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

Section 1: Q: We're talking with Dwight Jensen today, at his home at 13 Lakeview. Would that be right? A: 13 Lakeview Drive, Northeast, Iowa City. Q: Iowa City. Today is February 19, 2000. Thanks for having us in your home, Dwight. This is quite an honor. A: Thank you for coming. We're enjoying it. Q: Tell me a little bit about - I asked this question of Pat - how it was that you ended up at the Register, because you had been working at the University of Iowa's Daily Iowan. A: Yes. Q: Then, you what? Started sending out resumes after you'd graduated or somebody contacted you or how did it come about that you went to Des Moines? A: Well, Pat got her job without asking for it. I didn't. Let me go back. I decided, I guess, when I was in high school, that I would like to be a journalist. I first wanted to be a sports writer because I wasn't good enough to be an athlete so I decided I'd be a sports writer. The Register was a big paper in our home, the Sunday Register was. On Sundays, I would take Bert McGrane's - particularly Bert McGrane's articles in the Sunday paper about various games and I would sit down and I would pattern my story about our Friday night high school game after that. That's what I did on Sunday afternoons. Q: Where was your home? A: West Branch [Iowa]. Q: Okay. A: I was, at that time I guess, probably the sports writer, sports editor, whatever, for the high school paper. It sort of evolved from that into an interest in being a journalist generally. I started in the journalism school right out of high school in 1948 and after a couple of years, I left and went into the service during the Korean War and when I came back, I returned to journalism school and that's the point at which you picked up the question. After working at the Daily Iowan - I was editor for a little while - I got my degree and decided to do some graduate work and I was an intern for the University Information Service, writing news releases off campus on the campus events and things like that. I just decided it was time to get out and get a job and because of the background with the Register and having admired it since I was a child, it was what I considered to be the ultimate journalism job. So, I applied there and I applied to least one other newspaper, the Mason City Globe Gazette. I had a chance to go to both and I picked the Register, because I thought I'd arrived already, you know. So that's where it was. Q: Who hired you? A: Frank Eyerly. Q: What were the conditions of employment? How were you hired? What were you hired as and what was your pay? A: I was hired as a general reporter, as everybody was. You know, Frank would go back and forth - there was always a debate among newspaper editors about whether they wanted to hire graduates from journalism schools. This was not just Eyerly; this was throughout the entire profession, whether to hire journalism graduates or whether to hire educated people who could be taught to be journalists. He went back and forth on that and I just got lucky and happened to come along at a time when he was willing to hire someone from a journalism school. He hired Jack Magarell one or two years ahead of me and then he hired me in the late winter/early spring of 1956. The idea was, to come in and learn how to be a reporter. My pay, as I remember, was $65.00 a week. I think that was the normal starting pay, as far as I knew it anyway. I started out doing general assignment and then the police beat. That was what the new guy usually got to do. At first, I worked strange hours. I worked the hours and the days that nobody else wanted to, of course. In the beginning, I remember getting up from the dinner table on Thanksgiving, because I had to go to work and things like that. But after about six months or a little better, I got put on the courthouse beat. The courthouse beat was a beat where you generally got work the same days that other people did because the courthouse was open Monday though Friday. But the Register being a morning paper, the normal workday at the Register was 1:00 or 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon until 11:00 or 12:00 o'clock at night. I had worked later than that, the late afternoon to almost 2:00 in the morning on police, but when I went to the courthouse, I got to work Monday through Friday, from 2:00 until 11:00, roughly. After about six months or more of that, I was put on the City Hall beat. -- <br><br> Section 2: Q: Can we go back to that? I wanted to touch on the police and the courthouse beat. What were the routines of those beats and how did they compare? What would be your daily grind? Was there something you could expect each day or was it always something new? A: Well, it was a little bit of both. There was a lot that was something new, but there were certain things that were routines. I don't remember that much about the police beat, but what I do remember about it - well, I remember a couple of things about it. I remember that we had a press room in the police station and this is where you would hang out. There were some old-time guys around who covered police for the [Des Moines] Tribune and there had been old-timers who covered it for the Register. Maybe there still were, I can't remember. You would just go around and you'd look at the police blotter and you'd check out things and maybe go out and cover a crime or something. For a new reporter who didn't have much background in real day-to-day reporting, other than the Daily Iowan, it was kind of a mysterious place. At least I thought it was. I guess I did okay. I remember that in the summer, I took two summer interns in tow to sort of initiate them into how to cover the police