#34 – Walter Rugaber: Journalism, New York Times, Roanoke Times, Richard Nixon, Northwestern, Geo...

so hello today we have on Mr Walter rugaber he is a former journalist Mr rugaber how are you I'm well thank you how are you I'm doing good I think I can speak for both me and Ethan when we say that we're very excited and honored to have you on the podcast today well I'm glad to be here thank you well to start off we like to start off the same way uh where did you grow up I was born and raised in mon Georgia the uh the very center of the state my uh dad as you could probably guess from my last name was a was is a a Pennsylvania Dutchman um he and my mother moved South actually uh he worked for the Coleman the Coleman stove company okay in the pre camping days they had invented a u um a floor furnace which you went into Southern Homes and cut a hole in the floor dropped this furnace in there none of the homes at that time were very few had Central Heating and so um he brought the floor furnace South and they sold those things um all over the place and anyway that's how uh my Yankee parents got to be Georgians and uh I I I grew up and graduated from high school in mon so which high school did you go to was called the near high school at the time mon was the uh uh was the birthplace of the poet Sydney lanir okay and in fact our football team was known as The Poets I often look back on that and and reflect not a very fighting term The Poets but they were a very good football team we won a number of state championships so so were you very U academic in high school I would say I was average um I I was interested in certain things and good at certain things and not interested in other things and not good at those things uh so I loved English um I didn't care for French um but I I I had a lot of interesting experiences in high school it was a wonderful High School uh rigidly segregated looking back on it from the uh vantage point of 2023 it's really quite amazing I mean I graduated from high school you must remember in 1956 which was uh more than a little while ago and at the time it was an all-white high school and um um it's amazing to look back on that time and think of the change that's occurred uh in the in the years since when did it integrate it integrated after I uh I went off to college uh in 56 um Supreme Court decision in Brown versus the Board of Education had just been handed down in 54 and then the follow-up decision in 55 and so U we were still in massive resistance at the time and it would have been well into the 60s and in fact one of the um things that happened was the ler High School no longer exists uh the courts made them um do away with all the old names of the high school they felt it had a kind of a lingering um I guess it reminded everybody of the old days and and so my high school has now has the very IND IND distinguished name of Central High School and um um the U the black school I'm sure has a equally IND distinguished name so were you very athletic in high school not at all um not all tall people are very graceful and I'm definitely not very athletic clumsy is the word for it what about Educators was an was there an educator during your high school career that had any serious effect on you very much so her name was Josephine early she was my uh English teacher first in junior high school and then about the time I moved to senior high school she also moved to her teaching position was transferred to the senior high school and so I had a number of Le had her a number of years um and she was the first of a amazing series of mentors that that I've had during my life um one of the things that interests me as I look at my own children and grandchildren is I don't think young people get as many mentors these days as we used to I mean by mentors I don't mean people who just sort of tried to teach you things but people who who did that and who also really seem to care a lot about you as a person and really want to try to help you as a person and Miss early um was the journalism advisor in high school she really took it all very seriously it was it was not something she was uh just doing going through the motions she was really serious about about the school newspaper and um she really uh took an interest in those of us who worked on the school paper um and decided early on that I needed to get a good education and that meant going away to the best journalism school in America at Northwest at Northwest Western uh in Illinois which I of course had never heard of and um but she kept pushing me and pushing my parents and um I applied and was admitted and and got a wonderful education there it it she was quite a remarkable lady she was a um she was single uh she lived with her elderly mother and a and another single sister um and had a number of students that she mentored um people who became quite well known uh at the time it was it was quite a she had quite a career so she identified your talent for writing early on she seemed to really uh take an interest in in US young people to a degree that not all teachers did I'm looking around your house here and I see a lot of books was there any specific book from your youth that you think sparked me I don't know that I can say that there was I had a I had an interesting experience I knew very early on that I wanted to be in the newspaper business and I knew knew and I don't know quite quite how that happened nobody else in my family was a was a newspaper person um no one in fact my mother wanted me to be an electrical engineer she uh kept pointing out how poorly newspaper reporters are paid or were paid at the time and this was certainly very true and I think she I think she also thought being a newspaper reporter was somehow kind of vaguely not exactly respectable and that and that if I took a honest occupation like an electrical engineer that would that would be um that would be better but I um I stuck with my stuck by my guns this is what I wanted to do from the earliest age and and in some ways it benefited me I I've I've thought as I see my my kids and my grandkids come along um some of my kids all of whom are in their 50s now still don't know what they want to do when they when they grow up um and I think some in some ways it was a tremendous Advantage as a young person to have that certainty this is what I know I want to do it just saved me an awful lot of um indecision and hand ringing and wondering about you know what my future might be and all that sort of thing on the other hand um looking at some of the experiences of my my own kids um I probably missed a lot of things too I mean I I was so focused on on newspapering and journalism that I probably lot of let a lot of other things go by that might have interested me a lot um so what's best I don't I don't know but anyway to answer your question no I don't think there was particularly a book um at a at the time there were anthologies of newspaper reporting that I devoured and this was in the mostly pre-television days and there were there was a radio program um uh which featured journalistic exploits famous stories that journalists had done and of course I listen to every one of those programs uh religiously uh but I I don't remember a particular book no what was the goe what was the application process like for applying to Northwestern that's very amusing and great question but I'm I'm smiling because it so was so totally different than it is now um I wrote a letter to the uh to the admissions director asking for an application he mailed it to me I filled it out I mailed it in um I must have taken the SATs but it was early days for the SATs then um I must have done that but at any rate um a period of time went by I got a letter from him saying you're admitted um fall of 1956 arrived my mother and dad put me in the back of their Buick and we drove off to uh to Evanston which is just North of Chicago they uh we found my dorm they put me out in the parking lot uh waved goodbye this was the first I ever laid eyes on Northwestern University and of course nowadays young people have the advantage of touring colleges and being interviewed at the at the schools themselves um much better than when I was doing it U it it really was amazingly Dark Ages uh as far as College admissions um are our concern it's it's quite astonishing to look back uh and think how different it was then from how it is now do you think that you would have liked having the the experience that we have nowadays again it's it's it's it's sort of like having your career uh firmly in mind I don't I don't know what is best in a way um in a way you know I went I arrived at Northwestern was a fairly healthy attitude um I I wasn't full of um crazy ideas about what what college was really going to amount to it was uh just another step uh I think it was a more matter of fact thing but on the other hand um I might have been better if I'd have applied to more schools been able to tour around and look at different schools schols I might have seen a place I liked better who knows um that's the only North Westland is the only school I applied to as I say I got a wonderful education there but I think nowadays when you get an opportunity to look at different schools and think about what you really want to do in life and what what the best fit is for you um I think that's better yeah what was the major