I\u2019ve always liked what Mark Twain said about being a newspaper editor: \u201cI am not an editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good, so that God will not make me one.\u201d<\/p>\n
That thought occurred to me several years ago, as I was dancing in a Christmas parade, dressed as a giant gift box. I had a bow on my head and I was blowing a horn. It was pouring down rain, and the battery-operated lights on my box kept going out.<\/p>\n
Why was I doing this? Because I was the town\u2019s newspaper editor, that\u2019s why. You do things like this to be part of the community. And okay, I did kind of like the giant bow.<\/p>\n
Being an editor entails a lot more than just editing. When you\u2019re working on a small paper, you are out there with your readers. That\u2019s partly because you don\u2019t have security guards to slow some of them down before they find your office. But it\u2019s also because you\u2019re there, just a few feet off the sidewalk, sitting in the town you cover. It\u2019s their town. And you\u2019re there on borrowed time.<\/p>\n
If your door is open long enough, readers will start coming in and asking you to do things. And this is a good thing. In my career, these have included, but are not limited, to the following:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Organizing a high-school dance, with an \u201cunder the sea\u201d theme. I never thought I\u2019d be buying fishnet by the gross, but there I was at a junk yard, with the dance just a few hours away. We managed to scrape the rotting fish scales off in time.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Working a 7 a.m. career fair, to an audience of three, one of whom kept mimicking me.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Chaperoning a high-school class to Hawaii. Absolutely no complaints there.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Hauling buckets of raw emu guts to a community haunted house. Never again.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Taking pictures of a family reunion because they couldn\u2019t find a real photographer. I had no idea who anyone was, but I did get a great lunch out of it.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Standing on a flat-bed truck, dressed in outlandish clothing, heaving candy at people. Yes, another parade. But there was a party afterward, and I didn\u2019t have to dance this time.<\/p>\n
So, all right; maybe these aren\u2019t things Mark Twain would relish about a life in print.<\/p>\n
But if you think about it, it\u2019s been one hell of an adventure.<\/p>\n
And maybe my extended family seems just a little bigger these days.<\/p>\n
And I did get first place as a dancing gift box.<\/p>\n
So take that, Mr. Twain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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