I was sitting here in my office a couple of weeks ago and received a call from the news radio station that I worked at for several years to put myself through college, KASU 91.9FM in Jonesboro, Arkansas. I chatted with their news manager, who said the community was approaching the 25th anniversary of the shooting which happened at Westside Middle School. The station wanted to conduct a brief interview about what I remembered as one of the first reporters who arrived on-scene on that horrific date – Tuesday, March 24, 1998. I also helped to provide their station some file photos – which I still had on a portable hard drive – that must never have been archived.
Up until Columbine, which took place just about one year later, Westside was one of the worst school shootings to date. Sadly, most people have forgotten all about the event there that led to five dead and 10 injured, especially with school shootings in the headlines almost every week now. But it was big news back in March 1998. Network news anchors from all over the country eventually came to the scene. I remember some Japanese and British news stations even flying their reporters in.
When all this occurred, I was just 18 years old. Still wet behind the ears. I remember that I had wrestled with going back home to Chicago for spring break that year, but decided to stick around and earn some extra money for school picking up on-air news shifts at the station. We had a bare-bones crew that week, and even those who were around were out of the office at lunch when the phone calls began coming in at just after 12:30 p.m. that day. I remember, with no one else really around, making the decision myself to grab a tape recorder and camera and rush out to the scene. I’ll spare you the horrific things I witnessed. Needless to say, 25 years later I still have nightmares on occasion.
Not to shift gears too much, but when I received the call from my old station, part of me also seriously couldn’t believe the events of that tragic day in Jonesboro happened 25 years ago. Jeesh … that’s literally a quarter of a century! Have I really been doing this that long? (Yes, I have the gray hairs to prove it … they are coming in more and more.) “This,” of course, meaning being in journalism as a news reporter – now reporter and editor – and having the humble position of having a front-row seat to history.
As the Inter-County Leader continues to celebrate its 90th anniversary this year, I often think of all the previous reporters and editors who went before my time at the helm here, and had a front-row seat to the “big stories” that you have read about over the years, both locally, but also nationally and internationally. A lot of what we see out and about sticks with us in our memories more than readers probably realize. I have interviewed thousands of people over the years, and remember a great many of the people.
Being someone who loves history, too, I often fantasize about what some of the early reporters thought about here at the Leader when big stories arose. What was it like to hear about the attack on Pearl Harbor on the radio and have to write the story in the newspaper advising readers of the Leader that we were now entering World War II? How many people were in the office when that happened on a Sunday morning? Same thing for the JFK assassination … and maybe that we would be getting a new president as a result of Watergate?
Some of the more modern big stories I can remember actually reporting on, so maybe that is an insight to what emotions those early Leader reporters were feeling.
I remember having to cancel my New Year’s Eve dinner plans on Dec. 31, 1999, because our news manager thought the world was going to come to an end with “Y2K” and wanted all reporters in the station and ready to roll if needed. (Spoiler alert … nothing happened and we were all sent home at 12:30 a.m. I just had an angry girlfriend who wasn’t able to go out.) I also remember being in the local ABC News newsroom where I worked in Arkansas when the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, happened. Such a flood of emotion that day, too. Trying to decide what local angles of everything to cover, while internally a mush of emotions, knowing my stepsister worked for an opera company just blocks from the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, New York City, and we were not able to get ahold of her for almost 24 hours afterward, with the main cellphone towers on the Twin Towers out of service.
There have been a lot of totally positive and magical and special moments, too, being a news reporter and editor. I have gotten to meet five U.S. presidents during the course of my career, including working out of the press area at the White House several times. Even here … since becoming editor of the Leader last July … it has been fun following St. Croix Falls volleyball to the state playoffs and getting to ask candidates in the 2022 elections whatever questions that I wanted to. I have certainly got to do some super-cool things and interview some super-cool people as a result of this job so far … and I haven’t even been here a year yet.
Sometimes you do really get one extreme of “happy” and the other extreme of “sad” all in one day. I was having that discussion with my reporters, Sarah Beth and Shaila, just a couple of weeks ago. I think for all of us, the unpredictability and variety of stories we cover is really one of the most interesting and appealing aspects of this job. No day is ever dull. One day you might be part of the next “big story” that you will remember for a lifetime, either for good or bad. Another day you might be interviewing the governor, talking to kids playing with Legos at the Milltown Library, and then covering a house fire in Osceola, all in the same day.
Here is my salute and thank-you to, first, all of you, the individuals and groups who have shared their stories with us over the last 90 years, so that we, as journalists, can in turn, share that with our readers and members of the Leader each and every week.
Also, a thank-you to my two current reporters, and, really, all of the previous reporters who have worked for this amazing newspaper. Many of those have given up a lot of time with their families on evenings and weekends to cover the events that mean so much to our communities here in Northwest Wisconsin. But that passion for journalism, “big” story, all the way down to the “smallest” story, has been a key ingredient into our past and current success at the Leader … and hopefully continued success for many years to come.
CUTLINES – Special Photos
The Thursday, April 19, 1945, edition of the Inter-County Leader featured news about the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He passed away the previous week while on vacation at a resort in Georgia.
The Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2000, edition of the Inter-County Leader featured a report by Mary Stirrat, advising that “everything went smoothly” during “Y2K” preparations. Many feared computers would crash and cause problems to many different industries.
The Wednesday, Aug. 14, 1974, edition of the Inter-County Leader mentions that Richard Nixon decided to step down days prior and that Gerald Ford would become the next president of the United States.
The Wednesday, Nov. 27, 1974, edition of the Inter-County Leader advises readers about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, while he was visiting Dallas, Texas.
Things had to quickly be switched up for the front cover of the Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001, edition of the Inter-County Leader, following terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington and Pennsylvania.
The Thursday, Dec. 11, 1941, edition of the Inter-County Leader has the large headline, “United States at War,” following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that happened four days earlier.
Twenty-five years ago, almost to the week, I arrived at my first “big” news story, the Westside Middle School shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas. I worked at KASU 91.9FM at the time, a local news radio station, alongside John Seigenthaler, an anchor at the time for NBC and MSNBC News.