station. One was Ken MacDonald's son, Ken MacDonald being the editor. His son was home from college and working as an intern at the paper. I spent a little time with him down there. The other was one of Carl Gartner's sons. Carl Gartner was the editor of Picture Magazine for years and years and years and he had two sons, one of whom did an internship there for a few months. Q: It wouldn't have been Mike, would it? A: No, it was the other one. Q: The other son? A: Yes, I think so. Yes. I believe so. Q: What was mysterious about that beat? Are you saying that you had a lot to learn or just - A: I can't remember it very clearly. It wasn't one of my favorite assignments. I got out of it as soon as I could. But you weren't very welcome, for one thing. The police weren't very forthcoming. This was a good many years ago and there were still some old-time policemen who had joined the police force in the depression because it was a place to get a job. I remember one old-time detective who used to talk with some pride about taking a suspect in the elevator and working on him until he confessed before they got down to the floor where the jail was, I guess. Things like that. I can't really describe any better than that, I'm afraid. -- <br><br> Section 3: Q: Then, you were talking about your courthouse beat and then eventually, the city, isn't that right? A: Yes, right. Well, the courthouse - here you covered the clerk's office. You went in and looked at what had been filed that day and went around - there were several county offices that you visited, four or five district judges at that time and you'd call on them. That was an opportunity to get into a little bit of political coverage because there were - the year I was there, there were some political campaigns. Q: There was some enterprise reporting? A: Yes, I suppose. Q: So you could develop stuff from some of the sources that you had there? A: Yes. Q: Do you have any memories of one that stands out in your mind? A: No, not really. I'd have to go back and look at my old clippings which I haven't done for years and years. I do remember covering part of the congressional campaign for the districts that Des Moines is in, in 1958 or 1956 - I'm not sure which it was, it must have been 1956 - where Neil Smith defeated a long time Republican congressman. I did some of the stories on that, but I doubt very much whether I was the primary person on that. There were a few old things - I need to go back and put these in some kind of a time frame, but there were a couple of other interesting stories that stand out in my mind. One was when a young man took an airplane and flew back and forth, up and down Locust and Grand. Q: Yes, I've heard that story. A: Everybody got pressed into action on that. This was one of those stories where we all had a little piece and it got sent into the office and put into a larger story. The other one was the time that [Russian Premier Nikita] Khrushchev visited central Iowa and Des Moines and I remember being in the mob at the Hotel Fort Des Moines when his motorcade came down there. But I don't remember what my role was. Q: How was that story pieced together about the pilot who was flying up and down 8th Avenue? A: It would have been, I think, Grand Avenue and Locust Street. He buzzed the Capitol and he buzzed the Equitable Building and I think he went clear back up toward Terrance Hill and just back and forth. Q: In other words, you had reporters at each site? A: Yes, and there was a place out in - boy, trying to call up memories from years ago that I hadn't even dreamed of - but there was someplace out, on the outskirts where he decided to put down the plane. I think it was out around Pittsburgh Des Moines Steel or someplace like the steel plant out in the northwest part of town. We had somebody out there, an old reporter/photographer named Herb Schwartz from the Tribune, I remember, was out there. But I can't remember anything more than that. -- <br><br> Section 4: Q: I asked Pat - maybe you can describe what the configuration of the newsroom was, the fourth floor, because she was talking about where the women's society department was and Eyerly's and MacDonald's offices and the sports desk. Do you remember about where the cartoonist sat? Could you walk us through? A: Yes, I was thinking as I listened to Pat trying to describe that, how I would. It's hard without a board to diagram it on. But the fourth floor at the Register and Tribune building, which is the editorial floor, at that time was, at least on the west, the part that is to the west of where the bank of elevators are, was all one big open newsroom. It ran from Locust Street on the south and 8th Street on the west, I think all the way or nearly all the way to Grand Avenue on the north. It may not have been quite that - I can't remember any windows on the Grand Avenue side, but maybe they were there. In the southeast corner of that area would have been the library, what we called the morgue. Along the center of the west side, the 8th Street side, is where the editor and the managing editor, MacDonald and Eyerly's offices were and their secretaries were in an open space between them. To the south of that, toward Locust Street is where, I believe, the editorial writers were. To the north of that, along the 8th Street side, is where the news staff sat. There were rows of desks that were perpendicular to the 8th Street side. I don't know, six or eight rows of probably three desks each. So we were in there all slotted like that. Q: These were your desks or did they change from - I mean, if a person came in with a story, could they just sit at any desk? A: For the most part, you had a desk. I had a desk which was mine. I don't believe anybody