by Bruce Humphrey
My first go as a published writer
came at about
age 13, when my daily paper in Athens, Ohio published on page one an
Easter
prayer I had written. The next, as I recall, was after I graduated from
college, was in the Army and stationed in Heidelberg, Germany. I wrote
a weekly column for Americans in Germany about investing. (I knew less
about investing then than I do now, which is nothing at all.)
I worked as an armed guard in Denver at the Rocky Mountain News for a short time after returning to the states, and soon found a bit more journalistic challenge in Greeley, Colorado. There I worked as a photoengraver and photo lab technician. It was from that spot I got my first photo published by Associated Press: a picture of a cat drinking milk from a saucer on the back of a pig.
I worked a few years in Newark as photographer/feature writer, then returned to Ohio University, Athens, for a master's in journalism. I came back to The Advocate as picture editor, then managing editor. A restless nature, a grass-is-greener attitude, led me to the editorship of a daily paper in South Carolina but the publisher began running out of money and I ran for Ohio. I worked briefly as copy editor for the Columbus Citizen Journal and did various free-lance gigs, including a Dispatch sling route. Eventually I came back to The Advocate as a columnist/editorial page editor and when Thomson Newspapers bought the place I was reinstalled as managing editor.
My career at The Advocate was an off-and-on sort of thing because I kept suffering burn-out, angst, and agitation. Still I managed enough years for a monthly pension of about $117.13.
The Advocate chapter of my life ended when the publisher pulled rank and endorsed a less-worthy candidate for one of the offices. I don't even remember who the candidate was, only that he/she was the opponent of Gene Branstool. Playing power games at the expense of reader trust crossed the line of all that was important to me as an editor.
Reader trust was - and still is - holy. So Mr. Publisher did it his way and taught me a final lesson about the truth, the honesty, and the reliability of corporate journalism. This time I walked for good.
The only other employer to ever get a real grip on me was Muskingum Tech, now Zane State, where I worked about 14 years in public relations. A nice job with much challenge, but nothing ever compared to the excitement of final deadlines at a daily newspaper or the satisfaction of having given Licking County an honest job.
So that's how it went. From a youth's little prayer to an old fart's recollections - from the penning of that to the penning of this....
A long road, but one still open and stretching far into the distance ahead. All that's changed over the years are the media and the audience.