IF IT'S IN BLACK AND WHITE, IT COULD TURN YOU RED ALL OVER

There is a very wise rule of thumb in the newspaper business that I suspect has an electronic media equivalent. It goes something like this: Never use dummy copy as a filler or write something inappropriate in copy that you expect someone else to catch and fix or remove before it ends up being published in the paper. Or, more simply put: If you don't want it to "accidently" get into the paper, don't do it.

Unfortunately, that rule is too often violated and the result is sometimes a major public embarrassment.

Currently, this screw up -- brought to us via http://www.newscastic.com -- is making the social media rounds among journalists:

 

This is just one of the rule-of-thumb-violation debacles featured. If you are interested in the full horror show, here is the link: http://www.newscastic.com/news/15-times-filler-text-become-a-journalists-worst-enemy-797964/

During my nearly 44 years in the newspaper business, I witnessed numerous such embarrassing occurrences in both my own and other newspapers.

The personally most embarrassing occurred came while I was managing editor of The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., in the late 1970s, destroying the impact of what was an otherwise incredible piece of investigative reporting.

At the time, U.S. Sen. John Stennis, D-Miss., was pressing hard to have Congress approve final funding and design for the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, a man-made waterway that would link the Tennessee River near Corinth, Miss., and the Tombigbee River in Alabama. A large portion of the waterway was to pass through eastern Mississippi, to create a water transportation link to the Gulf of Mexico.

Wikipedia succinctly describes the Tenn-Tom this way:

"The Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway (popularly known as the Tenn-Tom) is a 234-mile (377-kilometer) man-made waterway that extends from the Tennessee River to the junction of the Black Warrior-Tombigbee River system near Demopolis, Alabama, United States. The Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway links commercial navigation from the nation’s midsection to the Gulf of Mexico. The major features of the waterway are 10 locks and dams, a 175-foot (53 m) deep cut between the Tombigbee River watershed and the Tennessee River watershed, and 234 miles (377 km) of navigation channels.^[1] The ten locks are 9 feet (2.7 m) x 110 feet (34 m) x 300 feet (91 m) the same dimension as the locks on the Mississippi.^[2][3] Under construction for twelve years by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway was completed in December 1984 at a total cost of nearly $2 billion."

Opponents of the project, primarily northern Democrat senators, decried it as a prime example of wasteful spending.

Nonetheless, Stennis -- a long tenured and powerful force in the Senate -- was undeterred in his support and kept pushing to have the project finished. As part of that push, he proposed a slight routing change, which he contended would shorten the construction mileage and, thereby, save money.

We received at tip that the rerouting would take the waterway through some rather large parcels of land that Stennis had been purchasing through "straw men" who were listed on land sales records as the buyers.

Our investigation of the tip took nearly two months to complete and involved the examination of hundreds of pages of land records, scores of interviews and weeks of fact checking. In the end, we had developed what we felt was ironclad proof of the allegation.

The reporter on the project managed to wangle an extensive interview with Stennis -- not a man given to freely talking under pressure to the press -- in which he finally acknowledged that some, but not all, of the land purchases had been made by others on his behalf. Stennis, however, contended that he didn't realize that the land purchased rather cheaply was along the path of the proposed route -- land the right of way though which would have to be bought at a considerably higher price by the government to complete the waterway and the balance of which could vastly increase in value because it would border the Tenn-Tom when completed.

Knowing that we would have to employ extreme caution in publishing this bombshell, I personally handled the first edit on the long and highly detailed story, then passed it along to the city editor for a second edit and took it back for a personal final edit. In the process, we exercised great care to make certain that a quick synopsis of Stennis' response appeared high in the story. After my final edit, I passed the story on to our best copy editor to read it, prepare it for publication and write a headline.

While doing his read, the copy editor inserted an inappropriate, sarcastic note in bold, highlighted italics and then passed it along to the news editor with the assumption that he would get a chuckle out of the insertion and then remove it before sending the story to typesetting. Well, you know what the say about the word "assume."

For whatever reason -- likely a brain burp brought on by deadline pressures -- the news editor failed to remove the note.

So, when the story was published, the high-up paragraph containing the synopsis of Stennis' response read like this:

"The senator acknowledged that some, but not all, of the more recent land purchases made along the proposed path of the waterway had been made by others on his behalf. However, he said he was 'totally unaware' that the land being bought was along the proposed route. (Can you believe this lying sack of shit.)"

OOPS!

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(Please note that I have made a correction in this post. Initially I identified Sen. John Stennis as "R-Miss." Actually he was one of the southern senators who never switched parties, I had forgotten that. He should have been and now is identified as D-Miss. My apologies.)

