Turning the page on newspaper career

I’ve turned over a dozen ways in my mind to write this column but none of them quite work so maybe I’ll just go for the straight-to-the-point summary lead.

After more than 35 years of  reporting to a newspaper office, in some capacity or another, I am leaving the Portales News-Tribune to pursue another vocation in sales starting Monday.

I’ve been at the PNT, this last time, for three years. I’ve worked with some great and talented people, had a great time, learned a few things about myself and the newspaper business, and hopefully have improved the product for our readers.

I grew up in Roosevelt County and began my newspaper career in 1970 after we moved off the farm and into the big city of Portales. I wanted to earn my own money for a multitude of reasons and throwing newspapers seemed like a good way to do that. I pestered then circulation director Lewis Toland until he finally gave in and put me on a route at age 11, a few months short of the required age 12.

Old Route 27 covered the west side of town, out past the university and the old hospital. Just getting there through the eastern New Mexico wind with all those papers on the handlebars was a challenge  some days. My mom and dad helped me on Sunday mornings and in bad weather and eventually we got more routes and routes closer to home and my brother and sister even became newspaper carriers.

I was the only one that moved inside with the business to stay and eventually I worked my way through the mailroom and backshop during high school and college.

Newspapers have changed a lot in the decades since I started. In the early 1970s offset printing was a new thing for the PNT and some other papers were still using hot metal at the time.

The use of color was a rare occasion when I first started. Before I left the pressroom we weren’t using much full-process color (color photos) but we had color on the press regularly. Today if the front page photos aren’t in color you know something mechanical is wrong.

In Tucumcari, I was the second publisher in the state to take up something called desktop publishing. We left behind the messy, smelly phototypesetting and photography days and began doing everything to lay out the paper on a Macintosh computer.

More recently we’ve begun putting the newspaper on the Internet and we’re even including video and other multi-media tools to deliver content to our readers. It’s a great thing for connecting with our end-user, but over the last decade newspapers have worked harder and harder in chasing fewer and fewer dollars. That’s led to schedules and workloads that I’m ready to leave to someone younger.

When I get home around midnight each night I have to bring a steak bone just to convince my dogs to let me through the door. This little circus disrupts the beauty rest of the lady of the house and I love her dearly and changing jobs is more appealing to me than changing spouses.

She’s been fretting that I’m giving up what I love just for her convenience. Not so. While she alone would be reason enough, it’s not the only one. I’m selfishly relishing being home at night and learning something new.

While I’m leaving the newspaper, I plan to keep writing this column, and in fact it will actually be included in other Freedom New Mexico papers in the future.

There is no doubt in my mind I’ll miss being at the newspaper every day. Mostly I’ll miss the connection I get with the community through pursuing our coverage. You get to know a lot of people under good conditions and bad in this business.

Getting the story while remaining a part of that community has always been my goal. Portales folks have made that an easy goal to accomplish. If the circle completes itself here, it will make me a happy newspaperman.

Karl Terry is the soon-to-be former managing editor of the Portales News-Tribune. Contact him at:
karlterry@yucca.net