Tag Archives: Beaumont Enterprise

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Feeling happy … and sad

A longtime colleague and friend has called it a career in print journalism and to be brutally honest, his announcement fills me with happiness for what awaits him but sadness over a revelation contained in his announcement.

Tom Taschinger served as editorial page editor of the Beaumont Enterprise from February 1995 until just the other day. That’s nearly 28 years in the saddle; his career spanned 40 years all told. Taschinger and I didn’t work together in Beaumont; he succeeded me after I departed the Gulf Coast in January 1995 for the Texas Panhandle. We knew each other well, though, as he served as editorial editor of the neighboring Port Arthur News during my time in Beaumont.

I wish him all the very best as he enters an exciting new phase of his life.

But he declared that he would be the “last full-time editorial page editor” of the Beaumont Enterprise. Thus, I feel a tinge of sadness.

You see, when I arrived in Beaumont in the spring of 1984, the then-executive editor, the late Ben Hansen, informed me that I would be sitting “in the catbird seat” writing editorials in a “great news town.” He was so right. Those were the days when communities, such as those served by the newspaper, depended on the opinion pages for leadership, for a touch of guidance … if only to remind readers that they should take the “opposite approach” to whatever solutions the paper sought to offer.

We offered those opinions. We sought to guide the community. We sought to provide a forum for debate and discussion. Now, to hear that my old buddy is leaving a post that will be filled with part-time help leaves me with a sense that he and I are part of a sub-species of journalist that has entered the “endangered” list of professions.

I left Beaumont for Amarillo and worked at my craft for nearly 18 more years. The newspaper where I served as opinion editor until August 2012 no longer publishes a daily opinion page. It has no opinion editor. I don’t even know who writes editorials for that once-vibrant newspaper.

I know it’s a sign of a changing media era. The Internet has consumed much of what Tom Taschinger and I used to pursue with great joy.

I am left, therefore, to shrug and wish my old pal safe travels as he continues his journey toward parts unknown.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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Recalling an astonishing first meeting

(By Michael Schumacher)

Readers of High Plains Blogger might recall a statement made on it that I am writing a memoir for members of my family.

The memoir is about two-thirds finished. It contains personal reminiscences of people I met during my career as a print journalist and recalls the more fascinating sights I saw and experiences that came my way.

I want to reveal one of the people I cite in this memoir. I won’t spill all the beans, but I do want to share one element of this individual’s character that I found most appealing.

***

The late Teel Bivins served as a Republican state senator from the Texas Panhandle from 1989 until 2004. I arrived at the Amarillo Globe-News in January 1995 to stand post as editorial page editor of the daily newspapers we published in Amarillo.

I knew a little bit about Bivins when I arrived, given that I had spent nearly 11 years at the Beaumont Enterprise. I had been watching the Legislature during my decade on the Gulf Coast.

My phone rang a few days after I arrived in Amarillo. It was Bivins’ office in downtown Amarillo. He wanted to meet with me. Good deal, I said. I’ll be right over.

I walked into Bivins’ office. Then he welcomed me to his desk. We shook hands, I sat down, exchanged a bit of small talk about this and that politician we both knew. He asked me about my family. I told him of my marital bliss and the pride we share in our sons who at the time were just completing their college studies.

Then it came.

Bivins at that point proceeded to tell me a tale of woe and a bit of horror at the condition of his wife. She suffered from alcohol and drug abuse, he said. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know whether he could stay married to her. Bivins said he was at the end of his tolerance with her. “I don’t think I can keep this up,” he said.

I mention this because in that moment, a politician I had known for, oh, about 30 minutes took the time to expose a part of his life that obviously caused him great pain.

I shall admit that in that moment, I didn’t realize what became clear to me a few days later. A legislative aide to Bivins informed that the reason Bivins wanted to tell that story about his wife was that he wanted to get ahead of a story I likely would hear … from someone else.

Do you get it? The man wanted to tell me his version of events before I heard someone else’s version.

It truly was an astonishing thing to reveal to a total stranger, let alone to someone — such as me — who was in a position to offer commentary on politicians’ personal lives.

I have retained a vivid memory of that first meeting with a prominent Texas politician. I do so on purpose, as it reminds me that politicians — of all people — indeed, can achieve a form of nobility.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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Time of My Life, Part 62: Community knowledge

A primary election is about to occur in Texas and newspapers around the state have concluded interviewing candidates for federal, state and local political offices.

I can recall a time when I did that, too. It was a full-immersion learning experience for me.

We would summon candidates into our editorial board rooms and grill them on issues pertinent to the offices they sought. We would pepper them with questions about their political history, on statements they made out loud and in public. We would inquire about their previous public service experience. We also would ask how that experience came to bear on the office they sought.