else sat there. I was the third desk in from the west side, the northernmost row of these desks. I could sit there and look down toward the managing editor's office and see all the other reporters. To the right of me sat Julie Zelenka, who was one of the few women. To the right of her, sat Walt Shotwell and back to back-to-back from us, behind us, sat George Mills and C. C. Clifton, the two pre-eminent political reporters. Cy Clifton retired sometime, I believe, while I was there, but "Lefty" Mills was there long after I left. To the east of us, in the area that would have been to my left as I was looking back toward the managing editor's office, is where the city editor, the state editor, the copy editors all sat around a Rim. There were two sets of those, one at our end, for the Register and one just right across from it, toward the south, for the Tribune. Pat described to you where the women's section was, right outside the space between the editor and the managing editor's office. I don't remember that very well. I remember the sports department being to the south of the Tribune copy desk area. The photographers were off to the east, in sort of the northeast corner of this rectangle that I'm describing. They had a darkroom in there and they had their offices and desks back in that area. As I recall, then, the columnists sat - well, Frank Miller, the cartoonist, was along the north side someplace up there. And the columnists, Gordon Gammack and some of the others, had desks to the north, along the north side, in that area near the north side. The northwest corner of that rectangle was cut out for a bank of elevators which went down to the back, and that's where we used to come up. The main entrance to the newsroom was, if you came in from the Locust Street side, and came up the elevator, you'd go through the lobby that had the big globe and all, and you came up the elevator and you got off the elevator at the fourth floor and then you'd walk around sort of a curved area that had big prints of some of the historic front pages from the Register there. But most of this, at least my recollection is, that most of us came in the back way, sort of, which was the bank of elevators that was behind my desk. That's probably more detail than you wanted. Q: No, that's the kind of detail we're looking for. A: Let me tell one other thing, because the Register and Tribune building has thirteen floors and they were very proud of that. This was not terribly old, I think, at that time. It had been designed by an architect in Des Moines by the name of Amos Emery. But the thing that I remember about it is, this was before air conditioning. This building was not air conditioned and on hot days, we had to have the windows open. And the buses right down on the street below would blow all their black smoke up at us. I remember sitting there in the summer, writing stories at my manual typewriter and perspiring onto the paper. That's something that I wanted to get in. Q: I've had someone else tell me that, that it was so hot and muggy and smoky. In fact, I was asking him about the working conditions and that was the first thing he thought of. That was an issue, I guess? A: No, it wasn't an issue with me in the sense that I thought it should have been different. We weren't alone in not having air conditioning. The building was fairly new, as I recall. It had been a reasonably modern building and you're talking about the mid-fifties. This was maybe not state-of-the-art, but it wasn't far from it, and this was the norm for a newspaper newsroom. From that standpoint, I didn't think the working conditions were bad at all, but it was memorable that it was that hot, yes. -- <br><br> Section 5: Q: When you wrote a story and submitted it, tell me what the process was. I think it went from your desk to the Rim, am I right? A: No. I worked very closely with the city editor. Now, the City Hall beat - and I hope I'm not digressing too much here, but the City Hall beat, which I got to do after I had been there only about a year or a little more, was the beat that, at that time, was uppermost in the managing editor's mind, or at least it was one of them. He was exceedingly interested in it because there had been some difficulties in the city government. He took a very strong interest in the newspaper's role in making sure that things at City Hall turned out the way they should for the community's sake and good government's sake. So I felt very fortunate to be asked to do that. As a general rule, we worked directly with our city editor or the assistant city editor. There were one or two, I can't remember how many, assistant city editors in addition to the city editor on the Register side. Very frequently, my direct relationship, the person I would call if I was out at City Hall or out on a story someplace might be the assistant city editor. The person that I would show my story to first when I came in might be the assistant city editor. But it went through the city desk. Anyway, the reason I mentioned the City Hall beat in this context was because Frank Eyerly took a very personal interest in a lot of the copy that was written about City Hall. So, sometimes, although it went first, almost always it went first to the city desk, it might go into him before it came out and went on to the Rim. Or, and this was not unusual at all, he might have come out and hovered over me or the city desk while a story was being written or edited, because if he had learned about something that was particularly troubling to him in connection with the city government from a source outside - a source in the community, then he would have a particular interest on that day, about a story. So it might go through his eyes