by Dave Balcom
He continued. “I know that they have no idea of what’s going on, except of course if one of them is a guilty party, so we need to concoct a cover story that explains why you of all people are interested in them ... but I figure if you’re willing, you’ll figure out a cover story...” here he looked at Jan, “The latest notes in Jim’s file say you’re pretty good at that sort of thinking.”
Chapter 12
I met Sonny Long Smith right on time Wednesday morning. The young editor was a tall man, something over six and a half feet, but if he weighed more than two hundred pounds I would have been shocked. His gaunt physique was accentuated by the acne scars on both of his sunken cheeks. His dark eyes gave him a haunted look, but all of that was blown away when he smiled, “Glad to meet you, Mr. Stanton. I’ve read your books and I’m a big fan,” he said as he shook my hand at the front desk of the newspaper.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to be running a note in my column this week that I met you, and if you’ll stand still for it, I’m going to have a photo taken of the two of us.” He said all of that as he guided me through the maze of unoccupied desks back to his office.
I sat in the only chair opposite his desk, and he sat hipshot on the corner of his desk, “I’m dying to know what brought you to our little corner of the world...” And he waited.
I looked around, “As I said on the phone, I’m in town visiting friends and I try to always make it to the local newspaper, check up on how the industry is surviving... chew the fat a bit...”
“May I ask who your friends are?”
“Ed and Rita Sweet; do you know them?”
“I’ve met Ed once; he might not remember me, however. I was really new to the town then.”
“Oh, he remembered you,” I said and changed the subject, “Is this your first time out as the editor?”
“Yes,” he said with a big grin, “I sure don’t hope for an inaugural experience like the one you survived in New York.”
“Where did you come from?”
“I have worked for the Listen Family Newspaper Group since graduating from Columbia; I worked news, sports, copy desk... you know, the normal path. I was in Hannibal when this job came open. I applied, and they picked me.”
“Married?”
“Yes, with one baby. They came right along with me.”
“Are they happy here?”
“Shopping is a little sparse for my wife, but compared to the bigger cities, this is a really safe place to raise a kid...”
“How’s your paper doing?”
“Well, we’re a privately held company; I’m not at liberty to talk about revenues and expenses...” I was waving him off so he stopped his canned response.
“I wouldn’t ask for that kind of information if you were traded on Wall Street, Sonny. I was just wondering about, you know, how have staff and the community responded to your work here...”
“Of course,” he said, a little embarrassed, it seemed to me. “You did your share of rehab work in your career, so you know it takes some time for the new guy to earn his way into the hearts and minds of the staff and the readers.
“Here it’s a bit easier in terms of staff; we’re down to three full-timers, including me; and we have four piecework stringers who cover specific things. My title is editor, but I’m a general assignment reporter, photographer, graphic designer and ad salesman. Our ad staff consists of two women; one outside and one inside handling classifieds, obits and proof reading. We have one graphic artist left, and my wife works production nights – she was a copy editor when I met her, and she works eight hours a week with our daughter in a playpen next to her desk.”
I nodded, looking at the rows of empty desks outside his office. “In its hay day, how many folks worked here?”
“There were ten full time equivalents two years ago; then the Fiskes announced their departure. I sometimes feel like the captain of the Titanic, but other days I feel like I’m going to oversee the biggest comeback since Joe Montana.”
I smiled at him, but said nothing.
“There are signs of life here lately,” he said. “Our county created a task force for economic development last year, and last week we made a presentation to a firm in Illinois that is looking to expand. Their described need and the vacant Fiske footprint are nearly identical.” His voice dropped to a whisper, “It would bring fourteen hundred family wage jobs at the start – that’s less than half of the Fiske jobs that we lost, but their manpower need would grow by about twenty percent a year for the next five years. That would put the number near twenty-five hundred in year five!”
“How good does this look?”
“It’s not something I can print, but their president and his group were down here last week on the Q-T, and as he was leaving he told our chairman that he expected to announce his plan this week.”
“And your chairman told him about your deadlines?”
He laughed out loud, “Hardly. My deadline wouldn’t make the top thousand factors in this deal – I have permission to run a special edition if this breaks off deadline.”
“That’s terrific! Just what are your drop-dead deadlines?”
“Scheduled news stories to file no later than noon Wednesday; paper sent to press at midnight. We have a one-hour window for transmitting pages starting at eleven, so we can take breaking news, sports, obits... that kind of stuff right up to that last minute.”
“That’s pretty workable; where are you printed?”
“Hannibal. Truck comes with the newspapers by five a.m. and we make the post office in time for star routes. Our carriers do in-town and single copy by seven...”
“When’s the final time you take classifieds or, say, special-case display ad?”
“Our grocery ad goes to the printer with the front cover at eleven-thirty – it’s the back page of the A section – so there’s time for them to get their final prices on that ad. Our Obit page is the last page of Classifieds, and it runs on the back of the B section. Those are the two last pages to go to press so we get final scores and latest possible obits, and the occasional ‘too late to classify’ notice. The drop dead deadline for that page is eleven.