NEWSROOM NOVICE

In our lives, we all have "firsts" that we look back on fondly across the haze of time. Maybe it's a first car, or maybe a first love. For me, one of those is my first newsroom job, although it is a position that I am not sure I have ever even listed on any professional resume, especially since it lasted such a short time and ended so abruptly. But, if it hadn't been for that job, my life might have headed in a different direction and I might not have had the nearly 44 years worth of newspaper jobs that I do list on my resume.

My first newspaper job, which I sort of fell into a couple of months after my discharge from the U.S. Navy in 1966, was at the New Albany Tribune in New Albany, Ind., the city just to the west of Clarksville, Ind., where I spent part of my younger life.

I didn't start at the Tribune, then an about 8,000 circulation daily, immediately after the Navy even though by the time I was discharged, I knew I wanted to go back to college and become a newsman.

I joined the Navy to escape my father's wrath after managing to amass a 0.4 average during the first semester of my freshman year at Indiana University. I failed out not because I was all that stupid, but because I had no desire to go immediately from high school to college. I actually wanted to enlist in the service and see something of the world before tackling another four years of schooling, but my parents wouldn't hear of it. Since I was only 17 when I graduate high school, I needed their signed permission to enlist.

So, instead, I went off to IU and found that I enjoyed playing euchre at the Student Union building more than I liked going to class. Consequently, failing out was not that difficult a chore. What WAS a chore was gaining readmission to the university after my discharge from the Navy. I was granted "conditional" readmission. The condition being that before I could return to IU's main campus in Bloomington, I had to take classes at Indiana University Southeast, then in Jeffersonville, and bring my GPA up to at least 2.0. This I did in one summer and one fall semester by getting all "A"s in 16 hours of course work at nights.

To support myself during those semesters, I had to find a job. The first one I took was as a collector for a loan company. However, I quickly tired of repossessing cars and pressuring payments from people who'd been duped into taking loans at interest rates bordering on usury.

I quit that repugnant post when an old high school friend told me about a job at the Tribune, then owned by Thomson Newspapers. I applied and got the job. That position, however, was in the advertising department, but it got my foot in the door.  I almost immediately began bugging (maybe I should say begging) the editor, John Anderson, to give me a shot as a reporter, which he finally did.

Anderson was one of those old-time editors who could sit at his desk typing faster with two fingers on an old upright Royal typewriter faster than most people can touch type with all the fingers on both hands on a computer keyboard. And, yeah, he had the omnipresent cigarette butt with a two inch ash that steadfastly refused to fall off until he was ready to dump it in his always overflowing ashtray. He also kept a bottle of Rebel Yell bourbon in his bottom desk drawer and nipped on it regularly during the day.

Anderson had been around the block a couple of times and even though he was then the editor of a small community daily, he had worked for some much larger papers in some big cities. In his early 40s, Anderson was a World War II Army combat veteran who'd been wounded twice, once at Anzio and once while making the mad dash across France with Patton's army. When he was discharged, he took advantage of the GI bill and went to college after becoming enthralled with a newspaper war correspondent he'd met in a foxhole on the Anzio beachhead.

Once I took a desk in the newsroom, I was off and running and Anderson liked what I was doing as much as I liked doing it and compared to what I had been making as a 2nd class gunner's mate petty officer in the Navy, the $65-a-week paycheck seemed like a fortune.

Maybe because I was a fellow veteran and maybe because of my charming personality, Anderson seemed to take a liking to me and took it upon himself to tutor me in newspapering. I actually learned a lot from him and much of what he taught me I spent years as an editor passing along to the young reporters who worked for me at various newspapers.

One of the things I learned from him was how to write a grabber lead.

"Look," he told me, "if you don't craft a lead that grabs the reader's attention right off, you're gonna lose 'em. A good lead should grab the reader by the lapels and give him a good shaking. If you do that, it almost doesn't matter what comes next because they'll follow it whatever it is. That's even more true if you write a great lead followed by three or four more strong paragraphs." Over the years, I found that to be unerringly great advice.

He also taught me that if a great lead didn't pop immediately into my head,  go on and write the rest of the story because in doing so, "the right lead will eventually reveal itself." He was right.

He also insisted that every good news story has a beat and a rhythm, just like a good song.

"Your job is to discover that beat and that rhythm and then write the lyrics," he told me.

He also instructed me in the now seemingly lost art of calling in and dictating a story off the top of my head. After my first pathetic attempt to do that while providing updated coverage of a trial, Anderson pulled me aside, got up in my face with a waggling index finger and growled:

"I have neither the time, nor the inclination to write your fucking stories for you. From now on, when you call in, you'd better be ready to dictate a real story and not that notes bullshit you hit me with today."

All were lessons that served me well throughout my long newspaper career.