selection process like did you choose one when you applied or did you choose after the first year it at the time uh and I'm not I'm not at all sure this is how Northwestern does it um the reason I went to Northwestern they had at that time the best known journalism School in the country so I was admitted to the journalism school and in that sense my major was sort of pre-selected if you will uh but they had a very good idea which was that um people who are going to be journalists really in many ways the last thing they needed to know was about journalism because they figured you were going to learn that when you went out and got a job which is certainly true and what you did need to know though was all sorts of things in the area of liberal arts history politics economics um iCal science uh and so on and so they required you to um to select a liberal arts major and minor and um to um take as many courses in those subjects as you would had you been in the liberal arts college looking back on it from from the advantage of of hindsight I realized what a wonderful thing that was I took relatively a limited number of courses in pure journalism and the the the advantage was I got this one wonderful educ broad education and that you know that's what I really needed were you satisfied with your education at the end of your four years at Northwestern University very much so I mean I mean I it it was a it was a rigor school I started off you were asking about major I was going to be an economics major um because I really did think it was so important that people who read the newspaper understand what was happening with economic issues um I didn't realize how much math was in was involved in in economics and I remember getting about as far as money and Banking and um I think they called me into the professor called me into his office and said rugaber I'm going to let you out of here with a c if you promise never to darken the door of the economics Department again and I said it's a deal and so I moved on and finally wound up in history which was safely beyond the uh the all the math yeah so at the end of your time at Northwestern University and your about to graduate did you have any jobs lined up were you interviewing for positions at newspapers yes I had um I had developed a really Keen interest in in Washington um and in the the national government and how it operated Congress the president and so on so forth all very glamorous at the time um and I had while I was in school I had um wangled my way into various things in Washington so I um I had figured out how to do sort of little mini field trips and that sort of thing I'd gotten to meet a number of people in um uh in journalism and so um I I really wanted a job in Washington and I interviewed and was hired uh is a reporter on the Washington star okay the newspaper which is no longer with us um graduated from Northwestern moved to Washington and uh the newspaper decided after I got after I got there I'd had a couple of minor um medical issues in college and they decided these medical issues uh disqualified me under their um under their health insurance plan and they so they wouldn't hire me so I had to scramble around and one of the friends I met another Mentor a man named Sterling green who was a famous um uh reporter for the Associated Press in Washington at the time had a friend on Capitol Hill who worked for a Texas congressman and they hired me for a while just to do donkey work um for for the for this Congressman I mean by Donkey work I mean clipping stories about him out of all the weekly papers in his district and writing his Weekly Newsletter and and and all that sort of thing but it kept it kept the wol from my door um uh while I waited to see what might happen and I finally concluded um let's see this was probably all 6 or eight months after uh graduation I finally concluded that uh nothing they weren't ever going to hire me and so I pulled up stakes in Washington went back to my hometown of mon um where I had worked during high school as a reporter for the uh for the local radio and television station and they rehired me and so that was my real first journalism job out of college you mentioned that radio station hired you did you ever consider media outside of the written realm in terms of radio or movies I guess no I never really did I I um um I really never thought of myself as being very articulate and um you know then as well as now the people on television radio were very articulate and um they could talk um much better than I could and at the time people like myself were not very often if ever on the air we wrote the copy for people to read or or whatever they were doing uh but we ourselves didn't ever actually have to appear on camera or in front of a microphone I mean unless it was some disaster that had occurred or something that required us to really be there and and broadcast in person and so I never really looked at it as a um as an electronic U um job I was I never thought I would be much good at that um I I enjoyed it because it was a serious news organization it was really in a way at that time for no particular reason I regarded it as is a more serious news organization than the local newspaper uh so I was happy to be working for the radio and television uh station um but I never really saw myself as a broadcaster that well that was never in the cards so which areas did you cover while you're at the radio station well um you know in those days and in a small town like that um making at the time probably had a population of maybe maybe a 100,000 and um so you cover you basically covered everything and now we're in late 1960 John Kennedy has just been elected president the Civil Rights Movement is just about to explode um I believe the first lunch counter cians were in Greensboro in 19 I want to say February of 61 I could be off on that by it might have been 60 but anyway uh clearly the Civil Rights issues were beginning to um get going and that was certainly true in maken and um uh so I followed that um had some interesting stories came to the attention of the uh of the editor at the Atlanta Journal um and in let's see um I guess the middle of 61 uh he offered me a job as a reporter in on the Atlanta Journal and I of course grabbed it and yeah went off to Atlanta MH what was that move like from make come to Atlanta again sort of like my college experience it really is amusing to me to look back on it um I didn't have a car and I can't you know I can't remember how um I suppose a friend or someone must have must have driven me to Atlanta and uh for the first uh week or two I uh stayed in the local YMCA which still rented you a bed um until I could find a little apartment out on pet Tree Road uh which I think I paid $90 a month for maybe maybe not quite that much actually I mean my pay was $90 a week so that's uh I couldn't just throw money around uh left and right um but um my job my initial job on the Atlanta uh the the Atlanta Journal was the afternoon paper in Atlanta but at the time it was actually the larger of the two papers it had a bigger circulation than the morning paper which was the Constitution and U it had a big um circulation out in the state so I was hired as a a um reporter to basically roam the state and write uh mostly I guess feature stories about things going on but often times um you would come across actually important news that was going on um um and and it was an interesting experience Georgia is a it it has the most counties of any state in the country except for Texas uh Georgia has 159 counties and Texas has somewhat more than that but um anyway each of these counties had a local political uh um battle going on so there were a lot of interesting stories to write about at this point did they give you a car or did you purchase your own car as you were traveling around uh they gave me a car not a very not a very handsome car but it got me around all right um um no I didn't get our I didn't get my first automobile until um and almost I I guess it was just before I got married I met my wife on the Atlanta Journal she was also a reporter um she had a car which is one of her many many attractions it was a uh it was a small Hillman mink I don't think they even make them anymore I'm sure they don't um but she would give me home rides home in the evening after work and uh that's how we got to uh that's how we got to be a couple so how long did you spend at the Atlanta Journal I was at the journal from uh 1961 until until uh essentially the end of 64 um we we were um we were a young and feisty lot and we when I say we I mean the reporting staff my wife and and and a good many others and we thought correctly I think even still that the Atlanta newspapers were not doing a very good job of covering the Civil Rights Movement which was clearly going to be the big story of of Our Generation and U uh the Atlanta papers had a chance to be the really definitive authoritative um source of information about the Civil Rights Movement and uh they really um did not cover it very actively um they covered it they had to cover it um but uh I remember vividly when the Atlanta schools were integrated in 1961 it was a huge International story uh reporters from all over the world really uh were there um and um uh it was it was a very important experience because of course there had been violence and trouble