before it went to the city desk. Or it might go through his eyes before it went onto the Rim. But the normal routing was reporter, city desk, then to the copy desk, where the news editor would parcel it out to somebody on the Rim. -- <br><br> Section 6: Q: Okay, I have to ask you, since you have brought it up. Are you saying he took an interest in what was going on in the city, he had learned something. What are you talking about with Frank Eyerly? Did he have some friends that he either wanted or did not want covered? A: No, it wasn't anything like that. It wasn't anything particularly like that. It was - and I don't know that this is unusual. I suspect that it happened at my time there and my only time in my career on a newspaper of that type was with Frank Eyerly and the hierarchy there at the time. But people at that level at the newspaper were members of the Des Moines Club and they moved in circles with the leadership in the community and these people talked to each other. It was more that sort of thing. But Frank would take a very strong interest. He was too much of a journalist to ever say, "Don't cover this person," or do it this way or that way just because he wanted it done that way, but he had some pretty strong - he was a very good journalist and he had some pretty strong feelings about how things should be done sometimes. Q: Would copy come back from him that had stuff deleted or stuff added or notes in the margins? A: I don't remember him ever doing it that way, but then, most of the time - I can only remember one or two times when he actually stood around my desk while I wrote a story and I can't tell you what the specifics were, because it's just one of those fuzzy things that's sitting out there. I think, most of the time he would have already talked to the city editor or he would see the copy and the city editor would get his reaction and whatever - Q: Who was the city editor at the time? A: The city editor was John Zug. The assistant city editor was Knox Craig. I can't give you any specifics about anything he ever said change or do or don't do. I just remember that he had a very strong interest in it and he watched over it. It may have been more of a case of telling the news editor how this story ought to be played than it was how it ought to be written. I don't know. Q: Did he have pet issues or subject matter that he wanted or that he took a special interest in? A: Oh, yes. Q: What were some of those? A: Well, he was very - and I think Ken MacDonald was too - he was very much interested in the arts. Music. Cultural things. They wanted to elevate that sort of thing in the community. As far as City Hall specifically, I think - before I got to the City Hall, there had been some difficulty with a new majority being elected on the city council. The city manager being fired. I think there was a perception at the time - and I'm not sure how the passage of time has worked on this, but there was a perception at the time that the bad guys had gotten control. So we were particularly vigilant. There was a fellow named Ray Mills who was a labor leader, who was elected to the council. There was a man named Bob Conley who was a lawyer and a south side businessman named Frank McGowan. The three of them were elected all at one time and they represented a different view of the city government than the west side Des Moines people had favored. So it made for a little friction for several of the years that I covered the City Hall. Q: Not working in the best interests of constituencies? Is that what you're saying? A: I would have to say, at this point, that I think things turned out pretty well over time. They hired a new city manager. He was a little more political than the city manager who'd been fired, who'd been more of a manager and less of a people person kind of thing, as I recall. It was just distressing to some people, but I don't think in the long run, that the city suffered that much. Q: Some people being Frank Eyerly included? A: Yes. See, they talked to each other. And they agreed with each other on things like that. My recollection is that Frank had at least one pretty good friend among the older group on the city council. So anyway, I got a chance to do something that he was very much interested in and I think it helped. I think I probably got raises more rapidly because I was doing work that he was interested in and because he was satisfied with what I was doing. And I did it for six years. Q: That beat? A: Yes. -- <br><br> Section 7: Q: Did you also cover county and state politics? A: Well, you see, at the time I went to the City Hall, I left the courthouse and didn't cover county anymore, at least not specifically. The way I got involved in statehouse coverage was, I sort of wanted to do it and I guess I must have made it known that I wanted to do it. The statehouse beat was a coveted beat and after I had covered the City Hall for six years, they sent me to cover the statehouse for part of one year during an election year. I never thought of it as anything permanent or anything that would displace anybody else. George Mills was the veteran statehouse reporter, as I recall, and Jack Magarell was also covering parts of state government and I guess it was one of those things where, because it was going to be an election year, there would be a greater load and they just put me in there as an added help for a little while. I don't recall what they did with City Hall during that period, either. Q: With regard to your municipal, city beat, I imagine there were some enterprise stories that came out of there and series of stories, of coverage that you did. Can you recall any specific ones that you are particularly proud of, at the time, that involved