But my career as a reporter at the Tribune ended rather abruptly after five months when I told Anderson that I'd decided that rather than going back to school in Bloomington, I would as soon just continue reporting for him.

"Look, kid," he told me, "you're good, but you'll be a lot better if you go back to school and get an education. Your fired. But, if you really want to come back to work here after you graduate, you can have your job back. Now, get the hell out of my office and go back to school."

A week later, I was standing in the registration line at IU's main campus in Bloomington, taking advantage of the GI Bill's education benefits, just like John Anderson had done 21 years earlier.

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VICTORY IN A VIRTUAL VACUUM

On Sunday, the United States's men's national soccer team logged a major victory, but you apparently would hardly know it if you relied on the front pages of the overwhelming majority of the nation's newspapers.

Team USA, playing at Soldier's Field in Chicago, defeated Panama 1-0 in a hard fought match to win the CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) Gold Cup tournament. Even though the event essentially was the Super Bowl of Northwestern Hemisphere soccer, a sampling I did of more than 100 Monday front pages of newspapers from around the United States found that only seven contained any mention -- whether a refer or full story -- of the victory, which would have been a point of great national pride for any of the other countries that made it into the competition.

The sampling I used was from among the hundreds of U.S. newspapers who's front pages are posted daily on www.newseum.org, the website of the Newseum in Washington, D.C. I selected the front pages of at least two newspapers in each state, including each state's largest newspaper. In addition, I looked at all of the front pages submitted by papers in Texas, the home state of Brek Shea, the U.S. player who scored the winning goal less than a minute after coming in as a sub in the 68th minute of the match.

The seven newspapers that did mention the U.S. national team's victory on their front pages did so only in refers of varying size. None carried a full story about the game on page one. Of the seven papers, four were in Texas, including The Monitor in McAllen, where I was editor for nearly 12 years until my retirement at the end of April.  The three non-Texas papers were The Santa Fe New Mexican, which serves a community with a substantial Latino population; the Salt Lake City Tribune; and the Chicago Tribune, which serves the city where the championship game was played to a sell-out crowd.

The win was significant on at least two fronts. First, it established a winning-streak record for the U.S. men's national soccer team. Second, combined with the winning streak, it will likely, for the first time in history, move the U.S. into a Top 20 spot in the world soccer rankings that come out in August, surpassing arch rival Mexico.

Interestingly, the U.S. victory got greater play in Mexico, despite the fact that Mexico's national team lost to Panama in the semifinals, altering a much-anticipated matchup with the US in the deciding game. Nearly every Mexican newspaper front page I looked at -- with the notable exception of Reforma in Mexico City -- carried at least a refer to the full story about the U.S. victory on the sports pages. Every one of Panama's newspapers submitting front pages to newseum.org had either a refer or a full story of their national team's defeat on page one.

Did any of this surprise me? Frankly, no. Despite the fact that futbol is the most popular spectator sport across most of the world, I've met very few U.S. sports editors who have much of an appreciation for soccer. What I typically have been told by sports editors is that they are not inclined to devote a lot of coverage to soccer because it's just "never really caught on" in the United States. That is probably true, even though it has undeniably risen significantly in popularity over past 30 years. And while I don't ever expect it to catch up with baseball, football and basketball in popularity in the United States, I think part of the reason it has not grown more popular than it is now may be due, at least in part, to the fact that a substantial number of print and electronic media sports editors seem to go out of their way to ignore it.

But can they afford to continue to do so? My two-cents worth says no and as support for that opinion, I will again cite the fact that a greater percentage of Mexican newspapers saw fit to give the U.S. CONCACAF Gold Cup victory more prominent play than it got on the front pages of the victor nation's papers. Why? Because among Latino readers, soccer is not only popular, but important -- a fact that papers in the United States need to think about as they struggle to maintain old and attract new readers.

It's certainly no secret that across the United States the fastest growing segment of population is people of Hispanic heritage. Newspaper executives are aware of this and for years have been fretting over what they can do to attract more readers from among their communities' growing Hispanic populations. Seems to me that one answer is to provide -- and well play -- more information that interests potential Latino readers whether it's news of significant, long-term importance, like the raging debate over U.S. immigration policy, or news about something so fleeting as the sport of futbol.

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ROYAL BABY COVERAGE: HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH? HOW LITTLE IS NOT ENOUGH?

It's a pretty safe bet that newspaper, television and radio newsrooms across the nation -- and probably around the world -- are already getting calls today from readers, viewers and listeners carping about the amount of coverage being given to the birth of Great Britain's new royal baby.

Let's face it, there really are millions and millions of people around the world who truly and honestly don't care about the event, or have only a passing interest in the basic fact that it has, at last, happened.