at integration in other places most notably Little Rock um but Atlanta uh integrated its schools peacefully and uh that was considered a big deal at the time um and and our papers uh put the story uh at the bottom of the front page which uh enraged us yeah feisty Young Bucks who thought we knew it all but at any rate and this this was probably pretty typical um and and and a lot of us wanted to leave and and and did eventually leave but in the meantime had a chance to uh be on the front row of some you know astonishing things the Birmingham church bombing uh I covered um I was thinking the other day um I covered a story involving a young uh black uh boy he was 15 at the time he was accused of of shooting and killing a elderly white farmer in in a very rural uh area of Georgia uh this would not have occasioned much interest uh except that the jury uh after a 45 minute trial sentenced him to the electric chair he would have been the youngest person ever executed in the United States 15 is a bit young even for even for uh the Georgia of 19 UH 60 this would have been 62 63 I guess um so that's caused a huge Hollow blue elanar Roosevelt wrote to the governor of Georgia and said he should do something about this and the pope got involved and it was really a very interesting story and I was able to dig up a lot of information that really raised some serious questions as to whether this young man had actually um had actually to killed the old farmer or not um um he eventually got another trial and then another trial and um um I was long gone from Georgia by this time so but anyway lot lots of stories like that it was an extremely interesting time to be a newspaper person did you ever meet any of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement many times um one of our Fondest Memories U at one of the one of the um in those days Atlanta was the host of a large um U State Fair and of course it had Midway rides roller coasters all that sort of thing and uh my wife Sally and I were there one one year and uh bumped into Martin Luther the king and Ralph abery um who were there with their kids riding the roller coaster and we we U we had some conversation and um it was really extremely one of my Fondest Memories of Martin Luther King is is remembering seeing him and and I it wasn't all of his children I don't think um but but I I remember what a classic moment it was to see him and his whatever children he had with him um jumping in the cars of the uh of the roller coaster and and and going off and you you know it was just such a classic fatherly thing to be doing and he had I'm trying to think I don't he had not won the Nobel Peace Prize by this point I don't think and and the idea but he he was certainly extremely world famous at the time and and to just see him doing something so ordinary as hopping in a roller coaster with his children was is is quite a memory that must have been surreal cuz he's such a Monumental figure yeah in American history yeah really we often talk about on the podcast about how we idolize people we'll see these popular famous influential individuals almost made of granite yeah we we perceive them as made of granite but when you meet them face to face they're just a human like it's interesting to see I think that's a great example of that well I think one of the things that's it's I've thought about a lot um myself lately is our difficulty and and I hope I can articulate this without getting myself in trouble but our difficulty in dealing with the fact that famous people uh are never perfect right yeah and you know George Washington Thomas Jefferson they own slaves um um you know we we find um issues with with practically all famous people and indeed Martin Luther King uh who was a in my opinion a great great man um truly amazing but you know he had his flaws and um I I think we we need to do a better job of dealing with that sort of thing but there were a lot of other people I mean the the um the the Civil Rights Movement was really quite as you look back on it it's totally different from how it is today totally totally different um in fact I would recommend to you young people there's a there's a video documentary called eyes on the prize which was originally broadcast probably in the 80s I want to say it's got a lot of documentary footage on the Civil Rights Movement it's quite amazing to watch that series I think it's available on Amazon or Netflix I'm not sure which but it's really quite amazing to look at that series of documentary of um um programs on the Civil Rights Movement now it it it has a completely different feel to it than race relations in our country do I think today just a completely different thing and at any rate um in the 60s uh of course there was Martin Luther King but you know there were so many other really interesting and dynamic and quite charismatic people head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was a was a guy named Jim Foreman who um not many people would know that name now but he was a very powerful speaker great organizer um and of of course it was the young people that really drove so many of the Civil Rights accomplishments did the Freedom Writers go through Georgia too uh mostly Alabama Alabama the I I can't even remember whether they because I think the Student Nonviolent organization that was them wasn't it yes uh that was there and something called core c which stood for the Congress on Racial equality quality I think uh was instrumental in organizing the freedom rights and they got in trouble uh the violence occurred in Alabama yeah yeah so you mentioned digging up information for various different articles that you wrote about the Civil re movement how did you find that information because you didn't have the internet nowadays look I know he's a very generational is amazing but when when I'm trying to prepared to publish an episode for the podcast I use the internet as my as my go-to resource sure I'm trying it's kind of hard to understand what my go2 resource would be if I didn't have the Internet it's really incomprehensible to younger generation it's always been there for us it's it's almost incomprehensible to me as a matter of fact it is it is terribly interesting um well um you depended on um on on on getting information from from the people involved uh the obviously the Civil Rights Movement the Civil Rights people had a vested interest in getting the maximum amount of newspaper coverage uh they could get I mean one of the um accusations of course of the of the white supremacists was that we were being used by the civil rights movement to stir up trouble and that sort of thing uh which is probably pretty much true um um that was their that was their objective and and nobody made any any particular bones about it uh but but it was also true that we were frequently fed information by um by whites on the other side of the of the issue and um there was no internet there were no cell phones um you did depend on um newspaper clippings from past stories uh which you carried with you when you could um but you really relied on your memory and of course the nature of news was was I think a good bit different then than it is now in that um the news um was much more I think event driven yeah in other words and at that at that time we were covering the Civil Rights Movement there were marches there were stins um there were demonstrations in front of courth houses um maybe my one of the big one one of the big Battlegrounds in the early Civil Rights Movement was in Albany Georgia and you know the school children um some of them quite young would turn out and demonstrate and the police would arrest them and throw them in jail and um I guess my point is it you know you were you were really dependent on what you saw with your very own eyes and you didn't really need to go to the Internet and get a lot of sort of background it was all right there in front of you how active was the clan in Georgia at this time oh very active did you ever have any encounter with them quite quite quite often [Music] um um they were a uh they the the there were different Clan organizations around the South uh the ones in Alabama I think were particularly violent um uh the ones in in in around Atlanta when the Atlanta schools were integrated it's very interesting to look back and from from this this vantage point when the Atlanta schools were integrated in 196 1 U the clan had bombed the Jewish temple in Atlanta and the clan had done a number of other violent things and the uh leadership in Atlanta the mayor and the chief of police um obviously decided they if they were going to be successful in having a peaceful uh desegregation of the schools they had to deal with the clan and um the police and the FBI I think identified the leading Clans people uh and followed them 24 hours a day 7 days a week all before and during the school integration and that really sort of put a put a damper on the ability of the clan to really do very much and they and they didn't do very much you see that's during this time in the 60s they're following them yes but they're also following leaders of the Civil Rights Movement M how active and entrance were the federal government in these movements around Atlanta at this time uh still I think a touchy and controversial subject um the uh all the Civil Rights people led by Martin Luther King were