I sometimes get asked what made me decide to be a journalist, or reporter as I prefer to be called. Journalist always sounded kind of uppity to me. Like I should start smoking a pipe and mumble a lot. I majored in "journalism" and I put "journalist" on my tax form every year, but I've always thought of myself as a reporter. Even after my promotion to managing editor, I still refer to myself as a reporter. I really can't imagine doing anything else. Well, maybe international super spy but that would involve wearing a tuxedo and playing Baccarat when I'm more of a bluejeans and "Go Fish" kind of guy. Plus if I'm driving an Aston Martin I would probably be expected to know how to parallel park.
I've always enjoyed writing. Going back to elementary school when my contribution to show and tell one day was a short story I had written about Christopher Columbus. I can't remember all the details but I know it turned out the world was flat, Columbus and crew sailed off the edge, battled some space pirates and discovered the moon was indeed made of cheese as long suspected. I thought it was brilliant but I vaguely recall coming in second or third to a guy who brought his grandfather's glass eye. Granted, that was pretty cool. Story of my life.
My initial interest in news reporting was sparked by a rather unusual source. Namely, the old 1970s television show, "The Night Stalker," where Darren McGavin played a world weary, perpetually grumpy crime beat reporter named Carl Kolchak whose investigations into murder and mayhem on the streets of Chicago always ended up having a supernatural source. Every week he would uncover and ultimately defeat vampires and witches and even took out a zombie once by filling its mouth with salt and sewing its lips shut. Let's see those amateurs on "The Walking Dead" try that sometime. As an impressionable 9-year-old, I watched from my hiding place under the covers on the sofa and thought, "I could do that."
Not long after, my sister and I started our own newspaper, covering all the exciting happenings on our street. It was a semiweekly one-sheeter because we lived on a very short street. I don't know if our cutting-edge reports about who got a new puppy or whose flower bed may or may not have been crushed by a skateboard were exactly Pulitzer material, but since we only charged 10 cents an issue the neighbors (our only subscribers) never complained.
My fascination with journalism grew in junior high school when one of my favorite English teachers, in handing out book report assignments, suggested I do mine on "All the President's Men," the true account of the Watergate scandal by the reporters who exposed it, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. I remembered Watergate from my childhood, mostly because the coverage of the hearings pre-empted my Saturday morning cartoons. I remember being perplexed and more than a little irritated at all the attention being paid to what I believed to be plumbing problems at the White House. Needless to say, reading the book was a revelation not only in discovering there was more to it than clogged pipes but the idea that two reporters could effectively bring down the president of the United States with the power of the written word. The book read like a spy novel and I was hooked.
I did my time in the trenches of my junior high's paper where we exposed our own earth-shattering scandals, like when M.S. was seen holding hands with J.R. at lunch, or when B.K. asked A.G. to the Sadie Hawkins dance. (We always used initials to avoid costly lawsuits). I would go on to work on that bastion of journalism, the high school yearbook. It's a lot of responsibility knowing that your work will live on forever. I know I still have my copy, shoved on a shelf somewhere. I think. Probably. This was followed in due course by my time spent working at The Oracle newspaper at Henderson State University where I learned about deadlines. Still not a fan. An internship at the Texarkana Gazette cemented the deal for me because while I spent much of the time writing obituaries, I did get to venture out occasionally for some real news: Election coverage in New Boston, Texas, a political battle between the pro-mayor and pro-city manager groups in my hometown of Hope and even a grisly death by trash compactor.
In the last year or so, we've had several new recruits come on board at the paper, many just out of college like I was, and in watching their reactions to the many bizarre situations they find themselves covering, whether it's helicopter crashes or manhunts or buffalo hunts, I find their enthusiasm and excitement to be contagious. It reminds me again why I got in this business to begin with and why I'll probably stick around awhile. I don't know if my journalistic legacy will be anything like that of Woodward or Bernstein, but I like to think Kolchak would approve. After all, Hot Springs has been vampire and zombie free since I got here.
Editorial on 04/26/2015