However, there are just as many, if not more, millions who are breathlessly fascinated by it all and are anxiously awaiting the next tidbit of news regarding William and Kate's new male offspring and heir to the throne. Although you might refer to these people as "heirheads," that does not, necessarily make them airheads.

All of this raises the age old question for editors and news directors: "How much is way too much and how little is not nearly enough?"

I'm sure that if there had been newspapers in ancient Greece, editors would have been wrestling with questions regarding at what point readers would have had just about enough coverage of Agamemnon, Odysseus and that whole Trojan Horse thing.

Like it or not, the birth of a new potential heir to the British throne, is a big news story. However, every big news story has a life cycle. The real trick for newspaper editors and electronic media news directors is being able to sense when that life cycle is drawing to a close and further intense coverage runs the risk of turning off the vast majority of readers, viewers or listeners and transforming every Joe and Jane Sixpack into a media critic. Call it, if you will, reaching saturation point; and deciding when it has been reached requires the exercise of news judgment. The problem is that no two news executives have exactly the same news judgment and, frankly, I sometimes wonder if some have any news judgment at all.

However, I believe that when it comes to stories like the royal birth, newspaper editors in general (and this does not include the editors of grocery store tabloids) and local electronic-media news directors have a better sense than network news executives -- particularly those at "all news" networks like CNN, Fox and CNBC -- of when enough is enough and how much is too much for their readers or audience.

For instance, while this morning's TV talk shows were essentially wall-to-wall royal baby talk, my local paper -- The Monitor, in McAllen, Texas, of which I was the editor for nearly 12 years before my retirement at the end of April -- carried a single story about the birth stripped across the top of the front page. That Associated Press story, headlined "Fans go gaga over royal baby," coupled with a jump-page timeline sidebar headlined "Key moments for William and Kate," pretty much gave average readers all they might have wanted to know about the new, as yet unnamed, British prince. Of course, that may not have been enough for the avid heirheads in Monitor's Texas-Mexico-border circulation area, but, if it wasn't, they can easily tune in to any of the TV networks or go one of the social media websites for more incessant royal baby chatter.

If you are by this point thinking that I put little stock in the news value of the royal birth, you're wrong. Although I did make some jokes about it yesterday on Facebook and Twitter, I appreciate it as big news both as a newsman and a history buff. However, my personal interest in it will peak once they announce the name chosen for the kid. I could be wrong, but I think most non-heirheads feel about the same. The question is, how much more beyond that will the public be subjected to by the networks?

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As always, your thoughts and comments are more than welcome and will be most appreciated.


OOPS! OUR SLIP IS SHOWING.

A friend of mine -- Elliott Potter, publisher and executive editor of the Jacksonville (N.C.) Daily News -- had a Facebook post this morning that made me smile. Here it is:

"People are pretty tough on the newspaper business, and I like being held to higher standards. But there are plenty of mistakes made in other enterprises, as well. FOR EXAMPLE: The AC in my personal office at the JDN has been out for a week while the company that was contracted for the $700-plus repair waited for "parts" to come in. Well, the parts arrived -- just in time for the hottest week of the summer -- only they are the wrong voltage. So... another week of waiting."

I have to say that in the a little over two months since my retirement, one of the things I have missed least about being the editor of a newspaper is the almost daily complaints by someone who managed to find a spelling or grammar error -- or, frequently, what they thought was a spelling or grammar error, but, in fact, wasn't -- in the paper.

Over the years, I found that the complaints came in about equal numbers from callers, most of whom would refuse to give their name and some of whom could be amazingly nasty and insulting, and from letters that would usually arrive unsigned in a plain white envelope with no return address that also contained a clipping with rabid little scrawls all over it. Also, when I would make an appearance in public at perhaps a Lions, Kiwanis or Rotary club meeting, someone would invariably bring up a question about spelling and grammar errors in the paper.

Let me make it perfectly clear that my point of reference here is not just The Monitor in McAllen, Texas, my last paper, where I was editor for almost 12 years before my retirement on April 30. In my nearly 44 year career, I was a senior editor of some sort at six different newspapers -- The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss.; The Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram; The Cincinnati Post; The State Journal-Register, in Springfield, Ill.; The Morning News in Florence, S.C.; and The Monitor. The number and frequency of spelling and grammar complaints received was about equal across the board.

Granted, the vast majority of complaints were valid and we had screwed up because someone, or even several someones, had suffered a brain burp or because a reporter's fingers on the keyboard had overridden his or her brain. Unfortunately, it happens, but not just to newspaper people. It happens to almost anyone who spends much time writing anything whether it's news stories, manuscripts, work memos or even letters to family and friends. That point, however, seems to get lost on the most self-righteous of grammar and spelling complainers who call or write to their local newspaper.