some investigative reporting and some real enterprise work? A: I did an awful lot of the routine stuff, covering city council meetings and covering planning and zoning meetings. I covered things like the planning of the Des Moines freeway from the beginning. The city brought in a professional traffic engineer - something that they hadn't had before - and we began to get more stories about street design and things like that. I think probably - well, it's an interesting question and I hadn't thought about it. I won an award from the American Political Science Association for reporting of state and local government in 1958. It must have been for something, but I don't remember what it was. But the one that I do remember, and it was one of the last things, I think, that I did. I did a series of articles on slums near the state capitol. Q: This would have been before the interstate came in, is that right? A: I think so. I can't remember, without going back to look up the clippings, which I have in a box. I can't remember when it was, but I think it was probably around 1959 or 1960, roughly. I had been exposed to some stories out of the City Hall where I got into neighborhoods that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten into to and I got concerned about that - and I don't remember how many I did. Q: When you say 'exposed,' what do you mean by that? You know, for somebody who is looking in from the outside, you had sources? Or you went down and took a look? Or you got a tip from something that was going on, with a lawsuit or something? A: I can just tell you how it probably happened. I can't remember specifically. But over the course of those six years, I got to know the city pretty well, because, particularly with thing like that planning and zonings, new housing developments, new street improvements, problems having to do with air quality and that sort of thing - we didn't call it that then, I don't think, but that's what it was - in the industrial part of the city, and I would go out and look at these places. So I saw a lot of the city that way and that's what I meant. I did surely develop sources over time. Every reporter did. A lot of them were city officials who probably had an ax to grind and used me to help grind it. Occasionally, you'd find somebody who was dissatisfied and would speak to you quietly. I'll tell you - in those days, there wasn't nearly as much use of blind sources on stories. We almost always had to have a statement attributed and attributed by name. It was very seldom that you could get by, with my city desk at least, using an unidentified source or something who didn't want to be named. It just didn't work. We didn't do it then. Q: What do you think about the use of unknown sources? A: Well, I'll tell you. I suspect, like anything else, you can abuse it, but I think you get a lot more information that way. It takes more skill on the part of the reporter, I think, to judge when to do that and when not to because you can pick up almost any paper and you can spot a statement that you think - maybe the reporter wanted to say that and so he attributed it to something other than a real person. So I think it puts more responsibility on the reporters' shoulders, but I think its okay. -- <br><br> Section 8: Q: You were saying earlier, that there was this idea of how they hired people at the Register - I can't remember, maybe it was Frank Eyerly at the time, was going back and forth on would we hire educated people to come in and they'll learn journalism or are we going to hire journalists to come in. I want to know from you, what was your background in covering municipal, county and state issues, besides at the DI. Were you an educated person or were you - you know what I'm saying. A: I'd say it was mostly on the job. I came from journalism school. I did have an interest in and quite a number of courses in history and political science, but I didn't have any direct experience and I didn't have any really heavy academic work. My work was much more on the practical side than it was on the government side. It's just that my interest was in government. That's where I gravitated. But I can name some reporters - well, I'll tell you what. I don't believe that Don Kaul came from a journalism school. I don't believe that George Anthan did. They both came while I was working there. Nick Kotz came while I was working there and he came from a very strong liberal arts and economics background, as I recall. I think he had done some work at the London School of Economics or someplace. Anyway, he had a very strong academic background. And Dean Fischer was hired that way, too. He had - it may have been Dean that did the London Economics - anyway, all those guys came from other than journalism schools, as I remember. So, it went both ways. Q: What's your opinion? Which is better? Or are there positives to both? A: Well, you know, having been a graduate of journalism school, I always thought that was the way to go. But I'm not sure that that's an absolute at all. I don't think it's necessarily easy to take just any old educated person and make them a journalist. Some editors seemed to think that, or used to think that. I think there are some principles and some ethics and things that you learn in a journalism school that you might not learn otherwise, but my feelings on that aren't nearly as strong as they used to be. Q: What are some of those principles that a journalist needs to have, as a working, professional journalist? A: Well, of course, other than being able to write and being able to put things in concise terms, understanding the subject that they're writing about, which are all basic, you need to have a strong sense of the responsibility