Nearly all my life I was a country newspaper editor.
No exaggeration. Forty-nine years ago I started work as editor of the Bolivar Herald-Free Press. Three years later I came to the Buffalo Reflex and in 2015 retired, though continuing as a freelance columnist.
That doesn’t quite add up to a lifetime; but, it is a while.
When I started in this business I had no idea where it would lead me; I sure didn’t expect to still be here doing the same thing nigh five decades later.
At the time my focus wasn’t too far down the road. It was on getting that week’s paper out, one week at a time.
If ever I had a long-term goal it was to become a book author and quit the weekly newspaper grind. I did get two books in print, the first in 1994, and the second in 2020, but neither made me enough money to quit the newspaper.
I might have tried harder to go the book route, but watching some of my successful novelist friends struggle from royalty check to royalty check did little to inspire me. I couldn’t give up a loyal newspaper readership and a regular paycheck.
Then, there was that thing about being a country newspaper editor. I just kind of liked the job, and sort of got used to it.
In later years I came to understand it was God who kept me behind the news desk, not my own doing.
If you had told me when I was 16 years old that I’d spend much of my life behind a desk, I’d have bet every cent I had against it. I was practically raised out-of-doors. Even school gave me a headache.
But, life seldom goes the way a kid figures it will. Sixty years after high school, I’m still trying to figure out what I really want to do with my life, and it’s just now settling in that I’ve already done it.
I’ve been a country newspaper editor.
Now, I know a lot of editors who work on country newspapers. But, that doesn’t necessarily make them country newspaper editors. Some of us were “country” long before we were editors, and still are.
It’s an inescapable part of my character – maybe even a flaw – that I learned how to milk a cow long before I learned to do the same with a news story.
Borrowing from Jeff Foxworthy’s real “redneck” formula, I’ve come up with a few real experiences to test editors who aren’t sure if they are truly “country.”
Here goes: You know you’re a country newspaper editor when…
• You take a personal telephone call and it turns out to be your parents’ next door neighbor with a classified ad.
• The mayor needs to talk to you right away, and it turns out to be a party for the police chief.
• A new teacher asks you to send one of your photographers down Wednesday to get a picture of the champion speech team. You tell her you’ll be there just as soon as you get the papers delivered.
• The county line grocery mistakenly got a bundle of last week’s papers. Can the delivery boy bring some new ones out? You grab a bundle and head out the door.
• A little post office near the Lake of the Ozarks didn’t get any newspapers. Same solution.
• Two teenage boys show up at your doorstep near midnight. “Want to see a big fish? We saw your light was on and thought you might want a picture for the newspaper.” You load your camera while they drag a monster catfish out of their truck.
• The only press pass you need at local ball games is a camera.
• You get more opportunities to free potluck suppers than a preacher to fried chicken dinners.
• You sometimes wear barn boots to the office.
• Your “official press car” is a pickup truck, which sometimes sits outside the office with a load of hay or cordwood.
• You seldom wear a tie to work, because you hate to explain “no one died” to everyone you see at the post office.
• Harvest season means more tomatoes, cucumbers and green beans than the help can carry home.
• Your readers never confuse you with “the media.” or apologize if they do.
• You are not “the media.” You’re their newspaper editor, and no matter who signs your paycheck, you know who butters your bread.
A former feature writer for Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, Jim Hamilton is a retired newspaper editor/publisher. Hamilton was reared on a small dairy farm in Dallas County, Mo. Contact Jim at [email protected].