Now, you may think I am being an apologist for newspaper spelling and grammar errors. I am not. I used to (and still do) hate seeing them. I find them to be embarrassing almost beyond belief and feel that readers have the right to expect that their newspaper will not only get its facts straight, but will also present them in a written form that is free of stupid spelling and grammar mistakes.

But, I am also a realist and realize that when you process as many words per day as appear in the average newspaper and do so in the amount of time a newspaper has to process them, mistakes will happen. It is almost an unfortunate inevitability regardless of the newspaper or its circulation size and despite our best efforts avoid mistakes. Over the years, I have found that even the nation's largest papers -- including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and USA Today -- publish their share of grammar and spelling errors.

Unfortunately, I think the problem has grown at least marginally worse in recent years as hard-pressed newspapers across the country have cut staff, particularly among desk editors -- like metro or city desk editors -- who give the first read to copy produced by reporters and among copy editors who do the final reads before committing copy to print. Today's newspapers have far fewer sets of eyes going over copy before the presses start and each set of eyes left must deal with a greater volume of words in a fixed time frame in the newspaper's daily race with the clock. The result is that far less editing time is spent with each story today than was spent 10, 20, 30 or more years ago, increasing the chances for spelling and grammar errors to slip through.

Of course, one of the problems that newspapers face is that our readers don't really have a good understanding of what it takes to produce "the daily miracle." That's due, certainly in part, to the fact that we don't do a particularly good job of explaining to our readers what we do and how we do it day in and day out, a problem exacerbated by editors who either react badly to complaints or listen politely, apologize, shake their heads, hang up and move on to the next problem rather than trying to explain the process in a way that will at least enlighten the complaining caller.

After years of listening to, being embarrassed by and internalizing spelling- and grammar-error calls, I finally developed an explanation that seems to have worked with all but that nastiest of complainers who were dead set on not listening. I used this explanation with both individual callers and when I spoke to groups and was called upon to answer the inevitable questions about grammar and spelling mistakes.

The average daily newspaper contains about the same number of words as the average 250- to 300-page paperback novel and a Sunday paper has about the same number of words as "War and Peace" -- possibly the longest and certainly the most boring novel ever written.  However, where the average paperback novel typically goes through an about six-month editing process, the daily newspaper typically goes through an about six-hour editing process. That's why we have come to refer to it as "the daily miracle," and part of that miracle is that while we do occasionally have grammar and spelling errors, it's a wonder that we don't have more.

Of course, there are always those who come back with the retort: "Well, don't you have proofreaders?" The answer to that being "no." The proofreader job pretty much disappeared from most newspapers with the death of hot type and the advent of computers. Perhaps, in retrospect, that was a mistake, but most newspapers paid for their computers, at least in part, with the money saved by doing away with proofreaders.

That explanation, I found, was often countered with: "Well, don't you have spellcheck?" The answer to that, of course, is "yes." We have spellcheck, but, unfortunately, we often become innocent and/or senseless victims of that bit of software since spellcheck doesn't always know what word we MEANT to use. There is little protection for errors in usage of words like bear, bare; where, wear; here, hear; there, their, they're; its, it's; deer, dear; kernel, colonel, etc.

One of the worst spellcheck victimizations I witnessed at a paper where I was editor occurred at The Morning News in Florence, S.C., when a reporter wrote a story that included a reference to a doctor who he meant to describe as "a prominent local allergist." The reporter's fingers apparently got tangled up, but the mistake was caught by spellcheck and changed. The reporter, however, failed to double check the spelling change before accepting it. So, when the story was published, the doctor wound up being described as "a prominent local ATHEIST." Needless to say, the physician, a deacon in his church, was quite upset with that designation.

I have also found that Microsoft Word's spellchecker hasn't a clue when to use "who" instead of "that" and often doesn't realize when you have left out a word.

While this explanation seemed to satisfy and give an understanding to most of those who would listen, it sometimes was not enough for the most self-righteous of complainers, who I often found to be current or former English teachers. For them, particularly the nastiest and most insulting, I would make a somewhat extraordinary offer -- come to the paper and spend a evening on the copy desk and experience, firsthand, what's it's like to work under the daily deadline pressure copy editors face. As part of that, I offered the same rate of hourly pay that I paid a copy editor for the level of experience the complainers had at their jobs, but they had to handle the same volume of copy as every other copy editor, including writing a cogent, interesting headline, and had to meet the same deadlines our regular copy editors faced. Although most people opted not to take me up on the offer, a few did. None of them, however, made it through one entire shift before tossing in the towel and admitting that didn't have a clue how copy editors could handle the pressure and time constraints.

