Tag Archives: opinion journalism

Time of My Life, Part 45: Back to where it began

I am positive you’ve heard it said that there are some things you always remember knowing how to do.

Riding a bicycle comes to mind.

Well, I spent the bulk of my journalism career writing opinion pieces for newspapers in Oregon and Texas. However, like most ink-stained wretches, I got started covering news events, or writing features, chronicling the events that made our community tick.

I am now retired from the daily grind. However, I have been given a chance to return to where it began for me. I am a freelance reporter for a weekly newspaper near where my wife and now reside.

I asked for this gig when we took out a subscription to the Princeton Herald, a weekly publication that is delivered via mail every Thursday. The publisher of the Herald, C&S Media, also publishes papers in other communities nearby. Farmersville is one of them.

The “S” in C&S Media is Sonia Duggan. She asked me recently if I would be interested in covering Farmersville, which is about seven miles east of Princeton. I said yes. So I am back in the game.

I attend Farmersville City Council meetings twice a month, reporting on what transpires at City Hall. I get to write the occasional feature story about Farmersville, a growing community in Collin County, Texas.

The most rewarding part of it, though, is getting to know the people who make the city. I am developing sources, becoming familiar with the community’s unique qualities. I am making my presence known at council meeting.

Man, it’s just like it’s always been.

Moreover, I get to cover these stories straight up, without injecting my own opinion into any of the text I write for the newspaper.

My boss knows, too, that my wife and I might not be available all the time to cover every story that comes along. Given that we’re retired, we have the luxury of traveling in our recreational vehicle, which we do during peak driving season in North Texas. That’s OK, she says, expressing her keen understanding that a freelance gig enables us to operate without too many burdensome requirements.

I just have to say, though, that learning about a new community fills me with great joy and, yes, even a bit of anxiousness. I expect the joy to remain even as I grow less anxious over what I discover about Farmersville.

Self-proclaimed scribe passes from the scene

A friend from my former stomping grounds on the Texas Gulf Coast has given me some sad news.

Dr. Gary C. Baine has just died. OK, I’m sad mostly because of the loss his family has suffered. One of his in-laws is a friend of mine and I pray she finds comfort.

Gary Baine helped me hone my understanding of what one can refer to as “editor’s prerogative.” Baine was a fairly regular writer of letters to the editor of the paper where I worked for nearly 11 years. I edited the editorial page of the Beaumont Enterprise and part of my job was to manage the flow of letters that would appear on the pages of that paper.

And yes, Baine was one of our contributors.

He wasn’t just was any old, garden-variety, run-of-the-mill letter writer. Baine, a dentist in Beaumont, was very, very proud of the submissions he would send in.

How proud was he? I’ll tell you.

He was so proud that he would take me to task for having the utter gall to actually edit his letters. He thought his text was sacrosanct, not to be touched by another human’s hands. Why, how dare I actually do the job that my title implied — as an editor — and seek to sharpen his submissions, to correct them for grammar and occasionally for clarity?

That’s what I did for, oh, more than three decades. And by the time my path crossed with Baine’s, I’d been at it for a decade-plus. I thought I was pretty good at it making people’s letters read better than the original submissions. So I edited Baine’s submissions, using precisely the same techniques I would use on other letter writers’ manuscripts.

That didn’t suit Baine in the slightest. We would argue. I would seek to tell him about how the greatest writers in the nation are subject to editing by their editors. I tried to tell him that when reporters turn their stories over to editors, they in effect surrender ownership of their copy; it becomes the editor’s “property.”

The same policy holds true for those who submit unsolicited text to the newspaper. You turn it in, the editorial assumes responsibility for it and then can edit it — or not edit it. It’s the editor’s call exclusively.

None of those explanations ever quite passed Baine’s view of how the world should be run.

We had our differences, but we remained cordial — which I suppose might suggest that deep down he didn’t take himself as seriously as his reaction to my editing style indicated.

Dr. Baine did sharpen my understanding of my craft. For that, I am grateful beyond measure.

May he now rest in peace.