“When you only publish once a week, you have to do whatever you can to, you know, break some news,” he said with a shrug. “Of course we update our Website daily; that’s really our most important breaking news service to this community. The print edition is more about the ‘who’, the ‘how’, and the ‘so what’ rather than the ‘what’ or the ‘when,’ you know?”
I nodded. “That’s the way it has always been on a weekly, but with the added tool of the Internet, you get a fair shot at the breaking stuff as well.”
“You got it. Now if we could just get advertisers to spend appropriately to be presented with that ‘daily’ content, then I’d be a star.”
“I understand; newspapers may have squeezed that toothpaste out of the tube on the down stroke when they bought that tripe about ‘build it and they’ll come’ when the Internet first appeared.
“The mainstream papers and everyone else set the tone that all online content was free, and that was a myth that never died. I can still remember the New York Times trying to persuade me to subscribe after I’d been reading their stuff for free for three years... tough sell.”
He chuckled at that, “The real problem is trying to prove effectiveness.”
“That was always an issue with advertising, but when the shop owner was seeing his ad in the paper he was sure all of his customers were too; but for the longest time the shop owners were older than the regular Internet users, so they weren’t seeing the ads and doubted if their customers were seeing them... that should be wearing off now.”
“To some extent, but the real problem is trying to match ‘clicks,’ or ‘views’ to purchases. The Internet is a true mass medium. To travel Bill Gates’s ‘Road Ahead’ you need to have millions of people paying fractions of a penny to make enough money to run your business. To generat
e the kind of income we need to run a real newspaper in a market of fewer than twenty thousand people, we’re going to have to reinvent some part of that formula.”
“Making any progress?”
“Not enough to fill those desks yet,” he said with a self-deprecating grin. “If I do, however, I’ll be as famous in my way as the great Jim Stanton is in his.”
“If you pull that off, I’m sure your success will be more important for this town and more lasting for your industry than anything I ever did. I wish you well.”
I started making movements for leaving, but he stopped me. “Before you go, I have to ask if you were friends with Ed and Rita before he won the American Tribute Sweepstakes?”
I settled back into my chair. “I was in high school with them back in Michigan.”
“Really?” He picked up a reporter’s notebook on the desk and started making notes. “Were you close?”
“Not really that close,” I said, knowing that this wasn’t going to go well for me if I continued to tell the truth. “Ed was a year behind me, Rita two years behind Ed. We got along...”
“So is your visit connected to their new-found wealth in some way?”
“Why would you ask that?”
He gave me a sideways look as he continued to write in his notebook, “Oh, call it intuition or just reporter’s nosiness, but I find myself being visited by a retired journalist who has made a name for himself by writing novels based on his real life experiences, and I can’t help but wonder why.
“Add in that he’s in my little corner of the world visiting the only man I know here ’bouts who made out all right after being dumped by the Fiske brothers, and, gee, I just wonder... you know?”
“You are a wonder, Mr. Smith, but I wouldn’t make too much of this visit. My wife and I just came to see the Sweets, spend a couple of days and, remember, I’m a community news guy first and foremost; my wife is a principal owner and former operator of a weekly group of free papers in Michigan – we always try to soak up local current events when we’re in a new place.”
“So you’re not here in connection with the ATS prize?”
“Why would I be?”
He smiled and shook his head, “As I said, I don’t know why, but it seems like a question that needs to be asked.”
I stood up, “I wish I could help you with that...”
“Oh, great,” he said and stepped past me to the door of his office. He opened the door and spoke to a woman across the room, “Francine? Can you bring your camera over here?”
He turned to me, “Do you mind?”
“Of course not,” I said.
“Great!” He was beaming like a school boy, “I want to add you to my collection,” and he waved his hand at the wall to the left of his desk. It was covered in black and white photos of him with a variety of people. “See that?” He pointed to a larger than normal photo of him with President Obama. There was a swarm of reporters standing around them, and Smith was taking notes as the President was speaking.
“He was Sen. Obama then,” Smith said with real pride. “He had been in Iowa, and his campaign swung down through Missouri... I caught them when they stopped for coffee in Hannibal, and he answered three questions for me... It was great!”
“And you want to put me in that gallery?”
“Why not?” He reached for my elbow and I moved with him to the other side of his desk. “Francine, meet Jim Stanton; Jim this is Francine Wilcox.”
“My pleasure,” I said to her with a smile.
She was all business, looked through the viewfinder, moved two steps to the side and then fired off a string of photos. She quickly reviewed the digital images and then looked up with a smile. “Pleasure is all mine.”
“Whatcha got?” Smith asked.
She turned the camera around so we could see and pushed the replay button and thumbed us through the images... “Pretty neat, I think.”
“Number three’s perfect,” Smith said with a chuckle. “Prep it for my column, will you?”
“Sure; you want a print?”
