{"id":35818,"date":"2019-03-05T04:16:22","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T04:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35818"},"modified":"2019-03-05T04:16:22","modified_gmt":"2019-03-05T04:16:22","slug":"time-of-my-life-part-26-they-kept-me-humble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35818","title":{"rendered":"Time of My Life, Part 26: They kept me humble"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I also never took myself more seriously than I took my craft.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I always sought to return the respect when they called.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It kept me humble.<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading Time of My Life, Part 26: They kept me humble<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[179,568,1235,1936,2022,2978,4668],"class_list":["post-35818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-media-news","tag-agn-media","tag-beaumont-enterprise","tag-daily-journalism","tag-golden-triangle","tag-gulf-coast","tag-media","tag-texas-panhandle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35819,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35818\/revisions\/35819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}