| July 2003 | |
Brotherhood of Community Newspapering
For the more than 50 years I’ve been in the newspaper business, the Texas Press Association has been a constant factor in my life. In the early years it was the water of knowledge to the sponge that represented my yen to know. This great business we’re all privileged to serve still provides something new to learn each day and TPA plays an ongoing role in that process. As I grew in my profession, TPA’s role expanded in keeping me updated and abreast of developments. Experience created new and different needs for me and TPA always found ways to meet those challenges. Early in my career, old newspaper sages frequenting TPA meetings gave me some wonderful advice — “Go to every one of these meetings with the notion that you’re going to take home at least one idea that will pay for your trip.” Not only did I apply that to TPA meetings but to regional meetings as well. I’ve never failed to find at least one nugget, usually several, whether it was in a program presentation or while sitting around picking the brain of someone just like me who faced the same problems and challenges. It’s amazing what a fresh perspective can provide. If you decide to find and apply moneymaking or money-saving ideas wherever you turn, then you begin to notice other things TPA does to help its members. Most of us publish, edit or work for small newspapers that don’t have the resources of big dailies so we’re resource hungry. That’s a major role for TPA. In those formative years, I found TPA had a magazine (yes, a magazine), The Texas Press Messenger, and a member Bulletin. The Messenger told me what my fellow editors and publishers were doing, what programs and workshops were coming, trends and the like. It still does in its more “acceptable” newspaper format. Our member Bulletin has given us some of what we see in expanded form in The Messenger and it gives us, as newspaper management, information on everything from personnel to postal rule changes (some things are constant) to advertising regulations. In addition, the Bulletin has always been a marketplace — for personnel, equipment and, yes, even newspapers for sale. In the early years our legislative oversight might have included treating state Rep. Elvis Wayne Doolittle to a barbecue sandwich when he was in town and telling him, “Now, Elvis Wayne, you vote right.” Which brings us to sophistication. TPA is a much more sophisticated operation today than it was 40 or even 20 years ago, from our legislative watch, to the legislative bulletin, to a Web site. Now, we’re offering training for reporters and editors online from the University of Texas as well as production workshops on computer programs such as Adobe Photoshop taught by such sophisticates as Russell Viers. And, then there’s Fred Anders and the traveling Mobile Lab, not to mention the Texas Newspaper Foundation courses at Texas Christian University. All of these are wonderful advantages for our members. As our individual newspapers’ needs have grown so, as you can see, has the Texas Press Association in its member services. But, thankfully, some things never change. One of those is something I call the Brotherhood of Community Newspapering. I first referred to it, outside informal gatherings, in The Messenger a couple of years ago. At our just completed summer convention I pointed out that our outgoing president, Bob Buckel, was the epitome of that wonderful sense of brotherhood. That fraternal bent has its roots in those sages of 40 years ago and earlier who gave valuable advice and offered a helping hand to a fellow community newspaperman. It could keep an old coot like me publishing forever. Well, almost. |
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