very dissatisfied U and there was a lot of evidence that the head of the FBI J Edgar Hoover uh did not want the FBI to play an aggressive role uh in the civil rights movement and and In fairness um you know these were still seen more as local state issues uh as opposed to Federal issues and the FBI always deferred to the local law enforcement which in a lot of communities and areas in the south of at that time was dominated by groups such as the Kus Clan and um so from the from the Civil Rights folks point of view uh the FBI was never doing enough from the local leadership the local police Chiefs sheriffs that sort of thing they of course regarded this as their jurisdiction yeah um these people were in their cities their counties um and they uh didn't need or want the FBI messing around in their business and so there was that constant Clash of points of view and uh it'll it'll never be settled but um um sometimes I I think as as the history moved along um I covered the trial of the um 18 uh clansmen who were um involved in the murder of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi um uh during Freedom Summer and by that time the clan was clearly deep I mean they they broke the case the clan actually the FBI actually broke Thea the uh the case and uh got a um person to confess and um that enabled the uh Federal govern to prosecute these 18 people of whom can't remember exactly but I think eight or 10 of them were actually uh tried and convicted in federal court and during that time also you see attorney general Kennedy um did he go after much hate crime in Georgia with his justice department um again I think as as time went on they got they got more involved um um attorney general Kennedy had a had a deputy for civil rights named John Dore d o a r who uh was quite a remarkable person for one thing he was a republican which uh which is quite amusing to look back on and but but John door was um um was quite an amazingly um strong figure uh and he led a lot lot of the not just the prosecutions of of those cases but a lot of the uh activity in the Civil Rights uh movement as the years went by so um they got more involved as as the years past you said earlier about making contacts with people how do you find sources when you're in the field well um and and I think almost all if not all of the civil rights cases uh there would be a local group a local movement always led by one of the young people from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or one of Martin Luther King's people would be there or and uh there'd be a you know it would be Selma or it would be Montgomery or it would be Savannah or Little Rock or wherever it might be and there would be someone there that you would get in contact with and you'd always go by and talk to the sheriff or the police chief and they were amazingly forthcoming themselves with information about you know what was going on the business Community was always good source because they had an interest in peace and quiet and so um they were often in negotiations with the with the Civil Rights folks over you know settins jobs um School issues uh whatever the the the local business leadership was often a good source um a lot of different people were involved um uh and you just drove around and and and talked to them one by one so you made connections with them yeah exactly you feel like that's harder nowadays than it was then to make connections with people and to you know I really don't I don't I really don't know um um not having done it in quite quite a few years I I don't I'm not sure no I don't know I think it's probably pretty much um I think my guess is it's pretty much like it always was I I think that nowadays there's a lot of news that's based on um Not So based on events as it was then yeah and to that extent the sourcing is a little different but I don't know that I think you still have to do the same things as you did then so what was the Catalyst that finally led to you and your wife moving on from Atlanta um as I say dissatisfaction with with the the what we saw as the Atlanta newspapers U lack of um um U aggressive coverage of the Civil Rights Movement plus I had a person who was um another mentor and my close friend and um who who happened to be City editor of of all places the Detroit Free Press and um he hired me to go to Detroit okay and um um it was really and and so we did that I guess at the beginning of 1965 I spent 65 and 66 in Detroit and it was really quite amazing the young couple from Atlanta um never been out of the South very much uh went to Detroit which at the time was automobile Central you know I think I think General Motors at that time sold 48% of all the cars made in America uh Japanese uh Germans just a little tiny fraction of the market um and Detroit at the time was an industrial Powerhouse fascinating to us uh on so many levels it really really was a very interesting couple of years uh um and again I got lucky um um Ralph nater came along just as I got to Detroit and Ralph nater published I I spent about six or eight months on the Detroit Free Press um covering like a lot of just sort of interesting stories but um another guy I knew from from the South had become the national editor of the New York times he called me they had an opening in Detroit the times did and so um in the summer of 65 I left the Free Press and went to work in the New York Times um as its Detroit correspondent and the day I went to work was the day Ralph nater published unsafe at any speed which was his book exposing uh what he regarded and and which was um the lack of safety uh improvements in American automobiles it was it was a very interesting concept nobody really this was unheard of at the time but nater's point was people are going to have automobile accidents there being human and it's really Detroit's job to design the cars so that when you do have an accident uh you're not as prone to to to injury and uh believe it or not that was a hard concept to to grasp at the time did they have a big impact in the city oh huge yeah huge um the the the industry was um quite quite concerned about um what turned out to be ultimately um um the regulation of Autos safety which there had been none and um it it became um quite an issue and uh eventually Congress passed the national um highway safety act which established a an agency to sort of set safety standards for cars in America and you know it's hard again it's going kind of hard to look back and imagine it was not easy to get a seat belt even on a car at that time much less the the um harnesses and something that's so common today yeah without one um today we see organizations like the UAW United Auto Workers um what was the unionization of Auto Workers in Detroit like at that time was it very present very present I I would say the uh Walter Ruther the famous um automobile union leader was still very much uh well let's see he was I guess he was I guess by this point he was reti but his image was still very much around and the union was very powerful and uh the big three automo Baker you as I say the Japanese and Germans were not much of a factor um but but yeah the union was a was a major player in Detroit of the time was Henry Ford II the CEO of he was how did he deal with unions too because I heard he was pretty Cutthroat when it came to I'm I'm sure I'm sure he was I I remember Henry Ford as and I did Cover Henry Ford and he was extremely amusing he uh um he uh he had a very Cavalier attitude or I in in a way it was so refreshing I mean um I guess he he's not the first person who said this but he was in some difficulty with his he had a lot of marital marital issues and uh he was in some difficulty with his current wife and stories were being written which weren't very flattering and I remember at a press conference once he got asked some question about this and he looked at the person asked the question and said it's my policy never complain and never explain um which as I say he was not the only person that ever said that but he had a he had a rather um in he he had a Cavalier attitude which I'm sure many people found to be off-putting but I thought it was kind of refreshing myself yeah cuz I heard he shut down the Ford facilities for over a day one time oh I'm sure the threat of unionization I'm I'm well Union was certainly very well established at Ford um um that might not be this specific reason why he did it but I remember there was a story where he shut down the factory and sent everybody home of course his grandfather Henry Ford I was notoriously uh anti-union and had many battles with the Union yeah so was it nerve-wracking to work for a much larger newspaper than a much smaller newspaper was more pressure there involved I wouldn't say necessarily nerve-wracking it was very different [Music] um uh the newspaper was hundreds of miles away in New York and I was out in Detroit and um so I dealt with them over the telephone uh all the time that part was very different um uh and the sort of stories they were interested in since it wasn't a local paper that was very different um and you had to get used to all these crazy New Yorkers who uh who are I remember once writing about an automobile safety issue that involved breaks and uh New York kept calling me saying we need more information the story about how brakes work and um I thought this was ridiculous uh