One of the things I enjoyed the most about my two decades plus as a newspaper reporter was having the opportunity to cover many different kinds of stories.
One of the examples I always use was the day in October 1992 when I covered three events in a five-hour time period: Vice President Dan Quayle's visit to Carthage, Carthage High School's match in the district volleyball tournament at Joplin and the Webb City Council meeting. I'm sure any reporter who has worked at a smaller newspaper has had the same kind of experience.
It doesn't happen as often with the Joplin Globe (especially since John Hacker left), but today's page one did shine the spotlight on reporter Roger McKinney.
McKinney had the lead story about an EPA proposal to clean up Treece, Kan, but the story that dominated page one was McKinney's coverage of the funeral of Girard football coach Craig Crespino.
This is one of those times when the Globe's obsession with page-one regional coverage made sense. While I might argue with the placement of the Treece story, McKinney's story on the Crespino funeral, coupled with the powerful David Stonner photo of a football player hugging a fellow Girard student after the mass is the kind of reporting that made me proud to be a member of the fraternity of a good portion of my adult life.
2 comments:
Roger McKinney still works at the Globe? I guess not everyone has quit yet.
Sometimes moving up to a bigger paper isn't as easy as it looks... and some of us choose not to step down to smaller papers. *shrug* Not that there's anything wrong with that if it fits your lifestyle and/or career goals.
When you apply at a metro and find out you're competing with at least 100 other folks for one open position, you realize it's not so easy -- despite how good your portfolio is or what types honors and awards have been bestowed upon you.
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