that you have, I think. And you need to be aware of the consequences of how you exercise it. That may be sort of obscure language, but I'm not sure how to describe it. I mean, it seems to me that the ultimate danger is the kind of thing that seems to be taking hold on the Internet where you can just put anything out there. It's not that simple. I don't think it's as simple as you tell everybody everything and then let them decide. You need to be sure that what you're dealing with is the truth and that you put it in a context that it comes out like the truth. Q: You're a gatekeeper. A: You are! Yes, you are, very definitely. Yes, and it's a very important role. It's a big job. And it takes a lot of personal character to exercise it properly, I think. Q: I asked Pat this too, but what is your concept of objectivity? A: Whoa! Well, I start from the premise that everybody is human and they view things through their own prism. But it seems to me that you can take facts and relate them in ways that minimize... . Q: Your own influence in the story, right? A: Yes, you should try to, yes. Q: Okay. And I guess you would see that, too, on a police beat, especially, where things are almost cut and dried, but still, you have to have a perspective. A: Yes. I think you do see it there as well as other places. There is a tendency, I think, on the part of a lot of journalists, and I think I was guilty of this too. You tend to see things as 'this is something that everybody needs to know about whether they want to know about it or not, and I'm, by golly, going to make sure they know about it.' I don't know if there's anything wrong with that, really, but it's not always realistic. -- <br><br> Section 9: Q: And you read the paper, the Register? Tell me what you think about it, reading it today as compared to what it was when you were there. A: Well, I'm disappointed in it and I'm not alone, by any means, on that. I was very proud to work at the Register and I did think, at the time that I worked there, that it was one of the best newspapers in the country. And I think it was. I think, you know, we might be talking about, among the 10, 12 - 15 best newspapers in the country. I mean, there are some others that are pretty good too. It had developed, over time, a long history of being the preeminent newspaper in the state, newspaper of statewide influence, and statewide coverage. I'm sure that, from other people you'll get more detail than I could give you about how Gardner Cowles and Harvey Ingham came down from Algona and bought up newspapers and made it the state paper. During the time that I was there, I would hear stories from my colleagues about some of the greats who were there ten, fifteen years before. One that I never met but heard a lot about was an editor named Stuffy Waldows. And then there was Ding Darling and there was W. W. Waymack and there were a lot of people who were there and gone before I got there, but there were some really great journalists there at the time that I was. During that time, the Register flew out into the state to cover stories, still had its own airplane, still had the peach sports section, had a four or five member Washington Bureau together with the Minneapolis papers that were also owned by the Cowles family. During my time there, we sent Gene Raffensperger and others out into the state to open up bureaus in Davenport and Waterloo and Iowa City and Dubuque, I think, and some other places, because we were going to have bureaus in the major centers in the state. The result was that you considered anything that happened within the state to be a story that was of concern and while there might have been some inevitable Des Moines bias, there wasn't the kind of Des Moines bias that there is now. Now, I understand what's happened to newspapers economically and the economic realities and all, and I can't make a judgment as to whether this was inevitable or not. But I just think it's lamentable that it has happened because living here in Iowa City, we don't get a newspaper that is that meaningful to us from Des Moines. I take it because I'm involved in some things that happen in Des Moines but I really do seriously question whether even that I couldn't get just as well from the Cedar Rapids Gazette, frankly. The other thing that we prided ourselves in, and I used to hear Frank Eyerly talk about this, was the editorial section. The team of editorial writers who were top flight people and I think probably still are. I used to hear Eyerly talk about how we take more syndicated columns than anybody and then just steal out the best and give our readers something that you can't get anywhere but the East Coast and that sort of thing. They probably come close to that still, but not as much as we did then. But those were all the things that I thought made the Register a really, really fine newspaper. There were only - I'm not sure whether there were more than three or four other papers in the country that had the kind of statewide influence that the Register and Tribune had. I think it was a very strong influence on the development of the state and on the sense of cohesion between Des Moines and outlying areas where there is always going to be some tension because of the rural, urban conflicts. So, that's how I feel. Q: Sometimes I just lose my train of thought here. A: I gave you too much in one shot! Q: I had asked Pat about this also, but - okay, the Des Moines Register was not only Iowa recognized, but it was nationally recognized. A: Yes. Q: I mean, one of the best in the country. A: Yes. Q: And one of the reasons, some people have said, that Washington politics, New York politics, even the West Coast, looked to the Register to get a feel for what the