Route 66: Print day at a 145-year-old Kansas newspaper
GALENA, Kan. — She wrote front-page stories about changes to the city's animal ordinance and the county's efforts to clean up an illegal dumping site. She laid out the rest of the week's 10-page paper: Obituaries on page two. Columns from local contributors on pages three and four. School news on five. Classifieds on eight. A back-page photo spread on three-dimensional Route 66-themed chalk art in a park along the historic road in nearby Joplin, Missouri.
By 4 p.m. that day, Machelle Smith moved to her next task. Seated at her cluttered desk inside the Galena Sentinel-Times newspaper's office on Route 66 near the Missouri border, she converted each page of the upcoming issue to PDFs to send to the printer before the 5 p.m. deadline.
The paper's masthead lists Smith as the operations manager. The 58-year-old Galena native calls herself its 'jack of all trades.'
'I've done everything,' she said above the crackle of a nearby police scanner.
The newspaper has existed in one form or another in this part of southeastern Kansas since 1880, three years after the town was founded around the discovery of lead in the area. Its current iteration is the result of a 1945 merger between The Galena Times Republican and The Galena Sentinel.
Eighteen years ago, Smith was working at an area restaurant when a friend asked if she was interested in a career change. The friend's brother owned the newspaper, then called the Sentinel-Times, and needed to replace the departing editor.
She had no journalism experience. Still, she took the job.
'For the first few months it was me by myself trying to figure out how to do everything,' she said.
Eventually, she learned how to put the paper together and how to operate the newspaper's print shop in the rear of the newsroom — its services include business cards, invitations, stickers, banners, posters, fliers and the like. For the last three years, the paper has printed posters for the town's birthday festival (called Galena Days) and donated 10 subscriptions as door prizes.
Last December, the newspaper's longtime publisher, David Nelson, died at 72. An engineer by trade, his obituary says he bought the paper in 1977, in part, 'so people at least had a place to publish an obituary free of charge' (they're still published free of charge).
Local business owner Brian Jordan purchased the paper from Nelson's widow.
Jordan, said Smith, 'believes if the newspaper dies, the town dies.'
More than 3,200 U.S. newspapers have folded in the last 20 years, according to a study from Northwestern University's Medill Local News Initiative. At least 3.5 million people live in counties the study called news deserts, places with 'no local news outlet consistently producing original content.'
The Galena paper is, of course, not immune to the pressures facing news outlets across the country. The staff size has remained virtually unchanged since Smith joined. There's proofreader Tia Day, who recently moved to St. Louis and works remotely. Webmaster Shayla Sturgis was once an intern who also works for a Native American tribe in northeast Oklahoma.
Advertising director Aniston Johnson, 22, joined the paper 10 months ago. Sometimes, she'll grab a stack of papers and head to businesses in surrounding communities to see if they'll buy an ad.
'It's a little difficult,' she said.
Like Smith, she multitasks. Last month, she wrote about a state award for a school kitchen manager.
'That one was a tough one for me, because it was my first time doing that,' she said. 'It was a little nerve-wracking.'
She also pens — literally — articles on historical events. At her desk, she has a handwritten draft of an article on an early 16th-century 'dancing plague' in an area of what is now France.
The paper has two freelance journalists who cover sports, Smith said, with plans to add more. They're also planning to devote the middle four pages to more Route 66 coverage as next year's centennial approaches. Kansas has by far the shortest segment of the route of all eight states at 13.2 miles, and two associations dedicated to route preservation: Kansas Historic Route 66 Association and Route 66 Association of Kansas (Smith sits on the latter's board).
Having finished uploading the PDFs of the latest issue, Smith closed the office for the day. The paper, once printed in Joplin, is now printed about 120 miles east near Branson, Missouri.
About 1,200 copies were delivered to the newsroom before 6:30 a.m. Thursday, when Smith arrived. On her to-do list that morning: Take 594 copies to the post office to mail to subscribers and the rest to newspaper racks around town.
