Some stories are worth an entire column; some are worth telling, but not worth the (whole) space. Here are a few of those vignettes, all of which involve first responders. Over time as a reporter, I came to realize just…
One of the truisms of life as a reporter, especially in a small town, is one always had to have access to motorized transportation. There was no predicting when or where a news event would take place, and, especially if…
During my career as a mass communications/journalism professor, I spent many years also teaching a section of English composition. Students were required to write a weekly 500-word essay using various styles of academic writing. One of those assigned categories was…
Author’s note: One of the major “news values”—factors that generate media attention—is “impact”: How much of your audience is affected, and to what extent? A low-impact story, such as a flood of sewage into the basement of a single home,…
The local high school kids called it PCP: Plane Crash Pot. The source of the PCP was, logically enough, a plane crash. The craft went down late the night of Tuesday, Feb. 15, 1983, about five miles south of Canyonlands…
What’s the biggest mistake you ever made? No, not that kind; I mean work related. If you’ve reached A Certain Age, you might even have trouble picking the one. Not me; mine shines out like a beacon against the…
I was sitting at my desk which faced away from the street, directly behind the massive wall of glass that used to make up the façade of the newspaper office (a position that frequently gave me an itchy spot between…
My first controversy on the paper was one I didn’t seek and didn’t want, especially so early in my tenure; I had only been reporting for a couple of months. The issue involved the Friendship Cruise between Green River and…
My first few days in town, toward the end of April, 1978, I wasn’t in town. Well, not sleeping there at any rate. Rentals were hard to come by (I gather it’s infinitely worse nowadays), so each evening I would…