rest of the country was doing. I mean, you talk about Iowa, but then, the Midwest and then the heartland, in general, you think that's true or maybe they could have gotten that from the Kansas City Star or the Chicago Tribune? What made the Register something that stood out among these people out east and out west? A: Well, I don't have any direct knowledge of that. But I do think that if you're on either coast, and you want to find out what the sense or what's going on in Middle America, you would go to one of the great newspapers. The Kansas City Star was one of them. The Louisville Courier Journal was one of them. The Minneapolis Star Tribune. The Register. I don't know that we had any monopoly on that. But I can remember Editor and Publisher and other organizations publishing lists of the best newspapers and the Register and Tribune would usually be in the top 10-12, in that particular period that I remember. So, I think that's why other editors would look to us. Q: And also the fact that it was Iowa that was covered. I mean, the Register covered not just Des Moines or not just central Iowa. It was rare when you found a newspaper in a state that covered the entire state. Stringers, correspondents, and like you say, flying out. A: The only other one that I can think of is the Courier Journal, which at one time, did the same thing in Kentucky, I believe. Q: What do you think we've lost, not having that kind of coverage? Why is it important? A: What I think we've lost is the sense of cohesion that having a newspaper that covers the entire state can help in gender. And as I said, it may be that it's just one of the economic realities today, that we can't have it anymore. But I think that's what we lost. You could identify - people in the far reaches of the state have difficulty identifying with other parts of the state anyway, and with Des Moines in particular. I think you could identify more if you had a newspaper that was including you in their orbit. The motto of the Register was "The Newspaper Iowa Depends Upon." I used to get derisive comments from people who were mad at us. George Mills will tell you that having somebody mad at you means you're doing your job. That's one way to look at it. But people would say to me, "it's a newspaper that depends on Iowa," and they would twist that slogan other ways. It's true. The Register did depend on Iowa and Iowa depended on the Register and I think we were better for it. At that time, anyway. -- <br><br> Section 10: Q: There's something else that you brought up in your letter to me and in our talks on the phone. The Register covered Iowa because these other communities weren't able to. A lot of these small communities had small papers that were almost novelties for some of these local Chambers of Commerce. Talk about the distinction between the Register, the Des Moines Register as it was when you were there, and a community paper serving, perhaps, the Villisca or Grinnell, even. A: Okay, yes. Grinnell has got a pretty good newspaper, by the way. But the Register applied resources to the coverage of news that nobody else could. Most small newspapers are so limited in the resources that they can put to news coverage that they have to rely on wire stories, they have to rely on things that people send into them. In the public relations business, it's actually automatic that you can get little newspapers to use any news release you send out because they need something to fill up. The other thing about it has to do with the quality of work they get, because little newspapers can't - they don't pay people enough and they aren't able to keep the really good ones long enough for them to get trained in the area and in what they're doing. The Register, when I worked there, had people who had been there for 30 and 40 years. I mean, Mills and Cy Clifton are two examples. But there was Nick Lamberto, there was Allen Hoshar, there were a whole lot of people, and that's just on the Register side. The Tribune had them too and sports had them. There were just a whole lot of people who had been there for 30-40 years. Maybe by that time, they were starting to burn out, I don't know. But at least there was a history there and there was a body of knowledge and experience there that the smaller towns would not be able to replicate. Q: Do you think that there is a role for some of these smaller community papers in that, even though they may be indebted to the Chamber of Commerce or people's public relations departments, of a way of getting the news out, where they wouldn't otherwise have it. A: Oh, of course there is, sure. Q: You know, you've got birth announcements and things. A: Oh, yes, there are all kinds of things that small town newspapers can and should do that any larger newspaper isn't going to be able to do. One of the things about the Register is that it was always a small paper. That is largely because there was a business decision made in the early years to keep it small so it wouldn't be so expensive to truck it out into the state. You go to most cities of the size of Des Moines and you're going to find a big, fat paper. You go to Milwaukee and the paper is huge. The Des Moines Register was one of the few papers, and I was never on the business side so I can't speak in any depth on this, but it was one of the few papers around, I understood, that got more of its revenue from circulations than it did from advertising. If that's true, then that provides an economic reason for keeping it small. So the news hole is always tight. There is no way that the Register at its best can cover all the thing that a community needs a local paper to do. But I think what that means is that most people need to read more than one newspaper.