One English teacher in Springfield, Ill., who took me up on the offer lasted a little over two hours before coming to my office to apologize for her "nastiness and lack of understand" and admitted that she didn't know how copy editors kept their sanity. (She, of course, was suffering under the misimpression that copy editors are sane to begin with.) Before she left the building, she stopped by my office again and assured me that "the next time I hear someone complain about mistakes in the paper, I'm going to just punch them right in the nose."

Seems to me that sometimes if you make a little extra effort to engage people and proactively explain what it takes to put out the daily newspaper you run the risk of turning a bitter complainer into an active ally.

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(BTW: I apologize from my too long blog hiatus. I'll try to keep it from happening again)

 

If you enjoy reading this blog, please share it and the link with your friends and colleagues. Thank you.

As always, your thoughts and comments are more than welcome.

 

AN INSPIRATIONAL FAREWELL

It's no secret that newspapers in the United States have been in severe turmoil for much of the past decade in the face of rising costs, falling circulation and declining advertising revenues. The most painful result has been the shrinkage of personnel in every department of just about every paper in the country as the industry thrashes about in search of new ways to remain vital, relevant, meaningful and profitable.

Some of the worst losses have been in the nation's newsrooms, where staffing, in some cases, as been cut as much as 50 percent, throwing some very fine editors and reporters out of work and into a market glutted with newspaper job seekers.

I was very dismayed to learn today that among those leaving the business -- hopefully just temporarily -- is Chuck Raasch, one of the finest, senior national reporters for Gannett's flagship newspaper, USA Today. I don't know Chuck personally, but, the newspaper business being the fraternity that it is, we share some mutual friends including Lee Ann Hamilton, a former USA Today staffer who is now business editor at Gannett's Cincinnati Enquirer and to whom I gave one of her first reporting jobs and her very first editing job when I was city editor at the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., before it was bought by Gannett; and Johanna Neuman, a former USAT White House correspondent, who I sent to the Clarion-Ledger's one-person Washington Bureau.

Although I've never met Chuck, I am very familiar with his work, having followed and admired it in USA Today regularly for many years. I have found that I often favor his coverage of national events over coverage of the same stories in other papers, such the New York Times and the Washington Post, because he has a way of bringing to his work a human touch that I can relate to. It may be a skill he brings to his reporting because he's never forgotten that he grew up as a South Dakota farm boy and understands his task is not really fulfilled unless people like those he grew up with understand the news he is trying to convey.

I learned of his departure from USA Today from a Facebook "share" posted by Lee Ann Hamilton. The share was Chuck's farewell message posted last night (Thursday, May 2, 2013) on his Facebook page.

While many who have had to depart the newspaper business have done so with understandable bitterness, that is nowhere evident in what Chuck has written. Instead, he has provided a farewell message that I find philosophical, moving and inspirational. But, then, considering the body of his work I'm familiar with this is not surprising. Having just retired on Tuesday after a 43 year and four month -- 15,815 day -- career in newspapers, I was considerably moved by Chuck's message and think it is well worth sharing with those who've not seen it, particularly those who have faced or may eventually face his same situation.

So here, in its entirety and with his permission is Chuck Raasch's farewell message:

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven" - Ecclesiastes 3:1
So, this is that time.
I've decided to join three dozen or so other senior colleagues at USA TODAY who have had a great run and have been given a generous gift: A year to figure out what we want to be when we grow up.
After 45 gut-wrenching days, in which the decision to stay or leave a job that I was born for never got far beyond 50-50, the objective reporter in me won over the journalist's heart.
It's time for a new assignment.
I am not done writing. That I know. And I am not near retiring, not on a day when my 79-year-old dad is planting seed corn in South Dakota soil. Retirement is not possible.
I thank USA TODAY and Gannett. In an age when it's the easiest thing to be cynical about our institutions and corporations, I have been blessed to experience what any South Dakota farm boy could have dreamed. I've been allowed to do something I love while staying true to who I am. Bylines from four continents and 49 states (and I WILL write from Hawaii, bank on it). Great bosses and colleagues, men and women, who believed, like me, that journalism was a calling as strong as the law or the cloth or medicine. The youngest cover story writer on the original USA TODAY. Senior writer at some of the nation's biggest moments, from elections to 9/11 to just now, Boston.
I've interviewed presidential candidates and great Americans who lived in one-room cabins in the Great Smokey Mountains (and generally enjoyed the latter types more).
And here is all I know for sure after all these years:
First , America is so much more than the sum total of its coasts, and the news organizations that remain relevant will be the ones that follow USA TODAY'S original legacy in recognizing that.
Second, as we click away for the latest incremental developments on Justin Bieber's pet monkey, exciting aggregationists and content monetizers everywhere, it is still true and will always be true that journalism is context, substance, meaning, analysis, understanding. And yes, news that the people might not want to hear.
Thanks for the indulgence, and see you down the road.