Through it all, though, I managed always — without fail! — to learn a little more about the community I served as editor of opinion pages, whether it was in Beaumont at the Enterprise or up yonder in the Texas Panhandle when I worked at the Amarillo Globe-News. Indeed, my learning experience began earlier than that, at the Oregon City Enterprise-Courier, where my journalism career got its start.

Through it all, I always learned something about the community where I worked and which I sought to serve as editor of the newspaper’s opinion pages. Back then, people would turn to the editorial page for a little bit of guidance, for some advice from the newspaper on how to handle pressing community issues. Or they would turn to our pages just to find one more reason to disagree with whatever opinion we sought to foist on our readers.

It was a learning experience to be sure, one that I always anticipated at the front end of the interview process. I always appreciated what I learned at the end of it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

 

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This news hurts … a lot

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We all have people who come into our lives and never really leave us, even if we no longer see them regularly. They are work colleagues, or those with whom we establish a sort of sibling-like relationship.

Ben Hansen filled both roles in my life. I got some heart-shattering news this morning, that Ben had died peacefully during the night.

I am trying to collect my thoughts and reel in my emotions as I bang out this post. Suffice to say, Ben Hansen — who was a physically imposing man — cast a large shadow over my life and over the communities he served as a newspaper editor in four states over many decades.

Our paths crossed the first time in early1977. Hansen was editor of a suburban daily newspaper in Oregon City, Ore. He had a position to fill on his staff; it was a temporary slot as a sportswriter. The sports editor of the newspaper had taken maternity leave, so Ben needed someone to pinch hit while she was away. I got the job, knowing it could end several weeks later.

Well, it didn’t. Another opening came up. Hansen hired me on a permanent basis. He helped launch my career then. He would leave the paper to take another editor’s job in Utah. After that, he gravitated to Beaumont, Texas.

That’s where our relationship took off. He called me one day to ask if I would like to interview for a job as an editorial writer for the Beaumont Enterprise. I flew to Texas for that interview; he hired me again. Ben told me that the Golden Triangle was a hotbed of news. He was so right.

Ben promoted me to editor of the opinion page. We raised a hackle or two on the editorial page of the Enterprise over the years. I was proud to be part of that effort. I reported to Hansen for nearly 11 years in Beaumont before I departed for the Texas Panhandle.

Ben and I stayed in touch, even after he left Beaumont for another editor’s gig in Prescott, Ariz., where he eventually retired.

I learned much about my craft from Ben. He was a stickler for “active-voice” writing. He despised text that contained “passive-voice” narrative; you know, the kind of the thing that would tell you that “mistakes were made.” He insisted that an active voice required you to say that “so-and-so made mistakes.” Even to this day I am keenly aware of that and seek to avoid lapsing into passive voice when I write this blog.

Ben Hansen was a good and decent man who saw himself as a crusader. He was quick with a quip and could knock out a nearly spot-on impersonation of John Wayne with barely a provocation.

I will hold him in my eternal gratitude for taking a chance on a young man seeking to start a career in print journalism. It worked out well for me and I owe much of what I was able to achieve to the patience he showed me decades ago.

I will miss my friend.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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Seen: a live armadillo!

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

MARTIN DIES JR. STATE PARK, Texas — You know the saying about there being “a first time for everything.”

This particular “first time” took many decades to present itself.

My wife and I saw a live armadillo scampering along a park road in this lovely state park deep in the Pineywoods of East Texas.

You see, we moved to Texas in 1984. That was — gulp! — 37 years ago. The armadillos I had ever seen — until we got here — were those that had been, um, reduced to road kill along our many thousands of miles of highways and bi-ways.

I once wrote a column for the Beaumont Enterprise — where I worked for nearly 11 years after arriving in Texas — about my frustration in never seeing a live armadillo. The only such critters I had seen had been of the type I described a few seconds ago.

We moved to Amarillo in 1995 and I was utterly certain we would see them a-plenty along the arid Caprock. Hah! Fat chance! Indeed, I noticed far fewer armadillo carcasses than we had seen along the Gulf Coast.

Over many years we have traveled the length and breadth of this vast state. Live armadillo sighting? Not a chance.

Until we ventured to Martin Dies Jr. SP.

My hope now for the little critter is that he/she stays the heck out of the way of oncoming traffic.

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Time of My Life, Part 54: Technology advances

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My 8-year-old granddaughter might not know what to call this device. You know what it is. I surely do.

I started work at my first full-time reporting job in Oregon City, Ore., in the spring of 1977. Our suburban afternoon daily newspaper still operated with these gadgets.

Indeed, my favorite moment of a day publishing our newspaper occurred around noon when every one of our staff of six reporters was pounding away on their manual typewriters. I was named editor of that little — and now defunct — newspaper a couple of years after arriving there. I used to stand aside while watching the staff work feverishly to get the copy turned in on time.

