Community newspaper was place to learn trade

It made me sad to read that the North Little Rock Times, a venerable weekly newspaper serving a great city, will cease publication this week.

My career began at the Times in December 1986, when editor Joe Schratz hired an untested, inexperienced University of Arkansas at Little Rock senior to run the single-person sports department.

The job entailed covering all sports at North Little Rock Ole Main and Northeast high schools; Lakewood, Rose City and Ridge Road junior high schools; American Legion baseball; and myriad other summer sports.

The part-time gig paid $4.50 an hour. A young person could survive on such a meager wage in the ‘80s. Rent for a one-room apartment at Holcomb Heights was about $320 a month, and gasoline was about $1 a gallon. My 1975 Toyota Celica was a gas miser. A year’s tuition at UALR cost less than $1,000. In fact, tuition for my freshman year in 198283 was only $800, plus fees.

Money wasn’t my motive, though. The Times got my foot in the door of a very insular industry and taught me how to be a newspaperman.

Its diverse duties taught me how to balance a complex schedule, and I learned how to cram a lot of names, quotes, statistics and color in a very limited amount of space.

I shot all of my own photographs, which I still do, while keeping complete game stats and play by play. After football and basketball games, I worked alone in a darkroom developing black-and-white film. I designed and laid out my pages with a pica pole and proportion wheel.

The job also taught me tact and diplomacy.

I swear that Times readers read their papers with a cup of coffee in one hand and a ruler in the other. If my story about a Northeast game was 1 inch longer than an Ole Main gamer, or if I used a bigger photo for one than the other, the affronted parties made their displeasure known by card, letter, phone and in person.

Times reporters were of far lesser stature than Arkansas Democrat or Arkansas Gazette reporters, but we enjoyed a relationship with our readers and newsmakers. To the athletes at the schools I covered, I was their guy. I was the one who knew them by their nicknames and covered their games from the sidelines instead of the press box. Occasionally, I’d join them on their long bus rides to road games.

Sometimes I wrote about outdoors topics, like outstanding hunting or fishing trips that someone in the community experienced. A feature about Jim Rawlins, who wrote the first guide for the Ouachita Trail, was a personal watershed moment.

I also noticed that the outdoors stories and columns were universally well received, and they were more satisfying to write than ball sports copy. That was the beacon that lit my path.

In many ways, the Times newsroom was the nursery where I found my voice and cultivated my style. It also was a patient and forgiving place where you could make rookie mistakes under the guidance of a managing editor like John Thompson, who taught you gently but sternly how to avoid them in the future.

It was a place to learn and grow.

To me, that’s a function that no other medium can fill. Community newspapers are places where “cubs” can learn reporting and news gathering techniques and hone their craft. They are the farm clubs that train tomorrow’s big leaguers.

What happened to the rest of the Times staff from that era? Schratz works at the Jonesboro Sun. Our city reporter Kate Richardson went straight to the public relations department of Alltel. Our photographer joined a rock ‘n’ roll band. The one that replaced him went to work for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

As weekly papers like the Times go away, there are fewer places where young people can start and grow under seasoned, professional leadership.

Times and markets change, and few markets have changed as rapidly and as dramatically as media. As people change the way they access, consume and process information, obsolete models go extinct.

Miss Laura said the other day that the Times had a “dinosaur” feel even in 1987.

In retrospect, yes. But in 1987, it felt like opportunity.