Akron's Daily Miracle

Stuart Warner

Description

Akron's Daily Miracle begins with the death of the heir to John S. and James Knight's newspaper empire and ends with the demise of Knight Ridder Newspapers but also with a note about how the Knight spirit lives on in Akron and elsewhere. The Beacon Journal staff discuss how they came together to produce the Pulitzer Gold Medal-winning series A Question of Color; what it was like to walk behind Akron's Lebron James in the parade of champions in Cleveland; and the impact of being the largest city in American without a local TV station. In between is a collection of essays from those who produced the news in the Rubber City, including international best-selling authors Thrity Umrigar and Regina Brett and popular columnists Bob Dyer and Stuart Warner, written to remind readers of the value of excellent local journalism.

Sujets

• Miracle
• History of the Americas
• Midwestern United States
• Local history
• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: University of Akron Press
• Date de parution: 08 décembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629222028
• Langue: English

Extrait

A KRON’S D AILY
MIRACLE
Series on Ohio History and Culture
Series on Ohio History and Culture
Kevin Kern, Editor
Kathleen Endres, Akron’s “Better Half ”: Women’s Clubs and the Humanization of a City, 1825–1925
Russ Musarra and Chuck Ayers, Walks Around Akron: Rediscovering a City in Transition
Heinz Poll, edited by Barbara Schubert, A Time to Dance: The Life of Heinz Poll
Mark D. Bowles, Chains of Opportunity: The University of Akron and the Emergence of the Polymer Age, 1909–2007
Russ Vernon, West Point Market Cookbook
Stan Purdum, Pedaling to Lunch: Bike Rides and Bites in Northeastern Ohio
Joyce Dyer, Goosetown: Reconstructing an Akron Neighborhood
Robert J. Roman, Ohio State Football: The Forgotten Dawn
Timothy H. H. Thoresen, River, Reaper, Rail: Agriculture and Identity in Ohio’s Mad River Valley, 1795–1885
Brian G. Redmond, Bret J. Ruby, and Jarrod Burks, eds., Encountering Hopewell in the Twenty-first Century, Ohio and Beyond. Volume 1: Monuments and Ceremony
Brian G. Redmond, Bret J. Ruby, and Jarrod Burks, eds., Encountering Hopewell in the Twenty-first Century, Ohio and Beyond. Volume 2: Settlements, Foodways, and Interaction
Jen Hirt, Hear Me Ohio
Ray Greene, Coach of a Different Color: One Man’s Story of Breaking Barriers in Football
Mark Auburn, editor, Hail We Akron!: The Third Fifty Years of The University of Akron, 1970 to 2020
Deb Van Tassel Warner and Stuart Warner, eds., Akron’s Daily Miracle: Reporting the News in the Rubber City
Titles published since 2006.
For a complete listing of titles published in the series, go to www.uakron.edu/uapress
A KRON ’ S D AILY
MIRACLE
Reporting the News in the Rubber City
Edited by Deb Van Tassel Warner and Stuart Warner
Copyright © 2020 by the University of Akron Press
All rights reserved • First Edition 2020 • Manufactured in the United States of America.
All inquiries and permission requests should be addressed to the Publisher,
The University of Akron Press, Akron, Ohio 44325-1703.
ISBN: 978-1-629221-94-6 (paper)
ISBN: 978-1-629222-01-1 (ePDF)
ISBN:978-1-629222-02-8 (ePub)
A catalog record for this title is available from the Library of Congress.
∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).
Cover: Cover illustration by Chuck Ayers. Cover design by Amy Freels.
Akron’s Daily Miracle was designed and typeset in Minion Pro with Myriad display by Thea Ledendecker and Amy Freels and printed on sixty-pound white and bound by Bookmasters of Ashland, Ohio.
We dedicate this book to Dale and to all absent friends.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Death of the Heir to the Knight Empire
Who We Were
2. A Mystical, Magical Place…
3. … And We Were All Pirates
The Stories We Had to Cover
4. ‘A Bringer of Change’ for Akron and the Newsroom
5. The Real Ernest Angley
6. The Death of Charlie Wright
7 . Lane School: Finding the Pulse of a Neighborhood
8. Sept. 11, 2001 — ‘We Had a Job … a Duty’
9. ‘20/20’ Hindsight: When Geraldo Rivera Came to Akron
10. How a Crooked River Shaped Environmental Coverage
11. The Walk of a Lifetime Behind a King from Akron
12. Coming Together for A Question of Color
Trying to Get It Right (But Not Always Succeeding)
13. We Were Family — and Families Make Mistakes
14. A Long Climb to the Mountaintop for Women
15. The Guild-ed Age of Journalism in Akron
The Departments
16. An Intern’s Journey: The Soap Box Derby and Beyond
17. Cooking Up Delicious Journalism in the Food Section
18. The Copy Desk: Adding Some Life to Deadlines
19. From the Biz Beat to Beyoncé
20. Oh, to Be a Fly on the Ceiling of the Art Department
21. Getting the Picture
22. Taking a Position Without Being Bland
The Competition
23. The Golden Days of Radio WHLO News
24. Caught in a Catch 23 — The End of Local TV News
Dealing with Change
25. Screwing the Pooch: Switch to A.M. Paper Was Rocky
26. Managing Through Changing Times
27. The Last Day at 44 E. Exchange St.
Afterword: The Empire Is Gone but the Knight Spirit Lives On
About Our Authors
Acknowledgments