We finally advanced to desk top devices that allowed us to type our copy onto floppy disks. The newsroom got significantly quieter at deadline time.

I moved in 1984 to a much larger newspaper in Beaumont, Texas, which had a significantly more advanced computer system. I stayed there nearly 11 years while the newspaper improved its publishing system along the way.

In 1995, I gravitated to my final stop in daily print journalism, moving to Amarillo, Texas, which had a publishing system named after the corporate owners: the Morris Publishing System. It was crappy. Morris Communications ditched that system to something much more workable.

My daily print career ended in the summer of 2012.

This is my way of chronicling all the changes I endured during nearly four decades in journalism. Typewriters to floppy disks to main frame computers to PCs. Now they’re taking pictures with smart phones in the field; they’re using Twitter, Instagram and assorted other media platforms to transmit the news.

It makes my head spin. Then again, my head spun plenty of times as I made my way through a craft I loved pursuing.

Today, I feel a bit like a dinosaur. I just don’t want to become extinct.

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Happy Trails, Part 190: The journey continues

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Earlier today I realized something that I should’ve known when I crossed that threshold.

It is that I have lived most of life in a place I never dreamed when I was much younger I would find myself in retirement. That is Texas.

I am now 71 years of age. We moved to Beaumont, Texas in the spring of 1984 when I was a mere pup of 34. We gravitated from Beaumont to Amarillo nearly 11 years later. Then we pulled up our deeply rooted stakes on the Caprock and ventured to Collin County with our No. 1 goal to be near our granddaughter.

I mention all of this because when my wife and I got married nearly 50 years ago we never imagined, never even discussed the notion of moving to a place so far away from Oregon, where I was born and where my wife essentially grew up and came of age.

Texas beckoned in late 1983 with a phone call from my former boss, who had relocated to Beaumont to become executive editor of the Beaumont Enterprise. He wanted to know if I would be interested in working there as an editorial writer. My first reaction was to laugh.

One thing led to another in the course of the next day or two and I decided that, yes, I would like to explore that opportunity. I flew to Beaumont from Portland and spent a couple of days visiting with my old friend and mentor.

I returned to Oregon. I told my wife that the job looked appealing. My friend called, offered me the job, I accepted his offer and then relocated. Our sons were still quite young, 11 and 10 years old. My family joined me that summer.

My wife and I considered Beaumont to be part of a “three- to five-year plan.” We would live there, I could develop some more experience and then try to peddle my skills to another employer … somewhere else! Maybe back “home” in Oregon.

It didn’t transpire that way. Another opportunity did present itself in Amarillo. I flew from Beaumont to Amarillo in late 1994, spent a day interviewing at the Globe-News, returned home to Beaumont. The publisher offered me the job … etc. You know how this played out.

We are now happily retired. I still get to write. I have my blog. I also work as a freelance reporter for a couple who owns a group of weekly newspapers in Collin County. I write for the Farmersville Times. It is a serious, unabashed blast. I have returned, in a way, to where it all began for me in the 1970s: covering city council, school board and writing the occasional feature.

It has been a marvelous journey. Retirement is everything it’s cracked up to be. The road ahead still beckons and to be honest, I am thrilled that our three- to five-year plan never panned out.

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Time of My Life, Part 52: Recalling the ‘Triplex’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I don’t know of many careers that haven’t suffered an embarrassment or two along the way; my career had its share of, um, regrettable moments.

One of them occurred not too many years after I arrived in Southeast Texas to work on the editorial page of the Beaumont Enterprise. The Hearst Corporation purchased the newspaper in late 1984, then brought in a new guy to run the place: George B. Irish arrived as publisher.

He quickly ingratiated himself with the power sources within the community. Then some of them — I think it was in 1985 — concocted a hare-brained public relations campaign that, shall we say, ended up face-planting at every turn.

The newspaper, because of the publisher’s standing with these folks, found itself caught up in the midst of a PR campaign to rename the Golden Triangle region. These chamber of commerce types wanted to call it the Triplex. Yep, the region that had been known for more than a century by one name would be called something else, or so these individuals sought.

They came up with a TV ad campaign that featured a faux Gen. George S. Patton Jr. — the flamboyant World War II commander — to “order” us to use the Triplex name. Actually, the fake “Patton” was more like a bad impersonation of the actor George C. Scott’s portrayal of Patton in the movie of the same name.

The newspaper’s editorial page signed on to that fiasco. We lent our editorial support to this idiotic notion. Why call it idiotic? Well, let’s just say the push back from the community was ferocious. It was fierce. It was, um, angry!

The movers and shakers had come up with this goofy notion that the region suffering at the time from the collapse of the oil and petrochemical industry no longer was as “golden” as its name suggested. It was tarnished by the economic downfall. So, let’s just change the name of the place, they said.