everybody knows how brakes work you put your foot on the pedal and it stops the car and I basically wrote that and they called up and said this is exactly what we need give us more of this and so I had to describe how when you put your foot on the pedal it causes a hydraulic um thing to De press the um calipers against the uh disc or whatever whatever in those days I guess it was shoes on the drum anyway um they kept calling and saying this is perfect we we this is exactly what we want and I realized nobody in New York actually drove a car they always took the subway everywhere they went and so they didn't know anything about homeos so that part was very different was your wife still in journalism in she she was she followed and and the the Free Press couldn't hire because we were married uh she worked for a Time u in a Suburban at a Suburban newspaper uh and enjoyed that very much then in um the next year our first child arrived and she uh um she stayed at home to look after our baby what was that like becoming a father uh wonderful in a way looking back on it it was really quite changed our lives of course uh mentally for the better made us think outside ourselves it was um uh it was a wonderful thing that happened did becoming a father change how you looked at certain issues within Society no not really probably should have but I don't I really can't claim that it did how did it affect your work were you more distracted or were you still hyperfocused on the job I'm not necessarily proud to say that I was still awfully focused on the job um I I'm that's just you know I mean um uh we moved a lot you know I spent when when my daughter was I guess two we moved to Atlanta back to Atlanta um there we had our older son um and then we moved to Washington uh in ' 69 and then we had our Second Son um and uh and and we did an awful lot of things together I guess I guess all parents look back on the early days of of Parenthood and think they should have or could have or wish they would have done more with their with their with their children but I I have a lot of memories of things we we hiked many a mile together and camped out and so I I think I probably did more than I remember yeah did you want to instill your L Your Love of Journalism inviting into them no no it turns out that our older son Christopher is a um economics writer for the Associated Press in in Washington um but he came by that through a sort of a securest way and really I I I didn't encourage any of them to to I think that's not appropriate yeah kids ought to do what they want to do yeah during this time were you still working with the New York Times mhm through all these things they they mve me through these different places when you move back to Atlanta you you were still working for the Times how was covering Atlanta for the Times different than covering Atlanta for the Atlanta Journal uh the Civil Rights Movement was changing pretty drastically we're now in let's see when I went back to Atlanta it would have been 67 and 68 um and um the the this things were changing um uh Martin Luther King of course was assassinated in ' 68 um in the spring of that year um but the I guess the main difference I noticed when I went back was that the more violent white resistance seemed to have have pretty much um I mean the overt white resistance U seemed to have pretty much um faded so how long were you in Atlanta before you moved to Washington two years two years went to Washington I used to say what Richard Nixon and I arrived on the same day 1969 um um and so that I finally got to to Washington DC where I wanted to go when I graduated from Northwestern uh finally made it um um and of course again it was a very interesting time were you covering waston the the political beat in Washington at this time or were you well a different thing I I went originally to cover the Nixon White House um um and I did not care for that assignment at all uh mainly because and we realized later on a lot more clearly than than we did when we in the middle of it all but U Nixon of course went in to office determined to really kind of control the press and he had um his his uh his assistance uh really um insulate him and and I'd never done anything like this I mean I'd always had access to the people I was covering um I had no access to Richard Nixon at all and really all everything that a reporter did in the Nixon White House was very carefully managed yeah I hated it did you ever meet Richard Nixon never met him never met him I mean you know shouted questions at him um uh from a distance um um but but but but he he was a very as I say he went into office determined that he was going to manage his press coverage and he was going to keep people at an arms length and he did was Ford more accessible to the public than I guess by this time I I had gotten out of the White House and never want never wanted to go back um um so by the time Ford came in um I was I was doing other things Richard Nixon has a very interesting presidency and very looking into you we've learned about your personal experience with the Watergate scandal can you go into and explain to The Listener a little bit about the waterg Scandal and your place in it yeah say one thing about what you just said about Nixon U there was a very famous uh New York Times columnist now deceased named Bill Sapphire S A fi e bill was a was a republican he worked for Richard Nixon uh but he understood I mean he he um he kept his distance from Nixon I mean he he worked for him but he wasn't a he wasn't a sycophant yeah and he said a very penetrating thing about Richard Nixon he said Richard Nixon it is like a is like a seven layer cake you you cut it down there's the good Nixon the bad Nixon the good Nixon the bad Nixon the good Nixon and the bad Nixon and those early years when I was in the White House I remember you know Nixon established the EPA Nixon did some uh very Progressive things about U um I think birth control and world population problems um there was um he was a very complex character I guess and and in some ways it's sort of a shame that he's remembered almost entirely for Watergate because he did do all these other things but um um I was covering politics in 1972 and i' had been assigned to the Hubert Humphrey campaign Humphrey was running for the Democratic presidential nomination and um I was frankly bored uh Humphrey was a wonderful gentleman um but but I I didn't find his campaign very exciting he'd been down in Florida came back to Washington um on the weekend of June June 17th um for a little RNR and um I got up on Sunday morning and saw the stories about the Watergate Breakin I had a a sense that this was going to really become a huge uh issue and and and problem for Nixon and a lot of the early coverage thought that um that the CIA might be involved that because the four four of the arrested people were Cuban um immigrants who' been involved with the CIA and had been involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion that somehow it was a plot among Cuban Americans to do something or other none of this I thought made any sense at all and my main idea was that I could get out of covering Hubert Humphrey so I walked my way onto the onto the Watergate story which wasn't really very hard to do at the time because nobody else was was was very interested in it at all um these two crazy young reporters on the Washington Post B Bob Woodward and U Carl Bernstein were interested and I was interested and a few others were interested but but the but the big shots um uh um the important people uh were in interested in U more more um engaging things and they were perfectly content to let us uh P away with Watergate until later on of course did you work directly with Bob Woodward Bob Woodward and Bernstein I work directly against them against it was a very interesting time and I we became you know I haven't seen either one of them now in quite quite quite some long time um um we had we had interesting different approaches to the story uh my idea was that I had a hunch Nixon was probably involved and certainly very senior people in his in the White House were involved um and I my sense of it was that this was a story that could cause a young reporter very serious trouble not to mention his newspaper and um so my idea was to see what I could do as far as unraveling this thing by getting the documentary uh information that might be available um and Carl and and Bob um approached it from a different direction they they they their idea was to interview as many people as they could who'd been involved in the Nixon uh apparatus my anxiety about that was when you you find interview people and they tell you things but after you write them will they still stand behind what they've told you whereas the documentary evidence is um is nice and solid um in some ways their approach um was the more successful um but I think if I were doing it all over again i' I'd still stick with mine because I did get an awful lot of good stories that way and they were stories that um was proved to be impossible for the nexton White House to to deny so yeah do you have a specific breakthrough story regarding Watergate that she wrote I think that the I think that what I think one of the things that really and wood Woodward and Bernstein mentioned this briefly in their book and it it occurred to me that