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Chicago Tribune
13 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Route 66: Print day at a 145-year-old Kansas newspaper
GALENA, Kan. — She wrote front-page stories about changes to the city's animal ordinance and the county's efforts to clean up an illegal dumping site. She laid out the rest of the week's 10-page paper: Obituaries on page two. Columns from local contributors on pages three and four. School news on five. Classifieds on eight. A back-page photo spread on three-dimensional Route 66-themed chalk art in a park along the historic road in nearby Joplin, Missouri. By 4 p.m. that day, Machelle Smith moved to her next task. Seated at her cluttered desk inside the Galena Sentinel-Times newspaper's office on Route 66 near the Missouri border, she converted each page of the upcoming issue to PDFs to send to the printer before the 5 p.m. deadline. The paper's masthead lists Smith as the operations manager. The 58-year-old Galena native calls herself its 'jack of all trades.' 'I've done everything,' she said above the crackle of a nearby police scanner. The newspaper has existed in one form or another in this part of southeastern Kansas since 1880, three years after the town was founded around the discovery of lead in the area. Its current iteration is the result of a 1945 merger between The Galena Times Republican and The Galena Sentinel. Eighteen years ago, Smith was working at an area restaurant when a friend asked if she was interested in a career change. The friend's brother owned the newspaper, then called the Sentinel-Times, and needed to replace the departing editor. She had no journalism experience. Still, she took the job. 'For the first few months it was me by myself trying to figure out how to do everything,' she said. Eventually, she learned how to put the paper together and how to operate the newspaper's print shop in the rear of the newsroom — its services include business cards, invitations, stickers, banners, posters, fliers and the like. For the last three years, the paper has printed posters for the town's birthday festival (called Galena Days) and donated 10 subscriptions as door prizes. Last December, the newspaper's longtime publisher, David Nelson, died at 72. An engineer by trade, his obituary says he bought the paper in 1977, in part, 'so people at least had a place to publish an obituary free of charge' (they're still published free of charge). Local business owner Brian Jordan purchased the paper from Nelson's widow. Jordan, said Smith, 'believes if the newspaper dies, the town dies.' More than 3,200 U.S. newspapers have folded in the last 20 years, according to a study from Northwestern University's Medill Local News Initiative. At least 3.5 million people live in counties the study called news deserts, places with 'no local news outlet consistently producing original content.' The Galena paper is, of course, not immune to the pressures facing news outlets across the country. The staff size has remained virtually unchanged since Smith joined. There's proofreader Tia Day, who recently moved to St. Louis and works remotely. Webmaster Shayla Sturgis was once an intern who also works for a Native American tribe in northeast Oklahoma. Advertising director Aniston Johnson, 22, joined the paper 10 months ago. Sometimes, she'll grab a stack of papers and head to businesses in surrounding communities to see if they'll buy an ad. 'It's a little difficult,' she said. Like Smith, she multitasks. Last month, she wrote about a state award for a school kitchen manager. 'That one was a tough one for me, because it was my first time doing that,' she said. 'It was a little nerve-wracking.' She also pens — literally — articles on historical events. At her desk, she has a handwritten draft of an article on an early 16th-century 'dancing plague' in an area of what is now France. The paper has two freelance journalists who cover sports, Smith said, with plans to add more. They're also planning to devote the middle four pages to more Route 66 coverage as next year's centennial approaches. Kansas has by far the shortest segment of the route of all eight states at 13.2 miles, and two associations dedicated to route preservation: Kansas Historic Route 66 Association and Route 66 Association of Kansas (Smith sits on the latter's board). Having finished uploading the PDFs of the latest issue, Smith closed the office for the day. The paper, once printed in Joplin, is now printed about 120 miles east near Branson, Missouri. About 1,200 copies were delivered to the newsroom before 6:30 a.m. Thursday, when Smith arrived. On her to-do list that morning: Take 594 copies to the post office to mail to subscribers and the rest to newspaper racks around town.
