{"id":9136,"date":"2015-05-01T00:11:20","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T00:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9136"},"modified":"2015-05-01T00:11:20","modified_gmt":"2015-05-01T00:11:20","slug":"opportunity-knocks-once-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9136","title":{"rendered":"Opportunity knocks … once again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Old men do have a future, even if it could be fleeting and temporary.<\/p>\n

How do I know that? A new door has just opened for me and I’ve decided to walk through it.<\/p>\n

I’ve accepted a challenge from a friend and former colleague who’s asked me to help him produce a weekly newspaper in eastern New Mexico. My friend, David Stevens, is looking aggressively for a managing editor for the Quay County Sun in Tucumcari. For the time being — and hopefully not too long — he’s going to rely on yours truly to help him with the task of publishing the Sun.<\/p>\n

David — a recent inductee into the Panhandle Press Hall of Fame — edits the Clovis News-Journal and the Portales News-Tribune; the papers’ parent company also owns the Quay County Sun.<\/p>\n

Here’s how it went down.<\/p>\n

David sent me a text message today, asking me to call when I had a few minutes. I called.<\/p>\n

“I’ve got an opportunity for you and you won’t have to leave the house,” David said.<\/p>\n

“OK, what’s up?” I asked.<\/p>\n

The opportunity provides me with a chance to work with a young reporter in Tucumcari, who’ll send me news budgets weekly. We’ll agree on stories he’ll cover for the next edition of the Sun. The reporter then will draft the stories, he’ll e-mail them to me, I’ll edit\u00a0the\u00a0raw copy\u00a0and send the files back to him.<\/p>\n

The Quay County Sun goes to press each Tuesday and is distributed the next day. During the day Tuesday, I’ll receive PDF files of the pages — again via e-mail — from the reporter who’ll build the pages at the Sun’s office in Tucumcari. I’ll proof-read the pages, call the reporter on my phone, recommend changes to the pages. My young colleague will make the changes and then put the pages, in newspaper jargon, “to bed.”<\/p>\n

The Quay County Sun publishes about 16 pages weekly. I’m told we’ll be producing eight to 12 pages with news copy on them.<\/p>\n

That, as they say, is the new opportunity.<\/p>\n

My friend, David, is well aware of my other commitments: the blog I write for Panhandle PBS, the special projects reporting I’m doing for\u00a0KFDA-TV’s NewsChannel10.com, and my\u00a0part-time job at\u00a0an automobile dealership in Amarillo.<\/p>\n

This new gig is going to be a first-class blast.<\/p>\n

My daily<\/em> print journalism career may be over, but\u00a0I keep turning\u00a0these corners and running smack into\u00a0unexpected challenges.<\/p>\n

As I keep telling my friends and strangers I meet on my daily travels through life … I am having way more fun than I deserve.<\/p>\n\n

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Old men do have a future, even if it could be fleeting and temporary. How do I know that? A new door has just opened for me and I’ve decided to walk through it. I’ve accepted a challenge from a friend and former colleague who’s asked me to help him produce a weekly newspaper in … Continue reading Opportunity knocks … once again<\/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],"tags":[1039,2587,3668,3790,4924],"class_list":["post-9136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-clovis-news-journal","tag-journalism","tag-portales-news-tribune","tag-quay-county-sun","tag-tucumcari-nm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9136","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=9136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}