Glazed? Maple?” The latter was my addition to the newspaper's doughnut tradition.
“Thank you for helping get the paper out,” I said, wandering from department to department, learning a little more about these people whose paychecks I now signed. My challenge was to discover who would help me make it in the coming year and who would hold me back. My corporate HR training courses from Dayton would come in handy.
Lee Roy was in his office with the door shut, arguing with someone on the phone, but everyone else was apparently in a fairly decent mood. They treated me with the caution you always treat a new boss, but they didn’t seem agitated.
Stan had worked some sort of pressman magic on Bossy. “Don’t worry Miss Lois,” he said, taking three doughnuts, one of each. “We’ll be right on time this morning if I get the pages from the newsroom.”
Wandering over to the composing area, I saw several pages nearly ready to go, with my picture and a big front-page headline reading, “Out-of-state Owner Buys News-Item” Also on the page: “Police Jury Okays Houses,” “Fine Feathered Friends: Blow Dryer Helps Teen Create Champion Chickens” and “Granny B. Celebrates 100th with Wit and Wisdom.”
“Wait,” I said to Tammy, scanning the page. “We need to change that head. I’m not an out-of-state owner. I now live in Green.” I avoided the champion chicken story and moved on to the birthday article. “And does that story on Granny B. really go on Page One? Is that the best we have?”
Alex walked up, clearly hands-on in every aspect of the paper at the ripe age of twenty-two. “What do you want the main headline to say?”
“Use bigger type and say, ‘News-Item Sold.’”
“That story on Granny B. is good,” he said, a doughnut in his hand. “Have you read it? There are some great quotes, and the woman is a hoot. And that chicken story is interesting. The girl won eight thousand dollars at the Louisiana State Fair last year. She has to wash her chicken with four buckets of water and blow it dry to make it pretty.”
I watched Tammy change the main headline, glanced at the feature stories, and mumbled something about letting them stay. Alex was right. We needed good stories about local people.
Two hours later when the presses rolled, I stood by with pride and admired the way the paper looked, all two sections and sixteen pages of it, with a house ad about garage sales and a page full of free weddings and anniversaries. I winced at a long story from a national drug company on improving your sex life, a story obviously copied directly from a press release and plugged in after I’d looked over the pages. I might hear from readers on that one. But the rest of the paper looked good, solid, and real.
“Good feeling, isn’t it?” Stan said, as he leafed through pages. “Never ceases to amaze me when it rolls off.”
Standing next to the press as it spit out more copies, I checked each page again. A small thrill ran through me. The part-time photographer even surfaced to take a picture “for the archives,” as he put it. I decided to frame those pictures— one of Stan handing me a first edition of The News-Item coming off the press and one of me looking through that day's paper.
A tiny group of mostly older people waited out back to deliver their routes, and Iris Jo pulled around in a small purple pickup truck. Climbing out, she introduced me to the motley group of carriers, who welcomed me to town but paid little attention to me.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked Iris. “We shorthanded?”
She smiled. “We’re always shorthanded, Miss Lois. But I throw this route for fun—gets me out of the office. I head right out to Route 2 and get in some good visiting every Tuesday and Friday afternoon. Besides, it eases up the load on Stan, and he appreciates that.” She nodded toward the pressman/ mechanic/delivery guy, who was
“Thank you for helping get the paper out,” I said, wandering from department to department, learning a little more about these people whose paychecks I now signed. My challenge was to discover who would help me make it in the coming year and who would hold me back. My corporate HR training courses from Dayton would come in handy.
Lee Roy was in his office with the door shut, arguing with someone on the phone, but everyone else was apparently in a fairly decent mood. They treated me with the caution you always treat a new boss, but they didn’t seem agitated.
Stan had worked some sort of pressman magic on Bossy. “Don’t worry Miss Lois,” he said, taking three doughnuts, one of each. “We’ll be right on time this morning if I get the pages from the newsroom.”
Wandering over to the composing area, I saw several pages nearly ready to go, with my picture and a big front-page headline reading, “Out-of-state Owner Buys News-Item” Also on the page: “Police Jury Okays Houses,” “Fine Feathered Friends: Blow Dryer Helps Teen Create Champion Chickens” and “Granny B. Celebrates 100th with Wit and Wisdom.”
“Wait,” I said to Tammy, scanning the page. “We need to change that head. I’m not an out-of-state owner. I now live in Green.” I avoided the champion chicken story and moved on to the birthday article. “And does that story on Granny B. really go on Page One? Is that the best we have?”
Alex walked up, clearly hands-on in every aspect of the paper at the ripe age of twenty-two. “What do you want the main headline to say?”
“Use bigger type and say, ‘News-Item Sold.’”
“That story on Granny B. is good,” he said, a doughnut in his hand. “Have you read it? There are some great quotes, and the woman is a hoot. And that chicken story is interesting. The girl won eight thousand dollars at the Louisiana State Fair last year. She has to wash her chicken with four buckets of water and blow it dry to make it pretty.”
I watched Tammy change the main headline, glanced at the feature stories, and mumbled something about letting them stay. Alex was right. We needed good stories about local people.
Two hours later when the presses rolled, I stood by with pride and admired the way the paper looked, all two sections and sixteen pages of it, with a house ad about garage sales and a page full of free weddings and anniversaries. I winced at a long story from a national drug company on improving your sex life, a story obviously copied directly from a press release and plugged in after I’d looked over the pages. I might hear from readers on that one. But the rest of the paper looked good, solid, and real.
“Good feeling, isn’t it?” Stan said, as he leafed through pages. “Never ceases to amaze me when it rolls off.”
Standing next to the press as it spit out more copies, I checked each page again. A small thrill ran through me. The part-time photographer even surfaced to take a picture “for the archives,” as he put it. I decided to frame those pictures— one of Stan handing me a first edition of The News-Item coming off the press and one of me looking through that day's paper.
A tiny group of mostly older people waited out back to deliver their routes, and Iris Jo pulled around in a small purple pickup truck. Climbing out, she introduced me to the motley group of carriers, who welcomed me to town but paid little attention to me.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked Iris. “We shorthanded?”
She smiled. “We’re always shorthanded, Miss Lois. But I throw this route for fun—gets me out of the office. I head right out to Route 2 and get in some good visiting every Tuesday and Friday afternoon. Besides, it eases up the load on Stan, and he appreciates that.” She nodded toward the pressman/ mechanic/delivery guy, who was
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