scoundrel who ran it broke up with her.”
“Theme park PR office?”
Brecht shook his head and grinned very slightly. “Selling sandwiches served on cheap plastic plates shaped like a prospector’s mining pan, as I hear it. Total waste of journalistic talent, her doing a job like that. Unfortunately for us, she can probably make almost as much money doing that as she could working for us. And living at home again, she pays no rent. So we have little chance to lure her back, though I wish we could.”
“I’m sure staff turnover is a problem at every small paper,” Eli said.
“Definitely. A paper our size simply can’t pay what we wish we could, even for our best people. And as an afternoon daily, we’re bucking a national trend toward morning papers. But we have no intention for this newspaper to go away. Not in my lifetime, anyway. But let’s put that aside and talk about what we hope to have you do for us. By the way, no need for ‘sir’ or ‘mister.’ Just David.”
“Whatever you say, David.” Eli mischievously wondered what the reaction would have been if he’d called him Davy Carl.
“Well, Eli, down to brass tacks, to coin a phrase. You already know the basics: Tylerville and Kincheloe County celebrate their common bicentennial next year, with the celebration culminating in a parade and downtown festival and local holiday on October 12, the actual bicentennial date. A month before that the Clarion will release a large one-time magazine titled Tylerville at 200 as our contribution to the bicentennial observance. It will be provided free of charge to all subscribers, given for special distribution to the various historical societies across the state, and used in other ways we will no doubt think of over the next several months. Of course we’ll enter it in the appropriate Tennessee Press Association contests, and I have no doubt we’ll win big in that arena. This is going to be a quality item, no tossed-off tabloid on newsprint. It will be a heavy-duty, slick magazine, perfect-bound, full size, comparable in physical quality to anything you’d buy at the magazine rack in a high-end bookstore. Down the road we may even reprint the thing in book format, if the response is as strong as I hope it will be. We’re outsourcing the print job because our press isn’t made for this kind of work. My intention for your involvement is to ensure that the quality of content is equal to or even better than the packaging. Which is why we have created the special projects editor position you’re applying for today. Any questions so far?”
“Will this be a strictly history-focused publication? Stories about the founding of the community and so on? I focused a lot of my proposal in that direction. By the way, I should probably go ahead and give that to you.” He pulled the document from his bag and passed it across the desk into Brecht’s hand.
Brecht continued: “A lot of history, yes. But not exclusively, and not all from the founding days. Certainly not dry, formal, academic history in any case. Nor will it be tea-parlor, provincial, ancestor-worship history that communities such as ours tend to drift into. You know how local history, and historians, can be.”
“Oh yes,” Eli said. “I grew up near Knoxville, and there were always plenty of local ‘historians’ around who were ready to lynch anyone who dared see their favorite forebears as anything less than minor deities, free of all transgression. They are glad to make idols of them, but not to concede that those idols were in reality as human as any of us. Occasionally it must be the role of an honest historian to take the air out of a few balloons.”
Brecht frowned, causing Eli to shut up abruptly and wonder if he’d just said something he shouldn’t. “Let me clarify,” Brecht said. “It is my intention that we publish a look at local history and heritage that is accurate and truthful … but not that we be self-consciously and
“Theme park PR office?”
Brecht shook his head and grinned very slightly. “Selling sandwiches served on cheap plastic plates shaped like a prospector’s mining pan, as I hear it. Total waste of journalistic talent, her doing a job like that. Unfortunately for us, she can probably make almost as much money doing that as she could working for us. And living at home again, she pays no rent. So we have little chance to lure her back, though I wish we could.”
“I’m sure staff turnover is a problem at every small paper,” Eli said.
“Definitely. A paper our size simply can’t pay what we wish we could, even for our best people. And as an afternoon daily, we’re bucking a national trend toward morning papers. But we have no intention for this newspaper to go away. Not in my lifetime, anyway. But let’s put that aside and talk about what we hope to have you do for us. By the way, no need for ‘sir’ or ‘mister.’ Just David.”
“Whatever you say, David.” Eli mischievously wondered what the reaction would have been if he’d called him Davy Carl.
“Well, Eli, down to brass tacks, to coin a phrase. You already know the basics: Tylerville and Kincheloe County celebrate their common bicentennial next year, with the celebration culminating in a parade and downtown festival and local holiday on October 12, the actual bicentennial date. A month before that the Clarion will release a large one-time magazine titled Tylerville at 200 as our contribution to the bicentennial observance. It will be provided free of charge to all subscribers, given for special distribution to the various historical societies across the state, and used in other ways we will no doubt think of over the next several months. Of course we’ll enter it in the appropriate Tennessee Press Association contests, and I have no doubt we’ll win big in that arena. This is going to be a quality item, no tossed-off tabloid on newsprint. It will be a heavy-duty, slick magazine, perfect-bound, full size, comparable in physical quality to anything you’d buy at the magazine rack in a high-end bookstore. Down the road we may even reprint the thing in book format, if the response is as strong as I hope it will be. We’re outsourcing the print job because our press isn’t made for this kind of work. My intention for your involvement is to ensure that the quality of content is equal to or even better than the packaging. Which is why we have created the special projects editor position you’re applying for today. Any questions so far?”
“Will this be a strictly history-focused publication? Stories about the founding of the community and so on? I focused a lot of my proposal in that direction. By the way, I should probably go ahead and give that to you.” He pulled the document from his bag and passed it across the desk into Brecht’s hand.
Brecht continued: “A lot of history, yes. But not exclusively, and not all from the founding days. Certainly not dry, formal, academic history in any case. Nor will it be tea-parlor, provincial, ancestor-worship history that communities such as ours tend to drift into. You know how local history, and historians, can be.”
“Oh yes,” Eli said. “I grew up near Knoxville, and there were always plenty of local ‘historians’ around who were ready to lynch anyone who dared see their favorite forebears as anything less than minor deities, free of all transgression. They are glad to make idols of them, but not to concede that those idols were in reality as human as any of us. Occasionally it must be the role of an honest historian to take the air out of a few balloons.”
Brecht frowned, causing Eli to shut up abruptly and wonder if he’d just said something he shouldn’t. “Let me clarify,” Brecht said. “It is my intention that we publish a look at local history and heritage that is accurate and truthful … but not that we be self-consciously and
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