be into Waterloo, we’d like to be into Dubuque. But you can’t compete with the TH, or you can’t compete with the Currier because people are going to buy one paper perhaps, and hopefully it’s the local paper because that’s the publication that’s going to have the information that most important to them. And I think that is the way, more or less, the industry in functioning. Q: Did you ever get the opportunity to work at a bigger paper? Why did you stay [at the Gazette] so long? A: I don’t know why. I got several friends, and a couple coworkers who went to the Register. John Carlson worked for me when I was state editor. He’s a columnist for the Register. Exquisite writer, very good writer. Fulbright fellow. He went to Harvard or Columbia or wherever the heck it was for a year. Bill Shembra, who was there religion writer for a number of years worked with us. I never had any particular desire to go to Des Moines. I at one point, I think in the early 70s, I had a huge case of envy. My older brother, the only brother I had, worked abroad for the state department. And he came back and moved into the Washington D.C. area. I went out and visited a couple times, and [thought,] “Damn, this would be fun to live out here!” So I made a few inquiries out there. And I found some places that if you didn’t have a Ph. D. they didn’t want you. There was one place, I don’t remember the town right now, but they responded to my inquiry and said come on and see us. [But] the more we talked at home, the more we decided that we’re very happy where we were. After that I just started doing different things at the Gazette. As I said, I did basically everything one can do. I think the thing that would have sent me on the road was – I was too dumb to do it – my boss came to me one day, I was state editor at the time, and he says I want you to take over the women’s department. “Honest to god?” I said, “What’d I do wrong, John, what’d I do?” Well, they were changing to Lifestyle but at that point there was no way I wanted to go back there and to weddings and all that junk. But it was that period of transition from strictly the social society pages to lifestyle, home-handy person, stuff like that. So I did that for three years. When Frank retired, I begged to go to politics. Thank god. -- <br><br> Section 9: Q: You also mentioned earlier that you feel very strongly about objectivity, so I’m curious, what do you think of somebody like Michael Moore? Do you think what he’s doing is good? A: No. Q: Not at all? A: Well, I don’t think he��s a journalist. I don’t agree with what he’s doing but that’s more my own personal politics. He’s got every right in the world to do what he’s doing, but I don’t agree with it. The person I disagree with is Dan Rather. I think [what he did was] abominable. I think it’s inexcusable, particularly in his position, if you can’t be more certain of the facts. My own opinion of Rather is that he’s had a personal hard-on – pardon the expression – for the Bush family since day one. He and the old man clashed on a couple occasions. Q: Do you think political journalism should lead or follow the community? Even though it’s objective? A: I don’t think it should follow anybody. I think it should lead, I think it should be the middle of the road, the forum for people to extract ideas from, to extract information from. You’re talking to someone who’s spent eight years as an editorial writer, as a reporter, and then as a columnist – and those are three strange hats be wearing. But it can be done. As an editorial writer, I tried to reflect the newspaper’s opinion. As a columnist I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. But as a reporter I wanted to impart as much [as I could.] I’ve got 60 tapes at home, mini cassette tapes, with presidential candidates from back in 80, some of whom you’ve never heard [of.] But I just wanted to tell what they said, what they felt and what they said they felt – not what I thought they said they felt. You know, and I think that’s important. Maybe it isn’t important to people, maybe readers now want me or Dan Rather to think for them. I don’t believe it. I never will. I hope to god that they never do. I think our role as journalists, as reporters, is to provide readers, viewers and listeners with the best possible information we can. I don’t care whether it’s on government or whether it’s on the PTA. I think there’s a distinction between us leading or us following the public. That’s scary. That would be very scary. There was a period [in the] early ‘80s if we would have followed, for my particular area of interest, if we would have followed the fundamentalists, right-wing Christian conservative republicans or the extreme dogmatic, Democrats. That’s the extremes that ran back then. There weren’t a lot of people down the middle. They were fighting tooth and nail. I don’t think we can let society lead us were we’re going. Q: Are you a registered Republican or a registered Democrat? A: Nope. No, sir. Q: So you don’t have any party affiliation? A: For 20-odd years I had an obligation to my job. And now I’m damn comfortable with where I’m at. I can’t imagine a circumstance where I’d go straight ticket. My inclinations on some things very strongly lead me to the Republican floor. But there are some things I just can’t abide with what they’re doing, so I can’t vote for a party. -- <br><br> Section 10: Q: You were on the road a lot, driving a lot. Did you ever feel burnt out at all doing politics and having to travel a lot and all the stress on you? A: It’s one of the reasons I quit when I did. I was 59 when I retired in March of 2000. I told the managing editor that I was going to leave. He said, “Well, when?” I said, “Soon.” “Stay here until August,” he said. And that’s what I did. Two weeks after the caucuses of 2000, I was done. I had no interest in going to another national convention. I had no interest in covering another national campaign. As exciting as it might seem to rub elbows with the blow ins in San Francisco and New Orleans, San Francisco, Amana, New York, Portland and Chicago, they get to be work after a while. The delegates go to bed at 10:00 p.m., and you get to keep writing. Or they get off work at 10:00 and you got to keep writing. Early on, it was a ball, it was great sport. I’d hop the car and head down to Des Moines and the company would buy dinner the rest of the week. And you go out and have a few drinks with the lobbyists, then head home and start all over next Sunday night. Two or three years later it got old. It’s no fun. I don’t know how somebody whose career is in sales or traveling survives year round. I mean, I was doing it for four months and it was just ugly. One particular year. The legislature started the third or fourth of January, and I left home the Sunday night before that and I got home the 14th of February. That’s the first time I got home because I was in Des Moines covering legislature and covering campaigns all over Iowa. I think that was the start of the beginning of the end. We mentioned Mike