I’ve always liked what Mark Twain said about being a newspaper editor: “I am not an editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good, so that God will not make me one.”
That thought occurred to me several years ago, as I was dancing in a Christmas parade, dressed as a giant gift box. I had a bow on my head and I was blowing a horn. It was pouring down rain, and the battery-operated lights on my box kept going out.
Why was I doing this? Because I was the town’s newspaper editor, that’s why. You do things like this to be part of the community. And okay, I did kind of like the giant bow.
Being an editor entails a lot more than just editing. When you’re working on a small paper, you are out there with your readers. That’s partly because you don’t have security guards to slow some of them down before they find your office. But it’s also because you’re there, just a few feet off the sidewalk, sitting in the town you cover. It’s their town. And you’re there on borrowed time.
If your door is open long enough, readers will start coming in and asking you to do things. And this is a good thing. In my career, these have included, but are not limited, to the following:
• Organizing a high-school dance, with an “under the sea” theme. I never thought I’d be buying fishnet by the gross, but there I was at a junk yard, with the dance just a few hours away. We managed to scrape the rotting fish scales off in time.
• Working a 7 a.m. career fair, to an audience of three, one of whom kept mimicking me.
• Chaperoning a high-school class to Hawaii. Absolutely no complaints there.
• Hauling buckets of raw emu guts to a community haunted house. Never again.
• Taking pictures of a family reunion because they couldn’t find a real photographer. I had no idea who anyone was, but I did get a great lunch out of it.
• Standing on a flat-bed truck, dressed in outlandish clothing, heaving candy at people. Yes, another parade. But there was a party afterward, and I didn’t have to dance this time.
So, all right; maybe these aren’t things Mark Twain would relish about a life in print.
But if you think about it, it’s been one hell of an adventure.
And maybe my extended family seems just a little bigger these days.
And I did get first place as a dancing gift box.
So take that, Mr. Twain.
Talk to us
Please share your story tips by emailing editor@kentreporter.com.
To share your opinion for publication, submit a letter through our website https://www.kentreporter.com/submit-letter/. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. (We’ll only publish your name and hometown.) Please keep letters to 300 words or less.
