For 13 months I have commuted from Longview to Mount Pleasant to publish the Daily Tribune. This small newspaper was on the verge of shutting down before it was purchased by the company that hired me to reverse its fortunes. I enjoyed the challenge, which was considerable: turning around the paper financially and editorially, hiring an entire staff, moving the office downtown. I get weary just thinking about all we did in a short time.
Now the time has come to find a new challenge, probably here in Longview so that I can enjoy our daughter Abbie’s senior year in high school. I enjoyed my time in Mount Pleasant. As with any new endeavor, there were challenges. Essentially, I hired an entire staff, and some positions were filled more than once. I am leaving a strong dedicated team there. Together we gave Mount Pleasant, Titus County and the surrounding area the type of community newspaper and website it deserved.
The readers in Mount Pleasant care about their newspaper. I know this because they told me, whether it was complaining about a missed delivery or thanking us for a story we published. For a small town, that was the busiest newspaper office I can recall in terms of phone calls and walk-in traffic.
Newspapers are struggling as an industry. I learned that one’s best chance of success is taking over a really lousy newspaper in a community with an older population still in the habit of reading a print product. One can actually grow circulation by giving subscribers something worth reading, namely local news. I arrived intending to make the front page completely local, every issue. And we did that, relegating the wire stories to the inside, where they belong in a community paper. A community newspaper’s franchise is local news.
But after increasing circulation by double digits, it reached a plateau. And it is increasingly difficult to convince advertisers that a newspaper is relevant, even though nobody else covers the community to a significant degree. The shift to digital is steady, inexorable and newspapers must change with it — or die. I wish I knew the answer. A lot of people far smarter than me are still trying to figure it out.
I am going to turn 60 next month, a fact that weighs heavily as I try to decide how I am going to spend my remaining years. It is possible I will never work for a newspaper again. After more than 40 years in the business, perhaps it is time to try something else. We will see what the future holds. I plan to try to peddle some stories and finish a long-delayed book.
I am grateful to my wife for her strong support while I made this difficult decision to leave this job. She and Abbie always have my back. I have been blessed with them coming into my life here in middle age. I am equally blessed by my two grown daughters. I may not deserve such affection and support, but I cherish it.
I figured out how many miles I commuted between Mount Pleasant and Longview since June of last year. I made that 110-mile round trip more than 280 times, racking up more than 31,000 miles. That is the equivalent of more than 23 days spent behind a steering wheel. I will not miss that aspect, though I grew fond of the surrealistic giant bust of Bo Pilgrim in front of the poultry plant.
I will miss the many wonderful people I met from all walks of life.
God bless and as we old ink-stained wretches like to say, see you in the funny papers.