there must be an awful lot of documentary information down in Miami which is where these four Cuban Americans had come from who who who had done the burglary at the at the Watergate and Miami had a uh prosecutor who was a Democrat and the prosecutor we had a Mutual contact so I thought why not try to enlist him in uh helping me find out what actually happened so I flew down to Miami and persuaded him to subpoena the two things the telephone records of the of the main Cuban American um guy named Bernard Barker and his bank account all the checks that had passed through his bank account so he did this and um um I I don't know whether he was one step ahead of the FBI or one step behind them but anyway he got all this information which of course he immediately gave to me and and you were asking earlier about um the lack of access to the internet it was very interesting I had all these telephone records and in those days uh a long-distance call was still a big deal and the phone company every month gave you a a list of all the calls You' made so every longdistance call that Barker had had had had made um was listed on this phone bills but only the phone number and in those days U no internet the only way to look these numbers up was to go down to the Library of Congress which had um what we called City directories they were basically glorified phone books with reverse telephone numbers page after page after page of them and you you would go and so um um [Music] the phone bill would say a certain number in Suburban Maryland and you would go and look it up in the and it would be a veterinarian or a beauty shop or whatever it would be um not very significant and then you would see other numbers that were too new to be in the directory so you'd have to call them up and if you were lucky they'd answer the phone you know Joe Meat Market or whatever it was but unfortunately sometimes they just said hello and then you had to wangle around and try to get them to um reveal who they were but the great breakthrough came when uh I call one of these numbers and the Cheery voice on the other end of the line said committee to reelect the president Gordon ly's office and so that was one of the early stories they had made all these phone calls to Gordon lyy yeah uh before the Breakin the other thing that was partly successful and partly unsuccessful was the bank accounts and that that contained the famous checks that had come through the Texas Oil Business and uh that also linked the burglary to the to the Nixon campaign I mean in other words uh the Cubans had been given these checks that they had deposited to Finance their travel to Washington and so forth uh and these were checks that had come that were Nixon campaign checks so those were a couple of of of stories that that again were were good solid stories that were hard to refute I mean you had the paper right in your hand and that was also before donors had to be disclosed wasn't it it was in in the process of happening but it was it was just before just before mhm and ly he went to jail didn't he not he did he did okay he was a very unusual character he uh he he he he uh man he became famous for his unusual qualities so once the story really broke down and Nixon ended up resigning how did that rock Washington especially in the field of Journalism oh sure never totally unprecedented now of course we wouldn't we probably wouldn't think anything about it but oh it it was a it was a huge huge um huge deal um and the politics were were quite considerably different then um um you you know what finally happened was became and by time I'm I'm long out of the story I'm I'm not doing anything but um late in the in the investigations it turned out that Nixon had tape recorded uh many or most all of his uh office conversations and there was a big battle over um whether the um Senate and then the U special prosecutor get copies of these tapes and Nixon of course resist Ed supreme court ordered him to turn him over he did turn him over um and the minute he did that um a conversation uh he had had in his office made it very clear that he had had tried to U um get the CIA and FBI to shut down the Watergate investigation that was a so-called Smoking Gun and he resigned a few days later so because he tried to pressure the CIA to get the FBI to drop the case he did yeah so the president resigns how does that Scandal the Watergate scandal impact investigative journalism from that point on did it change oh hugely hugely and I I think we're probably still um I think we're probably still working out all the ways that it that it impacted investigative journalism some extremely healthy one of the healthy things that it did was it invest it interested a lot of young people in journalism and in investigative journalism it showed them uh what an important and useful and valuable Civic tool that is um so we had a lot of new blood coming into the newspaper and and journalism in general U and then some not so positive ways I mean it immediately um became um common for every little Scandal to be a Watergate so it was this gate and that gate and some other gate and uh I remember I I was getting um I was getting a little tired of Washington at the time actually I was beginning to think of leaving and um and and I remember thinking you know this is going to get us in trouble because every little thing is not necessarily Watergate yeah and indeed um I I think some uh things did happen where investigative stories were overblown um and and and and that that was regrettable I read in an article that the Nixon presidency forever changed how the white interacted with the Press do you feel that is true I I I I would say in in many ways that's certainly true um um it's very difficult now for anybody in politics most particularly a president whose every breath is is covered uh not only by newspapers but by bloggers and you know people on Twitter and or whatever it's called um and you know their every move is watched and it it becomes impossible for people in politics to um to really be as Frank I think as they used to be [Music] um uh and I think they're much more gun shy and cautious uh they know that if they admit any error that they'll be crucified and so they don't U and they hold the Press uh as far away from them as they can and I can't say as I would blame them do you think the progression of modern media specifically social media has instill a sense of honesty among politicians I don't know that I really don't know the answer to that um I guess I shouldn't use the word honesty in politician but well um politicians get a bad rap I mean I um I I think in some ways um the explosion of media social media in particular it it hasn't indeed allowed Ordinary People to have access to the media um and I I see a lot of positive thing I mean you two guys you're doing this podcast you've done 34 of them uh what an amazing thing that is that's absolutely astonishing it's wonderful um but I think there are also a lot of very negative aspects um uh to it um I think it's making it very difficult in politics to compromise and without compromising politics um you're you're in you're in as I think George Bush once said deep doooo you mentioned that after it happened everything started becoming exone gay you wanted to leave Washington when did you leave Washington oh I left in um uh I left in N at the end of 1978 I I really uh I think one of the distinguishing characteristics of journalists we have short attention spans or at least in the olden days we tended to have short attention spans and um you know the wonderful thing about being a a reporter uh uh and editor um was that every day is different there's always a new uh story a new thing to get interested in something new is happening um the downside of that and this is what happened in Washington is um sometimes against it's not new it's it's get getting kind of boring and I um I remember I can't I guess I was was in charge of economic coverage in Washington at the Times uh and I came home one evening I remember and saying you know if I have to listen to these people debate the deregulation of natural gas one more time I think I'm going to go Stark raving nuts because this was an issue at the time that had been floating around Washington for a long time and I began to reflect on the fact that kind of it seemed like the same issues just kept coming up and coming up and I'd sort of ground through them all and was ready to do something else yeah so I walked in the house and the phone was ringing and it was U the uh the head of the U of A little media business based in Nora called Lamar Communications and they were looking he said for an editor of their paper in Greensboro um and I sort of knew North Carolina journalism respected it immensely and um we talked and I was very impressed um they offered me the job and I took it um and it it it totally changed my life for the better for the most for the most part in what ways would you say I had had had an opportunity at the I got burned out sort of uh on Watergate and I became an editor of the New York Times in Washington a very minor editor I might say and um but what was one of my jobs was to work with young people the New York Times at Washington would bring in young people who maybe were just out of college or in a few cases maybe still in college as as really sort of glorified um um there