Tag Archives: daily journalism

media news

Blog hits milestone

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This blog post represents a milestone for High Plains Blogger.

The moment I post this item it will mark the 700th consecutive day of blog commentaries from this platform.

I consider that a pretty big deal. So I thought I would pontificate briefly about what it means to me.

It means, simply, that I have been faithful to my boast that I although I cannot claim to be be an expert on anything, I have a lot to say about … oh, everything.

Some of my friends have called me “prolific.” I accept that description. I actually welcome it. I get that some posts sometimes do not measure up to what I would like to consider a high standard; perhaps this blog item qualifies as that kind of post.

The blog has kept me in “the game,” so to speak, since my daily journalism career came to a halt nearly nine years ago. I also have been able to write blogs for a public TV station, a network affiliate TV station, a public radio station and for the past couple of years a North Texas weekly newspaper.

So, while my daily print career crashed and burned, I have been able to keep my juices flowing through this blog and other media platforms.

Seven hundred consecutive days is a fairly big deal, the way I see it.

I now will try to add another 700 consecutive days, after which I intend to really brag.

local news, media news

Time of My Life, Part 26: They kept me humble

I operated under a number of principles during more than 30 years in daily print journalism. I always sought to be fair; accuracy was critical.

I also never took myself more seriously than I took my craft.

The readers of the newspapers where I worked all served as great equalizers. I started my newspaper reporting career full time in 1977 at the Oregon City (Ore.) Enterprise-Courier; I gravitated in 1984 to the Beaumont Enterprise in Texas; and then in 1995 I moved on to the Amarillo Globe-News.

All along the way I contended with readers who shared a common quality. They generally lived in the communities we covered. Thus, they had skin in the game; they had vested interests in their cities and towns.

So if I wrote something with which they disagreed and they took the time to call me to discuss their disagreements I tended to take them seriously.

I tried to learn something about the communities where I worked. Readers often were great teachers. They would scold me. They would chide me. They mostly were respectful when they disagreed with whatever I wrote, how I reported a story or offered an opinion on an issue the newspaper had covered on its news pages.

I always sought to return the respect when they called.

To be sure, not everyone fit that description. More than few of them over all those years were visibly, viscerally angry when they called to complain. I tried to maintain a civil tongue when responding to them. I’ll be candid, though, in admitting that at times my temper flared.

I usually didn’t mind someone challenging the facts I would present in a news story, or in an editorial, or in a column. I did mind individuals who would challenge my motives, or ascribe nefarious intent where none existed.

And every once in a great while I would a reader challenge my patriotism and even my religious faith. That’s where I drew the line.

However, over the span of time I pursued the craft I loved from the moment I began studying it in college I sought to maintain a level of perspective. I took my job seriously. I always sought to remember that all human beings are flawed.

It kept me humble.

local news, media news

Sensing an odd disconnect

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I picked up the phone this weekend to call a good friend.

We worked together at the Amarillo Globe-News. Not long after I quit my job — after being “reorganized” out of the position I had occupied for nearly 18 years — he resigned to take another journalism job back east.

As we visited, he told me about this challenge and that challenge he was facing at the paper where he’s working.

Then it hit me like a bolt of lightning: I did not feel connected in any meaningful way with what my friend was telling me.

Wow! How weird is this?

It’s been a month shy of three years since I left daily print journalism. It defined me in the many people’s eyes for more than 36 years. I toiled at four newspapers: two in Oregon and two in Texas. My career didn’t take me to too many stops along the way. Several of my friends who are still practicing the craft have made many more stops along the way than I ever did.

Still, for 36-plus years that was what I did. I had some modest success over that time and I am so very proud of what I was able to do, the places I was able to see, the people — famous, infamous and just plain interesting — I was able to meet.

Oh, but the disconnected feeling I’m getting these days is sending me a clear message.

I am glad to be gone from my last stop along the way. I was an old-school reporter and editor when my employer informed me that he planned to make “radical changes” at the newspaper and that I didn’t fit into those plans. I’ll admit that it hurt hearing such a thing. And, yes, I went through some grieving as I sought to collect my thoughts and plot the rest of the journey my wife and I would take.

Three years is a long time. Then again, it does fly by quickly, especially when you’re occupying your time doing other things. I’ve managed to do that. I’m staying quite busy writing blogs for two local broadcast TV stations. So I haven’t been sent out to pasture entirely. I’m also helping a friend produce a weekly newspaper in eastern New Mexico.

The disconnect lies with the daily grind. I no longer have to worry about answering the bell every single day. I’ll leave that to others who are young and vigorous enough to overcome the obstacles that emerge constantly to bring added pressure to an already pressure-packed job.

I’m glad my friend still relishes the challenges that confront him every day. As for me, I’ve got other things to do.

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Full-time work wears me out

This is another in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.

Epiphanies arrive at the strangest times.

Such as when one is in the middle of a part-time job and the realization hits: I no longer have the energy to work full time.

That one hit me at some point this afternoon. Thus, I figure I’ve taken another important step toward retirement.

I no longer want a full-time job. I busted my backside for 40-plus years, most of that time toiling in daily print journalism.

These days, my work consists of essentially two-part time gigs — or maybe one part-time job and another “job” that involves my favorite hobby, which is writing on politics, public policy and other current events. The actual job is at an auto dealership in Amarillo. The fun job is the blog I write for Panhandle PBS, the public TV station based at Amarillo College. (Look up “A Public View” at panhandlepbs.org and you’ll see how much fun I’m having.)

I already have chronicled — a little bit, at least — the circumstances of my departure from daily journalism. The event occurred almost two years ago. I was more than a little unhappy over the circumstance that brought it about.

The bad news is that I went into mourning for a time after I cleared out my office and drove home that day. The good news is that I got over my grief fairly quickly and have been looking forward to the future ever since.

I suppose now I ought to thank my former employer for telling me at the end of August 2012 that someone else would be doing the job I’d been doing at the Amarillo Globe-News for more than 17 years. Maybe I will do so one day. I might thank him for sparing me the chaos I understand has gripped the place as it transitions from what it was to whatever it’s going to become.

I might do that. Just not yet.

Retirement is looking better all the time, although I likely won’t ever give up the writing part of what’s left of my working life. Why would I want to stop receiving the kind of enjoyment I get from prattling on about this and that?