Glovers. Mike’s a paragon, as far as I’m concerned. The guy works harder than anyone I’ve ever known. And [when] he [isn’t covering] any campaign here, he’s doing some goofy stuff out following the national campaign. I don’t know how these national people do it. They’re delegated to a candidate. Somebody’s assigned to Kerry when he announces, as he makes the progression through the seats. They just keep with him and stay with him until the bitter end. And if he happens to be elected president, [then] there’s your White House press person. They just don’t have a life, these people. They’re strangers to their families. -- <br><br> Section 11: Q: Not having a college degree, have you passed up options? Do you think that if you’re just a good writer you can make it? A: I don’t know if I��m a good writer. I’ve been a luck writer. I talk about Jack Hjilion, and he was so tolerant. The only advantage I had was two things: for one, I could type when I got my radio station job – big deal, as if that made a difference. The other thing is, I’ve been always fairly good with the language. For whatever reason, English was comfortable.. I don’t know what the hell an adverb and a verb and all that junk means. But I can put words together in a way that means something. My choice, my preference, would be to have the college education. Not that my career has necessarily been diminished. Q: Is that a big regret for you? A: Yeah, it always has. I’m not going to get a degree. I’m not going to go online, go to Phoenix University or whatever and get a degree cause I’ve never had one. But yeah, I got four kids, and between them they’ve got a law degree and three Master degrees. My eldest quit after her sophomore year and got married. Education has been inculcated into our way of life. Yeah, I regret it. I don’t know if I would have been in journalism if I had gone to college. I don’t know what the heck I would have done. I was 50 years old before I decided what I wanted to do when I grew up. I don’t know what I would have done. I got this job in radio because I didn’t want to work in a factory. No offense to the factories. A lot of my very good friends, I won’t say some of my best friends are factory workers, that’s a cliché. But I didn’t want to work in a factory. I grew up around the Oliver Corporation, and as it turns out that place is closed. They’ve bulldozed the whole operation 10 years before I retired. I went up there and wrote a story. Talk about significant stories in my life, I went out and interviewed a brother-in- law and a couple of classmates who were losing their jobs because they were bulldozing the mainstay factory in this community of 9,000 people. I would have been there if I’d gone to work in the tool department at the Oliver Corporation back in ’58. I don’t know where I would have been in retrospect. I’m glad I didn’t find out. This has just been a hugely gratifying 40-plus years. It’s the best of all worlds. Q: What advice would you give to a recent college graduate who wants to pursue some kind of journalism career? A: You want realistic advice? The idealistic advice is to take whatever job you can get and go out and work and learn the process. My experience is that the small town daily or weekly is the best training ground in the world for polishing the talent you have and developing the talent you have, polishing some of the skills you’ve acquired. You’re going to come out of school competent, but you’ll get better as you apply those skills and as you work with people. There’s a far, far different world out there covering the Amish, for example than covering Iowa City. It’s just a whole different world. You know I’ve driven around northeast Iowa with a camera because the boss says get me a farm picture. O.K. [So you get a picture with a] pig in the swill or the slop or whatever it is. No, that’s not what he wants. He wants a picture of a guy harvesting corn. I just think the small paper was a tremendous learning tool for me. Jack Hjillion was the graduate degree, as far as I was concerned. -- <br><br> Section 12: Q: As burned out as you were when you retired, is it hard now not having that outlet for your passion for politics? A: I haven’t missed politics an instant – as far as being actively and aggressively involved in covering it. I enjoy politics. I’ll watch the debates. I can now vent my frustrations a whole lot better, or more, than I ever did before. I’ve become a consumer instead of a provider. I count on the media for a lot more information. It used to be that I was there, I knew when somebody was blowing smoke. Now frankly I don’t see the Register. I’ve lived around here 40-plus years, and I’ve never yet had a Register circulation person call me and ask me to subscribe. But I am a consumer. I count on the media. Except for the electronic [media.] I don’t trust electronic media. Locally, the electronic media are doing a good job in doing news. I think the 18 minutes or whatever they dedicate to non-commercial information, if half of it is news, what I call news, they’re doing good. I think there’s greater emphasis on electronics for profile- type stuff. But I do count on my Gazette. And watch for the wires. I think the state wire people do a good job. Far cry from the old days when there were two wires covering Iowa. You could see differences. Q: Have you seen the Gazette change since you left? Now that you’re reading it instead of working for it? A: Yeah, I don’t know anybody there any more. Really, that’s bizarre. [It’s been] four and a half years [since I left.] I would hazard a guess that there’s been a 60 percent turnover. Back in the 1940s, the guy I followed was a guy by the name of Frank Nye. You’ll see his name if you look in DI archives because he was a faithful supporter of the Hawkeyes. He started at the International News service in Des Moines and came to the Gazette in the early ‘40s. He started the column called “Political Notes.” He wrote that column every Sunday until ’78. October of ’78 is when I started, so about 35 years. The first assignment I had was to continue “Political Notes.” Every week. Damnedest thing in the world is to write a column of general interest. And I did it until I retired. That was March of 2000, So I did that from ’78 to 2000 – 22 years. [Then] they quit it. [Nye] didn’t even replace me. It’s no longer even his responsibilities. For his sake, I think it’s a wonderful thing because it was a pain in the butt. But as far as a significant contribution to the newspaper, it’s probably outlived its usefulness. They’ve created a couple of different areas of responsibility – one is youth, and religion, and all that stuff. Knowing whose doing it, I think it’s an honest and sincere effort by management to try to identify and relate to an audience that newspapers need. People your age need to be cultivated in some sense I don’t think this is necessarily the way to do it, but that’s the approach they’ve taken. But yeah, there have been changes. I think mostly they’re due to the demographics and changes they’re serving.