was a concept the clerks they called them uh they were Gophers basically uh did Run Around The Newsroom uh doing various jobs sharpening pencils getting coffee that sort of thing I I love this I I thought working with these young people was the most fun I'd ever had in years and um so it occurred to me that if I became the editor of the Greensboro daily news and record uh I could work with young people as a regular thing because it was a much younger staff this a smaller paper uh not all these big high-powered uh famous journalists that were on the New York Times um and I I found that to be true and and and I I I'd loved every minute of that I enjoyed that U so I spent uh probably 4 years is editor in Greensboro uh working with primarily a younger staff um I enjoyed that uh my the owner of the larger company again another one of the Endless line of people who saved my bacon over the years of my mentor another Mentor uh decided I might be a publisher but he realized I couldn't balance my own checkbook so he sent me to a program at the Harvard Business School for 6 months for five months to try to hammer some basic Financial uh skills into my head not sure they succeeded but anyway U uh he he had in mind that I would then become publisher of the Rono newspaper which I did in ' 82 and uh we can sum this up quickly because uh the the most interesting thing about that job which I then did till I retired at the end of 2000 so that's what 18 years the the the interesting thing about that job I took it thinking um that I knew everything there was to know about newspapers and I discovered that I didn't know a thing about news that that I thought I was so smart and once again discover overed that I wasn't nearly as smart as I thought that by which I mean I had always been focused on the news part of newspapers the reporting the editing um the headline writing the getting the thing done each and every day and when I became publish in Rono it was a whole world I never even imagined uh the circulation department the production Department the advertising Department uh the need to um pay attention to what newsprint costs were um of just all sorts of interesting things uh how the Press worked um it was endlessly fascinating uh because as I say I I'd always loved the newspaper uh from my very earliest memories but I really didn't know anything about how they how they worked outside the news side of the newspaper yeah so that was that that was an interesting and fitting into my working life did you enjoy learning I loved it I I loved it I I I I I've always been interested in new and and and different things that I know nothing about and um the the the the realization of how complicated uh of course it's totally different now this has all changed but then the realization of complicated it was to get that thing done every day seven days a week um was just amazing to me because you look at the paper and how much material is inside of it and sometimes it's hard to believe that that comes out every day to totally hard to believe now you know it's it's it's the shadow of it former s now but then we were uh when I went to Rono we were publishing uh 135,000 copies a day uh we sent a truck every morning all the way to Bristol um we home delivered that paper all over sou 19 counties in Southwest Virginia um we put that thing together every night printed it in RW o bundled up the paper put it on all those trucks I mean I think we had like 40 delivery trucks they took that thing all over and then came back and did it all again the next day what time would the paper would the printing press have to finish printing the papers for them to go out on time depending on what day of the week it was Sunday obviously much bigger paper started much earlier in fact part of that paper was printed early but you know basically uh we tried to keep an open late enough we didn't always succeed to get um sports scores in from the night before now when West Coast baseball um was was always a problem because of course that was that was the time zones made that impossible but so roughly uh 11:00 at night wow was about as late press would start um probably a couple hours later and then they would print um for depending again on how what what what day of the week it was but um we we committed to getting uh all the papers delivered by 6:00 a.m. uh on weekdays and 7:00 a.m. on Sundays we didn't always succeed at that but that was our goal yeah what happens of a headline breaking news event happens while you're in the middle of printing a newspaper do you just have to wait until the next paper comes out fortunately it happened very rarely yeah it happens a lot in the movies but but but but unfortunately it didn't happen very much uh to us I mean you think about it I mean not much happens at 2:00 in the morning I mean so sometimes of course there are exceptions I can't remember a case I'd have to think about that there there probably were two or three cases where some dramatic thing would happen somebody would die that would be the that would be the main thing uh overseas stories come into pardon would overseas stories have an effect on that too that that's true but I can't remember a lot of that uh and and it was very complicated to stop the you know the old the old line was stop the presses that's what the crusto editor yelled into the phone happened very rarely very rarely did it did it it it it it it it was awfully complicated to have that happen you didn't have the staff there for one thing um uh the paper was uh not as computer generated as it is now so it was very physical you had to do a lot of physical things to remake the paper it just didn't happen very often yeah I read and I believe Luke did as well that you were a part of the reginia humanities board I was can you tell us a bit about that and what what you were involved with went on that board that a dear friend of mine in Ru Oak had been involved in it uh she decided that because she was involved in it I want to be involved in it um I knew nothing about it uh it was very interesting uh the humanities of course history um archaeology culture of all kinds um they did a lot of very interesting things i' I've been gone from the board they've changed a lot I think under um under the people who came along later but um it it tried to find things in in Virginia that were common to us all um folk music they did a awful lot down this way uh with country music uh blueg grass um uh all sorts of folk issues um um they popularized or tried to popularize um country music and and that sort of thing and and just nothing nothing was beyond them they were and they it was a it was a journalist's delight in a way did you do that after you retired yeah so you finally decided to retire in 2000 what was it like from working extremely hard all those years to retiring was that a big transition well I I've been reflecting on this because it it I didn't get much U I had been on I had been a trustee of Holland's University and uh was still a trust Trustee of oll University and I've been retired for let's see uh probably I don't know a year or so when the president of Hollands uh left rather suddenly as College presidents often do I guess and um one of my colleagues On The Board of Trustees called up and said oh this is just what you need to do uh they needed a year or so to find a real college President so uh they talked me eventually into becoming the interim president while they they they got a real president and I thought oh this is going to be great I mean you we're going to sit around and listen to Mozart all summer and this is going to be so much fun gosh it was some of the hardest work I ever did u a lot of different constituencies involved in a university you know you got the the U The Faculty the alumni uh the staff uh the students uh all was somewhat different interests a lot of complicated funding issues and that sort of thing going on um it was it was also some of the most interesting work I ever did too so anyway I did that for a little little over a year um 911 happened while I was there so that would have been the fall of 2001 and I they got a I left there at the end of 2002 then somebody decided it would be a good thing if I went down to Virginia Tech and helped with a sort of a kind of a regional Economic Development Think Tank sort of thing down there so I did that for three years and so I didn't really get retired until probably 2000 let's see that' be 2006 or so um and then I kind of became a full-time Gardener um which I have loved every minute of and and that became a full-time job so um I'm still trying to get myself retired and you mentioned 911 how did it feel to at these world events from the general public standpoint not being involved in or reporting with it was that interesting you know very I mean um uh my Mo my main of course as we all do I I I remember it vividly um uh you know when it happened and one of my journalistic memories of that was by now cable is really in the picture CNN CNBC they're all really out there um doing it and it was extremely interesting to watch CNN coverage they blanketed they had a camera everywhere it was amazing everywhere um in the world uh you could think of U they seem to have a camera and a guy with a microphone the problem was they didn't know anything I mean they never heard of Osama bin Laden they didn't know anything