In addition to the 28 Akron journalists and former journalists who wrote chapters for this book, several former Beacon Journal staff members volunteered to copy edit and fact check. We are grateful for the editing assistance from Carla Davis, Kathy Fraze, John Greenman, Jim Kavanagh, Ann Sheldon Mezger, Roger Mezger, Charles Montague, Marcia Myers, Olga Reswow, Lynne Sherwin and Sarah Vradenburg. For believing in the worthiness of this project and supporting it without reservation, we also thank Director Jon Miller, Marketing Manager Julie Gammons, Editorial & Design Coordinator Amy Freels and Print Manufacturing & Digital Production Coordinator Thea Ledendecker of The University of Akron Press. We also want to thank the Special Collections staff at the Akron-Summit County Public Library for helping us locate photographs and Kim Anderson, executive assistant to the publisher at the Beacon Journal, for obtaining permission to use the photos. And finally, a thank you to Kendall Allen Rockwell for sharing Dale Allen’s unpublished memoir with us.
Deb Van Tassel Warner and Stuart Warner
Introduction
This book is not a history of media in Akron. It begins with the death of the heir to John S. and James L. Knight’s newspaper empire and ends with the demise of Knight Ridder Newspapers, with a coda about how the Knight spirit lives on. In between is a collection of essays from those who produced the news in the Rubber City, written in the hope it will reinforce the value of excellent local journalism.
From the time we began work on this book, we lost four Beacon Journal newsroom leaders from the era memorialized on these pages: former Editor Dale Allen, former Managing Editor Larry Williams, former Editorial Page Editor David Cooper, and Bonnie Bolden, who was copy desk chief, features editor, and metro editor. The title comes from an essay in Dale’s unpublished memoir. An excerpt:
We called our newspaper “the daily miracle,” and there was good reason for that description, even if some of our readers thought otherwise. They had other names for what we produced. Some used generic terms, such as “rag” or “yellow sheet” or “scandal sheet” or “lining for the bird cage.” Others gave special names to papers serving their communities. In my hometown of Joplin, Mo., folks called the morning newspaper “the morning liar” and the evening paper “the evening apology.” In Raleigh, N.C., readers called the News & Observer “the News & Disturber.” In Cleveland, when readers wrote about their Plain Dealer they labeled it “the Pee Dee.” In Kent, Ohio, The Record Courier became “the Wretched Courier.” And in Akron folks had another name for the Beacon Journal: “The Leaking Urinal.”
But, in my view “daily miracle” still seems an apt description. Name another business in which a brand new product is put on the assembly line every day, pumped out during our peak years by the hundreds of thousands, then delivered to customers. And not just Monday through Friday, but every day of the week, 365 days a year. Even after witnessing the miracle firsthand for 40-plus years, my mind still boggles at what we did, in part because of the myriad tasks required to put that newspaper on a subscriber’s porch or in their newspaper box each day. And to do it for a minimal charge of 10 cents or a quarter a copy back a few years ago. Even with all the new technology we brought to the table in the latter years of the 20th century, the work to produce the daily newspaper remains a wonder to behold.
Chapter 1
The Death of the Heir to the Knight Empire
Mary Ethridge
John S. Knight has loomed large in my life from its beginning. Sometimes literally.
In my early childhood, I knew Mr. Knight as my dad’s boss, a towering, reserved man whose visits to our home required my patent leather shoes and best manners.
As an adult, JSK’s presence haunted me as I drove past the John S. Knight Convention Center to work as a reporter at the Beacon Journal years after both Mr. Knight and Dad had died.
At the paper, I’d meet with colleagues in the JSK room where larger-than-life photographs of the man peered over my shoulder, ordering me to, “Get the truth and print it!” Readers who objected to something I’d written would tell me, “John S. Knight would be rolling in his grave.” After leaving the Beacon Journal, I did some freelance work for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. His life and legacy have surrounded me for decades.
But in December of 1975, together in a Boston hospital room, we were just two people linked by loss — an old man and a teenager stunned by violence and grief. This moment marked what I consider the “before” and “after” segments of my life, a clear line of demarcation between innocence and experience, the time between when life made sense and when it didn’t.
Let me first go back to the “before.” During Mr. Knight’s visits to our home when I was young, he was often accompanied by his adult grandson, John S. Knight III, or “Johnny,” who worked as an editorial writer at the Detroit Free Press under my dad’s tutelage. Both my dad and I adored Johnny. Dashing, hip and as warm as his grandfather was reserved, Johnny charmed me completely. Although he was 14 years my senior, he’d break away from adult conversation to talk to me earnestly. His questions went well beyond the favorite-subject variety that adults usually pose to kids. We discussed the Vietnam War, music, saving the planet.

John S. Knight (left) looks over the Beacon Journal in 1955 with Knight Newspapers executives Lee Hills (center) and Knight’s brother, James. JSK was grooming his grandson, John S. Knight III, to take over the company until the younger Knight was murdered. (Beacon Journal file photo)
I can still see him sitting in my parents’ living room, a vision of cool in hip huggers and platforms