Boston Globe
16 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Rod Nordland, 75, dies; war reporter who also wrote of his own struggle
With a toughness rooted in his wayward childhood and the brashness of a self-made man, Mr. Nordland was from an era before 'journalism became a prestige career for a bunch of Ivy Leaguers,' as he wrote in his memoir. Advertisement When he set out to become a reporter in the early 1970s, urban daily newspapers often had the money to support overseas bureaus, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, which sent him to Southeast Asia in 1979. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up He did not move back to the United States for 40 years, until he was compelled to do so by his illness. His reporting gained reach and impact, and his life gained glamour, when he was poached by Newsweek in the mid-1980s. The perks of the job included an unlimited travel budget. He was on the scene and frequently running a news bureau during the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, the Lebanese Civil War, the Salvadoran Civil War, the Persian Gulf War, the war in Kosovo, the Iraq War, and the War in Afghanistan, among other conflicts. Advertisement He initially joined the Times in its Baghdad bureau, and he took over responsibility for the Kabul bureau in 2013. His international reporting earned him multiple George Polk and Overseas Press Club awards. His specialties were recounting violence in unflinching prose; attending to the most vulnerable people in a conflict, often women and children; and narrating everyday dramas of war zones in epic terms. In 1999, he described for Newsweek what it was like for a 36-year-old mother to survive a mass murder surrounded by her children and relatives in a restaurant in a small town of southern Kosovo. In Afghanistan, he repeatedly wrote about the danger and brutality young couples faced when marrying without family approval. One of those stories -- about an 18-year-old young woman and 21-year-old man who had never been alone in a room together but nevertheless publicly proclaimed their love for each other, provoking death threats from relatives -- became a book called 'The Lovers: Afghanistan's Romeo and Juliet' (2016). A critical review in the Times called his efforts to help the couple with money and sanctuary while also making them into major media figures a form of dubious 'Western saviordom.' In a 2016 interview with The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Mr. Nordland responded, 'What is a savior complex?' he asked. 'The notion that it would be better for me not to get involved in their case so that they could be killed, and that would be the more ethically responsible course? I don't have a right to intervene and save their lives?' In 'Waiting for the Monsoon,' he reports that the couple moved to New Haven, where the man, Mohammad Ali, has worked as a handyman and driver. Advertisement Mr. Nordland (left) interviewed a martyr's relative, in Kobani cemetery, Syria, in 2018. MAURICIO LIMA/NYT Rodney Lee Nordland was born on July 17, 1949, in Philadelphia. His father, Ronald, he wrote in his memoir, was a mechanic who beat Rod, his five siblings, and his mother, Lorine Myers. Later in life, he learned that his father was 'repeatedly arrested and often convicted of sexual assaults on children, both boys and girls,' which he said explained why the family moved so frequently from one small Southern California town to another. Around 1960, his mother left his father and took the children to her family's home in Jenkintown, a suburb of Philadelphia. She worked a series of clerical jobs and relied on welfare to help feed her children, though they still sometimes went hungry. Beginning at age 13, Rod worked multiple jobs to support the family, including as a movie theater usher, newspaper delivery boy, dishwasher, country club caddie, semipro boxer, poker player, pool hustler, and occasional burglar. Around the age of 15, he and his best friend ran away to Miami, where they were caught shoplifting and spent two weeks in the county jail. He discovered a new, productive outlet for his inner turmoil as a senior in high school after his brother Gary got into an argument with a police officer, who subsequently beat him with a billy club. Rod wrote a furious letter about the episode to The Times-Chronicle, Jenkintown's local paper. Not long after, the police officer was suspended and apologized to Gary. The experience was a 'revelation,' Mr. Nordland wrote in his memoir. 'I could write my rage,' he wrote. 