Hopefully, Chuck will quickly find a new situation at a newspaper that will appreciate him and where he finds the work meaningful and satisfying and from which can eventually retire in his own good time.

The newspaper business can't afford to lose thoughtful, skillful and dedicated people like Chuck and hope to continue being vital, relevant and meaningful.

So, here's to you. Chuck, with all of hope that I can muster that you land on your feet quickly so that I and tens of thousands of other readers can continue to follow your fine work as one of the nation's best reporters.

                                                         -30-

EVER THINK ABOUT BEING A CITY EDITOR...UHHH, NO

With the release Monday of careercast.com's latest best/worst jobs in America survey, which designated "newspaper reporter" as the No. 1 worst job, I started reflecting back over my more than 43 years in newspapers.

When I came into the business full time after getting out of journalism school at Indiana University and joined the staff of The Louisville Courier-Journal & Times as a reporter in the Indiana Bureau, it was my dream job -- newspaper reporter. I had no desire or plan to be anything in the business but a reporter, having arrived at that decision while in the Navy.

Although I served in a variety of editor capacities for the last 36 year of my newspaper career, I didn't set out to be an editor. It was a role I had thrust upon me quite unexpectedly one morning about four months after I joined the staff of The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., as investigative reporting team leader, a position I accepted after seven years as a reporter at Louisville, the last two of which were spent as a member of The Times investigative reporting team.

I started my new position on Jan. 1, 1977, leading an investigative team that included two other very good, young reporters, Rick Tulsky and David Phelps. Although I lost track of Phelps after he left to go to The Minneapolis Tribune, I am still in touch with Tulsky who went on to be part of Pulitzer Prize winning efforts at The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Los Angeles Times and now is director of the Medill Watchdog investigative reporting program at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, one of America's finest journalism schools.

I'd been at The Clarion-Ledger just over four months when I walked into the office one Monday morning in April and found Managing Editor Don Ferrell, a former journalism professor at University of Missouri, pacing back and forth in front of his office just waiting for me to arrive. I had no sooner dumped the couple of file folders and note books I was carrying on my desk when Ferrell said, "Come into my office, I need to talk to you right now."

My immediate thought was "Oh, shit." I'd learned long before that when the managing editor demanded that you come to his office "right now" it usually meant you were going to get a chunk of you butt gnawed off.

Ferrell ushered me into his office, asked me to have a seat and then plopped down on the corner of his desk. Don was a big desk-corner sitter, something I think you learn to do as a college professor to keep from having to stand during an entire lecture.

"What's up," I inquired.

"Have you ever thought about being a city editor," Ferrell asked. It was a question I didn't even have to mull over for a nanosecond.

"No, why," I instantly replied.

"Well, because," Ferrell said, glancing at his watch, "in 10 minutes I'd like to go out in the newsroom and announce that you are now city editor." He went on to take a couple of minutes to explain that our city editor, who had always impressed me as a bit to jittery for the high pressure spot, had had some sort of breakdown over the weekend and wouldn't be coming back.

"What if I don't want to be city editor," I replied, with heavy emphasis on the "don't."

"Then," Farrell said, again glancing at his watch, "I am going to go out into the newsroom in eight minutes and announce that you've resigned."

Needless to say, I was stunned, but I knew Ferrell was serious. He was not a man given to running bluffs and was just brash enough to do exactly what he said. Considering the circumstance and the fact that I had gotten remarried just a few weeks before dragging my wife, Gail, away from her familiar home in New Albany, Ind., and brought her to Jackson, Miss., and figured that the last thing she would want to hear was that I was suddenly unemployed, I gave the only reasonable response.

"OK, I guess you've got yourself a new city editor," I said, stepping off the abyss into a newspaper role I'd never even considered and was not sure I had a clue how to do. Sure, I'd been city editor and even managing editor of my college paper, the Indiana Daily Student at Indiana University, but that was fun and this was serious.

Ferrell opened his office door and peered out into the newsroom, which by that time had much filled up.

"Let's go make the announcement," he said.

I stood up, feeling almost as though my knees were going to buckle, and followed him into the newsroom for the surprise announcement which stunned the staff almost as much as it did me.

Immediately following the announcement, I gathered by stuff from my old desk by the window and moved into the city editor's desk just outside Ferrell's office door. I sat down for the first time in the city editor's chair, looked out over the newsroom and said to myself, "What the hell do I do now."