The term Golden Triangle was meant to identify the cities of Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange. The broader region ID’d by the name included Jefferson, Orange and Hardin counties. Some folks came to calling the region the “Tripot.” Why? Because the map of the three counties drawn together reminded many folks of — get ready for it — a commode.

The seriously angry reaction came from those who believed the idea was being pushed by outsiders who had no understanding of the region or its residents’ affection for the Golden Triangle identity. You know, they had a point.

Indeed, Irish himself admitted to me privately once that he wasn’t too keen on the campaign as it developed. “That’s what happens,” he said to me a low voice, “when you have an idea developed by committee.”

This fiasco unfolded 30-some years ago. It died a fairly quick and quiet death. The idiocy never took root. Over a brief span of time, the chamber of commerce — and we at the Beaumont Enterprise — surrendered to the reality that a bad idea got the reception and met the fate that it richly deserved.

But … I still was having the time of my life.

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Recall election on the horizon? Hmm?

I must stipulate right up front that I don’t know Mike Getz from the Man in the Moon. Nor do I know Tyrone Cooper.

The two of them got into a major snit at Beaumont (Texas) City Hall recently, with Getz telling Cooper — the city attorney — that he ain’t “bullet proof.”

Getz, a member of the Beaumont City Council, apparently has been prone to shooting off his mouth. The council is slated to vote on a censure resolution next week. I hope the council shows some guts, if the allegations have truth to them, and slaps this guy across the face with a formal condemnation.

I’ve been away from Beaumont for 25 years. I worked there for nearly 11 years, from April 1984 until January 1995. As editorial page editor for the Beaumont Enterprise, I witnessed my share of City Hall drama during that time. The most dramatic moment occurred when the city lost millions of dollars in unsecured funds when the company that was managing the money folded. The city’s money vaporized. City Manager Karl Nollenberger resigned in disgrace.

A recall election then began to materialize. The mayor and a city council member were subjected to a recall movement. The election fell short. The council member and the mayor survived.

So it strikes me that there just might be another recall election in the city’s future.

Read about Getz’s big mouth here.

You might recall that there was some talk about censuring Donald Trump during the impeachment inquiry that resulted in the Senate trial that acquitted him. A congressional censure wouldn’t have had much impact on the president.

It’s different at the local level, in a city the size of Beaumont (population, 118,000 residents, give or take a few). Everyone knows everyone else there. Getz reportedly has been popping off for some time. A censure would have a stinging impact on a City Council member.

It also might ignite a fire that leads to another recall petition.

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Place that drew me there has vanished

The image you see with this blog illustrates what I did for a living for nearly 37 years. I took notebooks such as this with me to jobs in Oregon and then to Texas.

I mention this notebook today because we have returned from visiting the last stop on my professional journey. I came away with a huge trove of good feelings, seeing old friends, celebrating my son’s birthday and enjoying the unseasonably warm weather under a bright Texas Panhandle sun.

However, I also came away with a feeling of sadness. You see, the newspaper that summoned my wife and me there 25 years ago has all but vanished. The Amarillo Globe-News used to be a towering presence in the community. It has been decimated, reduced to a tiny fraction of its former self.

The Globe-News’s building — at the corner of Ninth Avenue and Harrison Street — is empty. Its signage has been stripped off the exterior wall. There’s an “AVAILABLE” sign on the property.  What’s left of the operation has moved into Suite 103 inside the tallest building in Amarillo, a 31-story bank tower down the street and around the corner.

News racks? Where they sell single copies of the Globe-News? I didn’t see a single one anywhere. I was told that convenient stores still sell the paper. I had a thought about buying the paper, but then I realized I would shell out more than $3 for a journal that would have little news of interest to me. I took a pass.

I guess it’s a sign of the times and the changing media era into which we are still plunging. My previous professional stop, in Beaumont, way down yonder on the Gulf Coast, is undergoing similar retrenchment. It, too, has all but vanished. The newspaper still operates out of its historic structure at 380 Walnut Street, but the corporate owners are looking for a smaller site to house its diminished staff. The Enterprise will vacate that site eventually, although the Hearst Corp., which owns the newspaper, is a proven media company with much greater newspaper chops that Morris Communications, which sold all its properties — including the Globe-News — and then closed its newspaper operation.

That ain’t all, man. My first professional stop, the Oregon City (Ore.) Enterprise-Courier has vanished. It closed completely in the late 1980s. Its parent company — Scripps League Newspaper — sold all its remaining properties and then ceased functioning altogether.

I am saddened by what has happened to print daily journalism. It was driven home to me this weekend on a return to Amarillo. The fellowship of friends was wonderful. The absence of any tangible evidence of the newspaper where I once practiced my craft with great joy and excitement, though, pains my heart.

But … retirement from all of that remains equally joyful and full of adventure.