'Not only that, but doing so could result in some kind of change for the better. I could find the people who were like me, cowering from my father as a kid, or like my brother, smacked around by an irresponsible cop, or like my mother, abused by a violent husband and tormented by aggressive bill collectors.' Advertisement He attended Penn State on a full scholarship and graduated in 1972 with a bachelor's degree in journalism. He was immediately hired by The Inquirer. He had an important role on the team that won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize in local reporting for coverage of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. After he became a foreign correspondent, wars came to so define his life that he associated each of his children with a different conflict, he wrote in his memoir: 'Lorine, a child of the Bosnian conflict, was born in 1992; Johanna, a child of the Iraq War, in 1995; and Jake, a child of the war in Afghanistan, in 1998.' Still, he credited his terminal illness with giving him a new perspective. Laid low in the hospital, 'I could see clearly, finally, all the mistakes I had made,' he wrote. A 'volatile temper, 'arrogance' and 'certitude that dominated my every action' had 'helped make me a successful foreign correspondent and bureau chief but denied me the opportunity of becoming so much more.' His first marriage ended in divorce. He met Segal in 2016, whom he leaves along with his three children. Segal said that Mr. Nordland had been given only 14 months to live when he received his diagnosis, but with experimental treatments, led by Dr. Eric T. Wong of the Life Cancer Institute at Rhode Island Hospital, he survived for six years. Advertisement In his memoir, he connected his sense of the purpose of journalism to his memories of growing up. 'That my father's treatment of all of us, especially Mommy, was hidden from public view, that he managed to continue his life of criminal abuse relatively unscathed, at least within our family, enraged me,' he wrote. 'What was the point of being a journalist if you didn't make hidden injustices visible?' This article originally appeared in
Los Angeles Times
20 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
As jacarandas bloom throughout L.A., fire victims hope their purple flowers will return too
It was Alexis Murphy's tradition to photograph the jacaranda that guarded her childhood home in Pasadena. One year, she arranged its violet droppings in the shape of a heart. Another year, she turned them into a cartoon smiley face. But this spring, after the January Eaton fire scorched her childhood home and the jacaranda along with it, the scene was too grim to capture. Where the aged tree's limbs once exploded into violet, singed branches crisscrossed in colorless sterility like an unfinished painting. Murphy didn't want to post something too depressing. So she snagged a flower from a neighbor's lawn and filmed a close-up of the blossom, panning out to her burned tree. That was when she saw it. Barely discernible in the May gloom, a glint of purple shone from the jacaranda's canopy; nearby, seed pods dotted patches of green. The tree was in bloom. 'Oh, my God, maybe it is coming back,' she said, half-wishing for the tree's revival. Jacarandas, among the most divisive of L.A.'s imported plant species, have long signified to Angelenos the coming of warmer, more vibrant days. Their symbolic weight has been all the greater for those who lost their homes to the January wildfires that devastated L.A. County as well as swaths of its natural landscape. 'Any tree that's leafing out or recovering is a sign of hope for everyone, and I think people really take some joy in that,' said David Card, a longtime Pacific Palisades resident and board president of the Palisades Forestry Committee. 'Right now, it's the jacarandas that are center stage,' Card said. Originating in subtropical South America, jacarandas typically bloom around May and June, taking their cue from the season's first stretch of consistent heat. In wetter years, the 25- to 40-foot-tall trees may not push out flowers until well into July. This year, hot spells in May encouraged some early bloomers, said Lisa Smith, a consulting arborist and president of the tree-consulting firm the Tree Resource. Still, at the time of the January fires, the semi-deciduous trees had not yet flowered, which likely minimized the damage they suffered. The arborist said what also helped is that jacarandas are highly heat-tolerant and generally planted among low grasses rather than tall shrubs, limiting the potential for upward burn. 'They're a pretty rugged, tolerant species. They can handle harsh conditions,' Smith said. Because jacarandas across the county sustained significant bark char and crown damage, L.A.'s purple bloom was down some patches this year. The issue might worsen. Healthy-seeming flowering on trees like Murphy's could be a 'false start' belying the plant's sickness, Smith said. Trees have been known to experience delayed deaths years after a wildfire has been extinguished. Nonetheless, researchers in Pasadena and the Pacific Palisades shared positive outlooks for the trees' future recovery. Gretchen North, a biology professor at Occidental College, said plant recovery efforts in the canyons above Altadena have revealed that jacarandas have fared 'remarkably well.' 'They're blooming, even though they are burned at the base,' North said. The professor added that most of the damage is limited to scorched bark. In cases of more severe scarring, North said, 'the jacaranda looks like it will recover.' In the Palisades, the trees this year began flowering far earlier than expected, said Card. However, experts warned that L.A.'s trees, including jacarandas, still face threats from post-fire recovery efforts. For one, construction activities like excavation and soil compaction from heavy machinery can damage a tree's critical root zone, preventing uptake of water and nutrients crucial for the plant's survival. On a wider scale, activists said joint cleanup efforts by FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have prompted the premature removal of trees in the Palisades, hundreds of which were misidentified by unqualified contractors. 