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Editor's Notes
About 30 newspaper folks from around the country flew into Atlanta for the National Newspaper Association's "On the Road" tour. Other Alabamians on the trip included John Stevenson of Roanoke, publisher of the Randolph Leader, and Luke Slaton of Moulton, publisher of the Moulton Advertiser. John organized the trip and is in line to be president of NNA next year. NNA represents what we in the business term "community" newspapers- the smaller daily and weekly papers that are closest to their communities. I've tried to get involved in NNA some in the last few years and I've met a lot of good people. I've learned that the newspaper business and its problems are basically the same everywhere, whether it is Texas, Mississippi, Illinois, Michigan, Maine or elsewhere. We toured small daily operations (small maybe in the daily newspaper realm but huge papers to me!). Our first stop was Rome, Ga. north of Atlanta where Burgett Mooney III is publisher. The Mooney family has owned the Rome News-Tribune for generations and also owns weeklies in northeast Georgia as well as the weekly Cherokee County Herald in nearby Centre, Ala. The News-Tribune is a good operation with a strong editorial voice (and a nationally known editorial cartoonist, unusual for a paper its size). The paper understands the importance of the Internet and is starting to integrate video, making it, in effect, a broadcaster as well as a newspaper. We next motored over to Anniston to tour the relatively new home of the Anniston Star. Ed Fowler, vice president of operations, gave us an overview of the operation and a tour of the facilities, located on property that had formerly been a part of the military base Fort McClellan. The Star is also a family-owned paper. Brandy Ayers is publisher. The operation is unique because the paper has developed a relationship with the University of Alabama to offer a graduate program in community journalism. Graduate students work at the paper to learn "on the job." It is truly a hands-on school. Grove Hill's Hardy Jackson writes a column for the Star that the Democrat frequently reprints. He lives in nearby Jacksonville and teaches at Jacksonville State University. We visited the nearby Berman Museum of World History and the Anniston Museum of Natural Science. At the Berman, you'll find an impressive collection of art and military artifacts, collected by a now deceased Anniston couple. There are even some Hitler artifacts among the collection. The natural science museum includes displays of wildlife from around the world. We also toured the Anniston Army Depot where a large civilian force manufactures and repairs weapons, combat vehicles and ammunition for the military. One of our hosts said that if you see a track vehicle on TV in Iraq, it has likely passed through Anniston or will at some point. There are rows and rows of buildings as well as rows and rows of tanks and other armored vehicles. The Anniston Army Depot is also home to a stockpile of chemical weapons that are steadily being destroyed. We didn't get close to them (few do) but I didn't complain! I didn't realize what an operation this is. There are nearly 7,000 people working for different agencies at the Depot with a total payroll of some $317 million annually. I think we have made a grave mistake to become involved in a war in Iraq but I do appreciate what these people do to service our military personnel and to try and help protect them. We drove westward a piece for a tour of the Talladega Super Speedway. No races were being conducted but some trial runs were underway (an Earnhardt "8" was racing along the track but it wasn't Junior!). Carol Pappas, publisher of the Talladega Daily Home, one of the Star's publications, gave us a tour of the paper's new facility and showed several publications that serve the nearby Logan Martin Lake vacation area as well as the speedway. We headed back to Georgia and stopped in Newnan, south of Atlanta to visit the Times-Herald, another independently-owned daily. Newnan's population has exploded in recent years as Atlanta has expanded southward and the paper has steadily grown, moving from being a weekly to a full seven days-a-week paper. The community's and paper's growth is amazing. By the way, the late newspaper columnist and humorist Lewis Grizzard hailed from Newnan and Coweta County. While all of the papers we saw were much larger than the Democrat, it was good to get a chance to see how others do things. The methods of newspapering are almost always the same, only the scale changes depending on size. It was also good to see and talk with people who put out newspapers from all over the country. I learned as much talking to them for two days as I learned from the tour itself. Feeding the lions in Grove Hill And speaking of Hardy Jackson, on the opposite page is a column of his that ran in the Star back in early April that detailed some of the differences that long divided the denominations in Grove Hill as well as the flap that split the Baptist Church. Grove Hill isn't named specifically but it is obvious what he is talking about. I was aware of the column before it was published but I decided not to run it. It isn't that it isn't funny (it is) or true (it is), I just didn't think it would serve any purpose in helping our community. Too, I've always figured religion is a personal issue and if you aren't way out on a limb, you worship your way and I'll worship mine. There's nothing wrong with the column itself but I do take exception with the delight in which some folks have circulated it as a way to needle those they disagree with religiously. I was criticized for not adding in the needling by reprinting the article. When I realized that the column was being bootlegged and passed around to the extent that it has, I decided to go ahead and reprint it so folks won't continue to burn up the copying machines and to make a point of my own. And that is: I've been a little disappointed at the glee - almost a vengeance in many instances - with which many good church going folks have passed the column around. Some of these are members of a denomination that are all too quick to boast of their tolerance and compassion for others. That proud tolerance all seems a little hypocritical now to this ol' backslider. I'd just as soon take my chances with the Roman lions of old as with some of these "tolerant" church folks. Jim Cox is editor and publisher of The Clarke County Democrat. | |||||