At the time, I didn't realize how fortunate I had been to serve at The Louisville Times under City Editor Bob Crumpler, a man that many of the reporters who worked for him -- many of whom went on to make big names for themselves at papers like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times -- would readily agree may have been one of best city editors ever. He had a keen mind, a brilliant news sense and an almost impish sense of humor. He sort of reminded me of an overgrown, salt-and-pepper haired Irish leprechaun. But he also coud be gruff and tougher than a $2 steak and knew, better than almost anyone I've ever seen, how to deal with reporter attitude. Above all, he was fair in his dealings with everyone who worked for him, even those with whom he had to occasionally butt heads.

I know, because as a reporter, I had been one of those head butters, or, maybe I should say, buttheads.

I got the full taste of Crumpler's toughness several month after moving from the Courier-Journal & Times Indiana Bureau in New Albany onto The Times city staff in Louisville and being given a split-days work schedule with Tuesdays and Thursdays off. The Times, which died a few years ago, was the afternoon edition of the Louisville papers.

After the move to the main office, I hurled myself into the work covering or coming up with lots of good stories that frequently made Page 1 and earned me accolades that left me feeling puffed up and very darned self important. In other words, I started developing an attitude, which led me to believe that I had gotten too damned good to have to work a crappy split-days-off schedule.

I decided one Friday morning that it was time for me to have it out with Crumpler and demand that my split-days-off situation be changed. I went up to his desk in the newsroom and said, "Mr. Crumpler, I'd like to talk to you."

He looked up at me, over the reading glasses he always wore low on his nose when he was editing copy, but dangled from a cord around his neck when he wasn't. "OK, come see me in my office after lunch," he said, then looked back down at the copy he was editing and quite obviously took to ignoring me.

As soon as I saw him return from lunch and head into his office, I got up from my desk, walked over, knocked on the office door and stepped in to confront him.

"What's on you mind, Fagan," he asked.

I stammered around a bit as I slowly built up my courage as I recounted all of the "wonderful" work I'd been doing since coming over to the city staff. He nodded politely and agreed that I'd been doing a good job, then asked, "Is there a point to this?"

"Yeah, Mr. Crumpler, there is," I said. "I want you change my split-days-off situation, or..."

"Or what," he countered.

"Or I am going have to look into going somewhere else," I said.

He pondered for a second and then said, "Tell you what, let me think about this over the weekend and come see me Monday after lunch."

I left his office reasonably sure that I had won. Monday came and I had my eyes glued on the clock. Deadline passed and Crumpler left for lunch while I sat at my desk anxious for him to return. As soon as he did, I ambushed him in his office.

As I sat down, he pulled out a yellow legal pad, glanced at it, then spoke.

"Fagan, I've given your request a lot of thought and have decided to go ahead and change your split-days-off situation."

I smiled to myself, quite satisfied that my bluff had worked. Before I could thank him, though, he spoke again.

"Beginning next Monday, you'll be off on Mondays and Wednesday's," he said, as my jaw dropped. He then reached into his bottom desk drawer and pulled out a large stack of file folders, held them up and said, "As far as you going somewhere else, I just want you to know that all these people want your job."

He then dismissed me and I exited his office nervous and a more than just a bit scared I might end up without a job. Essentially, I had my ego and attitude deflated in one quick stroke by a master. I sat back down at my desk and decided I'd better just do the job and keep my mouth shut, which has never been an easy task for me.

About two months later, I was busily working on a deadline story when Crumpler came up to my desk and said, in his sternest voice, "Fagan, when your done with that I want to see you in my office."

"Oh, shit," I thought to myself as I hurriedly finished the story, pulled the final take out of my typwriter, dropped it off in the city desk copy box and headed for Crumpler's office.

"You wanted to see me Mr. Crumpler," I said nervously as he summoned in and indicated that he wanted me to shut the door.

"I've been very pleased at the way you reacted to your new days-off situation," he said. "But, I've decided to make another change. Beginning new week, you'll be off on Sunday and Monday."

Thrilled to get consecutive days off, the only words I could find was a simple, "Thank  you , Mr. Crumpler." I got and turned to walk out the door when Crumpler spoke up again.

"Oh, and, Steve," he said, calling my by my first time for the first time since I'd move onto city staff, "why don't you just call me Bob from now on."

With that, I knew that I had earned something wonderfully intangible -- his respect. I can't think of any point before or since in my newspaper career that I'd felt any more pride than that.

So, as I sat there in the city editor's chair at The Clarion-Ledger for the very first time wondering what the hell to do, I thought to myself, "Maybe you just need to play it the way you think Crumpler would."

I picked up the phone to call my wife to tell her that I'd just been appointed city editor. The next call I made was to Crumpler.

                                                                    -30-