'They were bringing in people from states so far away they never even heard of jacarandas,' said Carl Mellinger, a consulting arborist and member of the Palisades Forestry Committee. 'In my opinion, if you can't tell what the tree is, you have no business identifying its fiber-building period,' Mellinger said. A spokesperson for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said that 'every decision about tree removal is made thoughtfully and with expert guidance from professional arborists.' 'While we strive to preserve as many trees as possible, public safety and recovery progress must come first,' the spokesperson said. 'We continue to work closely with homeowners, the county and community groups to make informed, responsible decisions about tree removal and preservation. ' A representative for FEMA declined to comment. Mellinger was able to work with a colonel to get the Army Corps' protocol changed and minimize errors, he said, 'but there were still trees out there that were gonna get cut down, even though they were viable.' Residents whose injured trees were removed were surprised to find themselves more distraught about losing the trees — which would take decades to regrow — than losing their homes. LuAnn Haslam, Murphy's next-door neighbor in Pasadena, said losing her jacaranda felt like a second wave of grief after her home burned down. For more than 25 years, she'd marveled at the tree, one of her favorites gracing the street. When it blossomed each spring, coating her lawn in purple blooms, she'd beg her husband, 'Don't clean those up!' Haslam said she didn't watch the cleanup crew remove the tree this year. She couldn't bear it. 'That's one reason why I really pushed it on the colonel that you can't be cutting down these trees that are going to make it,' Mellinger said. 'People have already been through one disaster,' he said. They needn't endure another. The Palisades Forestry Committee in March published a waiver for property owners that allowed them to retain so-called 'hazardous' trees on their property. Card said the system has largely worked, save for the occasional complication by an overly aggressive contractor. However, arborists and activists agreed that Zone 0 regulations may spell trouble for those working to preserve the Palisades' natural landscape. The defensible space directives, meant to minimize burn risk to homes and other structures, are poised to drastically reduce the number of trees permitted in residential L.A. neighborhoods, said North. The trick, North said, will be balancing safety assurances that cities require with the green recovery that their residents need to move forward. Many factors affecting the survival potential of burned trees, including jacarandas, are out of individuals' control: the level and frequency of rain, the pace of bark generation, the passage of time. Still, arborists said residents can take several steps to improve their trees' chances of recovery. The most critical factor, Smith said, is water. Without it, scores of jacarandas won't even make it through the summer. 'Don't seek perfection. Just get water on the tree,' Smith said. She added that those who live far away now can ask a neighbor or friend to place a tree watering bag around the trunk of the injured tree. This way, water is slowly released, trickling down to the roots. Smith added that if the tree is able to push out fresh leaves, residents can prune its dead branches and leave the live ones to foster 'meaningful new growth in the canopy.' A good visual cue for a salvageable tree is the growth of new bark beneath its burned outer layer, said Mellinger. 'You have to scrape the bark or cut under the bark to try and find the living tissue that's under the cambium and the inner bark,' he said. Removing dead bark before watering a burned tree can also protect it from pests and pathogens, said Jim Henrich, curator of living collections at Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden. Priority No. 1, Henrich said, is making sure water is actually saturating the soil. After that, all you can really do is wait. For many jacaranda lovers, the labor of preservation was a knee-jerk reaction, like shielding a child from a blow. Valeria Serna of climate nonprofit Resilient Palisades recently purchased a 500-gallon water tank on her own dime and lugged it to several neighborhoods that lacked water access. Vicki Warren, on the other hand, wasn't much concerned about the fate of the jacaranda outside her late father's home, which burned in the Palisades fire. It was the magnolia in the backyard she loved. But when the Army Corps removed her beloved tree this year, all that remained was the jacaranda — the one that for years had left her car sticky with sap and stunk up the street. One day in May, Warren parked in the spot on Radcliffe Avenue, which she had trained herself to avoid, right below the purple giant. Then she made a promise. 'You and I are the only ones left here,' she told the tree. 'I'm going to take care of you.'
