Last Updated: August 13, 1999
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Fond remembrance
Your first editor seems immortal, or at least too tough to die, so I
was shocked as well as saddened to learn that mine, Annie Laurie Kinney,
had died not too long ago. She was 96.
No editor ever terrified me more or yelled at me more or — how do you
say this? — loved me more.
But it is what she taught me that sticks in my mind.
I met her 35 years ago. With her husband, William Sr., and her son Bill
Jr., she ran the twice-weekly Marlboro Herald-Advocate in Bennettsville,
S.C. One day when I was 14, I showed up at her doorstep and announced I
had come to be a reporter.
She didn’t flinch. “Sit here,” she said, and she lectured me for half
an hour on community journalism. Then she assigned me to cover my first
story (a baseball game) and two days later gave me a front-page byline.
For the next five or six years, I wrote stories, took pictures, edited
and proofread copy, handled circulation complaints, inserted section B
into section A, and stamped the finished papers with address labels and
drove them to the post office. Eventually, I was actually paid for some
of that.
She taught me many lessons but two stand out:
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Never, ever, for any reason, get anything wrong, or else.
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Fill the paper with as much news as you can, especially the human stuff
people really care about.
Here’s how I learned Lesson No. 1.
I had been proofreading copy for a week or two when I handled an ad
for Sterchi’s Furniture store. It featured a color television set on sale
for $399.99. But when I finished proofing the ad, the price mistakenly
read $39.99.
Early the next day the phone rang. It was the manager of Sterchi’s.
“You want to come down here,” he thundered, “and see the line of people
outside my store waiting for their $39 television!”
Mrs. Kinney gave me the tongue-lashing of my life. Then she taught me
something else: how to use a piece of paper to cover up everything in the
copy below the line you’re proofing, so your eye concentrates on it and
doesn’t wander. It is a great editing tip, and I use and teach it to this
day.
In Lesson No. 2, to go after news all the time, was reinforced every
day. Mrs. Kinney regularly would give me names of people in town, and order
me to call them and dig up some news. She was the master of this tactic.
She could dial someone up, chat for a minute, and in no time know that
Uncle Earl was recovering from gall bladder surgery, Buddy and Janelle
and the kids were spending the week at Myrtle Beach, and Vernon Jr. had
just gotten his acceptance letter from Clemson. All of which went into
the next issue.
Seldom have I handled a touchier assignment than my first high-society
wedding. Our ace social correspondent, Miss Harriet Jackson, was away,
so I was drafted to cover the big event, under the meticulous and relentless
supervision of the bride’s mother. Soon I was immersed in descriptions
of bridal gown bodices and floral centerpieces and in recording which great
aunt presided over which reception punch bowl.
I wrote the story, quadruple-checked everything, proofed it (naturally,
using a piece of paper to underline each line), and patrolled the back
shop to ensure the printers didn’t chop off the story in mid-sentence,
as often happened in those hot-type days.
The day the story ran, my heart froze as I saw the Mother of the Bride
locomoting into the newsroom with a look of grim determination. I considered
fleeing, but that would have violated another lesson I had quickly absorbed:
In small-town journalism you cannot escape the people you write about.
So I trembled and stood my ground.
She marched toward me from one side as Mrs. Kinney closed in from the
other. I was a dead man. Then Mother smiled and took my hand. “Thank you
for the lovely story,” she said warmly. “I just hope you know how much
people appreciate it when the paper takes time to treat them right.”
Another eternal lesson took hold.
It won’t do to sentimentalize Mrs. Kinney, of course. Like most editors,
she was both guardian angel and tormentor. She could be difficult, and
her paper was far from perfect. But for me she exemplified tough love.
Never, from the first day I set foot in her office, did Mrs. Kinney
treat me as the Kid Playing Reporter. She respected my ambition, and she
demanded performance and discipline on the fundamentals every day. No excuses.
No slack because I was a kid.
Respect your colleagues and readers. Get the news. Get it right. Or
else.
Could you have a better start in the business than that?
Stepp teaches at the University of Maryland and is senior editor
of American Journalism Review.