“Absolutely; it’s for me, not the newspaper.” He handed her a thumb drive. “Put in on here, will you? I’ll get the print at Jensens’ Drug.”
“No problem,” she said with another smile, and then turned to me. “I had never heard of you until yesterday, but visiting us made Sonny’s week, so all of us here thank you.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “No problem. I’ve really enjoyed it.”
Smith walked me to the front door. “Sorry we didn’t get coffee, but I’m really glad to have met you, Mr. Stanton.”
“Jim,” I said. “Keep the faith; newspapers are precious and require a great deal of tender love and care.”
“Thanks, Jim.”
Chapter 13
I met Jan back at the motel, and found her in a funk. I replayed my visit with her, and we agreed that we had the absolute deadlinenailed down, and in a manner that hadn’t compromised the Sweets in any way.
“But I think Mr. Sonny Long Smith didn’t just fall off the journalism turnip truck,” she said after I had described his interview. “But then again, he’s a Columbia graduate...”
“Actually, I’ll bet that means he attended the University of Missouri in Columbia,” I said.
“Of course, I wasn’t thinking,” she said. “But, then again, that’s not chopped liver in terms of journalism training.”
“His first question took me off stride, but I deflected it as best I could without flat out lying.”
“Sounds like you did, but I’m thinking you better give the Sweets a heads up that they’ll probably be getting a call from Mr. Smith. You can fill them in on what you said so they can take the same line.”
I pulled my phone and punched Ed’s cell number. He answered and I told him what I’d found and what I’d said about our relationship.
“That sounds okay. Isn’t it?”
“I think so, Ed, but we think you and Rita should be thinking about what you’ll say about that subject when he calls either or both of you.”
“Why will he call us?”
“I don’t know that he will, but Jan and I both think he will.”
“What should I say?”
“I can’t tell you what to say, Ed. The only thing I can tell you is that you want to talk with him. Don’t blow him off in any way. I think you should talk about how much fun it is to be reacquainted after all these years and how much fun it is to show Jan and I – both of us connoisseurs of small-town America – your corner of Missouri.
“I don’t think he’s going to come after you or Rita as long as you don’t seem to be hiding anything. Okay?”
“I’d rather he just didn’t call.”
“But if he does, don’t reject him, Ed. Hell hath no fury like a reporter who thinks he’s being played, stonewalled or lied to.”
“I get your drift.”
“Good. We’re about to go to lunch and discuss a strategy for meeting your kids this week. After lunch ...”
“I’m playing golf in about fifteen minutes. Agent Richards told me to not disrupt my normal schedule. Rita’s back in school today. I’ll be home about three-thirty. We’re planning on you two for dinner. Agents Richards and Hurst said they’d be around a little after seven...”
“Good. We’ll be there in time for dinner. Anything we can bring?”
“Could you bring some vanilla ice cream?”
“Not a problem, see you about five.”
Chapter 14
While I had been at the newspaper, Jan had been video chatting with her folks at the newspapers in Michigan. After my conversation with Ed, I waited in the “sitting” room of our suite until she finished up. She came out just beaming.
“That looks like it was a good meeting,” I said to her.
“Oh, it was terrific! I can’t believe how good Julie looks. She’s really close now, but she’s radiant, full of energy and just... well terrific!”
Julie Rathers was pu
blisher of the Mineral Valley Record and CEO of the little newspaper group that was now completely employee owned and operated. She was also pregnant for the first time at the ripe old age of 38, and I found it totally in character that Jan was more concerned with her publisher’s pregnancy than the operational status of her newspaper.
“So how’s your group performing?”
“Oh, that. The malaise you hear about the impending death of the industry has not reached the Record or its group. Nobody’s going to confuse the management group’s P&L with Microsoft’s, but they’re doing well, growing and having a ball. They don’t miss me a bit, and that in itself is perhaps my proudest accomplishment.”
I hugged her and said nothing. She nuzzled my collarbone and I rubbed her back. We stood like that for a while and then she pushed me to arm’s length. “What are we going to do here?”
“We’re going to go find Riley Parker and introduce ourselves.”
“He’s the younger of the adopted boys, right?”
“Correct, but more to the point, he’s the only one who lives here in Elliotsville.”
“How are you going to find him?”
“Special investigative reporting technique; you want that I should reveal all my secrets?” I did my best Humphrey Bogart impression, which is pretty lame.
“You looked him up in the phone book, didn’t you?”
“I’m totally deflated.”
“But you did; didn’t you?”
“I’ll drive.”
The drive took barely five minutes. Riley’s address turned out to be a double wide mobile home in a small park on the northwest side of town.
The park had an abandoned look to it that defied its entrance sign “Welcome to Hope Acres.”
Riley’s published address was the trailer park, and as we pulled into the circular drive that created the park, there was an index to residents that could be read from the car. Parker was listed as lot nine, and we proceeded to that site and found three cars in the driveway.
“They have company; we should have called,” Jan said.
