Globe editor praises the late Jack Harshaw

In her weekly column, Joplin Globe Editor Carol Stark, who received her start in journalism at The Carthage Press, offers memories of former Press City Editor Jack Harshaw, who died this week at age 81:

The Press, always an afternoon paper, had no computers in 1977. We worked on typewriters in a room where you could cut the cigarette smoke with a knife. We typed on long reams of paper then ripped them off and handed the copy over to Jack if it was for a news page. That’s when the pencil came out from behind his ear and the dreaded markups began.

If there was time, he’d make reporters rewrite their stories. For me, that was every bit as valuable as the Journalism 101 classes I was taking at the college. For Jack, less was more and he’d scratch out my flowery adjectives and “prose” — I thought I was deep and compelling.

“News is news, kiddo. Just get the facts down right,” he’d tell me.