about anything if you switch to CBS there was Old Dan Rather and Dan rather's colleagues and they did not have a camera everywhere but they knew a lot uh they know they did know who Osama Bin Laden was and what all those issues in the in in um involved in uh Al-Qaeda and so forth and just a contrast between the old school CBS people who had been around for a long time had traveled widely read widely and knew all these people and knew what the issues were versus the upstart CNN which didn't have that experience and didn't have that same depth of knowledge but just had that incredible presence everywhere it was it was very interesting yeah and you me you mentioned that incredible presence and today news is extremely widely available it's disseminated at a great amount I say and from many different sources you think it's harder for us to discern credible information than it was oh terrible it's terrible I just don't know um it's very hard to do and the other thing that I think compounds the difficulty when I was in school now I'm going to sound like an old coot I I hate doing this but I have to when I was going through school there were there were regular Civics lessons where they treated tried to teach us about the media this is a news story this is a headline this is an editorial this is a this this is a that um here's how you evaluate it this thing comes out every day folks they're giving you their best shot but hey what you know it may not be the last word um on what really happened um take it with a grain of salt uh use a little judgment you can't necessarily believe everything uh it's not that they're lying to you it's just they don't know yeah um so we grew up with more experience and more um background about how to use the media and so nowadays I think the problem is is is is made more difficult not only because there's so much more of it but I think um younger people don't get the kind of skill training if you will on how to use it um I I I don't have an answer for this how do you personally view me how how do you discern from FAL and from the fal and from what's factual being in being in the industry so long do you have any advice on how to do that I I I really do take it all with a grain of salt um I I I and and again it's not that I think uh they're Liars or or that they're trying to mislead people but I think what in my day used to be a fairly simple problem of hey we're doing the best we can we have to put it out every day uh we can't know everything things may change this is how it looks to us right now but how it's going to look tomorrow we don't know well you multiply that now instead of being one newspaper and three TV networks you've got hundreds of different kinds of outlets and they're all doing that it just it just has put uh a it just has vastly complicated the the problem do you see a discernable difference between physical news like the newspaper and online news not as much as I did no no what differences did you used to see when when people used to get mad at me which is often they would shake their finger under my nose and they would say what this town needs is another newspaper if you had a little competition you'd clean up your act didn't quite turn out that way now there's an infinite amount of competition and it hadn't cleaned up anybody's act in my opinion it's made has made things worse more difficult for everybody and you see news stories in modern times too such as in Kentucky when a newspaper was rated by the local police department um you think the threat to the freedom of the press is greater now than it was in modern times gosh that's a hard uh I I think it's always been there because I think journalists make people uncomfortable um always have have um I just think it's the part of the nature of the Beast um but I I do think these are much more challenging and difficult times because I I do think media plays such a huge role in um and it's hard to articulate exactly what I mean but it's it's um the the stakes are much higher I think than they used to be and I think people are looking more critically at all institutions in our country and the media just doesn't come out very well I mean people just don't trust us uh I shouldn't say us because I'm not involved anymore but I mean I think Trust in Media is is down in the dumps and but so is trust in so many other things as well very difficult I I don't know what the answer is or what the outcome's going to be um it's certainly not going to be easy to deal with and we talked about the progression in technology when it comes to Media earlier um back in the day media Juggernaut such as the New York Times was probably much more prominent and I know they have a very large online footprint today yeah but actual physically physical media such as newspapers have been on the downtrend this past few years what do you see about this what what do you think about the survivability of print media when it comes to the Future not going to happen um I mean I think they're all you know my old newspaper the Rono times I saw the other day I think they're printing 11,000 copies of that paper now um which of course is just I mean it's not even printed in Rono it's printed in Lynchburg there's so few copies printed they print that thing in Lynchburg and truck it Toronto um and you know I don't I don't so many people particularly people my age are always um regretting the passage of of of Ink on paper and yeah I I I'm like everybody else I loved it and it's still I still enjoy reading ink on paper but the fact is that um the computer the the U uh being able to get that stuff online golly it it's not only cheaper they don't have to buy all that paper and ink they don't have to truck it all over everywhere it's actually in a way easier to read I mean I read the New York Times online um and that paper is much easier to read online than it used to be when you had to Paw through all those pages is I mean the publisher of the New York Times a very funny story this goes back this would this would have gone back to I guess my day I mean publisher of the New York Times said that he thought it was that one time he should take the Sunday New York Times and read every word in it so he did he got the Sunday paper and he started to read and he spent every minute reading the New York the Sunday New York Times that one edition until finally on the following Thursday he gave up and said it couldn't be done um you know that that that's that's ridiculous uh the the online stuff is much easier cheaper more convenient um the the ink on paper I mean I'm suppose I'm sure there'll always be some Legacy kind of stuff but it's it's it's it's history it's going away doesn't make any sense anymore do you think small town newspapers will be at the at the Forefront of that disappearance no I think they'll probably be among the LA the last I would assume that's interesting because we have a local newspaper the curol news and he recently um started publishing an online edition where you can subscribe annually or whatever The Gazette too yeah that's Gazette the same thing and they've really focused on this past few months updating their website yes modernizing completely I think they see the handwriting on the wall yeah that that is that your generation no way you're you know and so people that don't do that are going to get lost in the shovel thanks thanks what advice do you have to the younger Generations particularly students like luk and I who want to pursue journalism or as a career field oh advice is very simple do it you'll never regret it do it um there like any job or any career there were things that that weren't always so much fun but they were few and far between I mean it is absolutely astonishing that people will pay you to do this uh it's so much fun uh you get a free ticket uh to all events you get a front row seat on all the big things that happen in the world uh you get to ask uh upid questions of um people who think they're big shots um you'll have a wonderful time do you think that formal education like you went through University is the correct way to do that or do you think that there are other viable Avenues well there might be other viable Avenues but the benefit of the university is that it it forces you to do things that you tell yourself you'll do but you probably won't um Professor say says read these 100 pages and you do it because you know you're going to get a question about it the next day and if you try to do that on your own well maybe if you were super duper disciplined but most of us aren't and the other advantage of the of the University I think education is that it opens you up to things that you really didn't even know about right that's true that you would you wouldn't you wouldn't study on your own because you didn't know about them would you encourage aspiring journalists to pursue a journalism degree I would not some more I would definitely not I would I mean as I said at the beginning I I was very lucky that the where I went to school uh knew what it was doing and did not um and did not give me a lot of Journalism because you learn the journalism by doing it now you need some I mean I'm I'm not I'm not dissing it uh completely I I got a great education and it it it definitely gave me a leg up up in in in what I was doing so sure I would I mean courses and how to be a reporter um um courses in basic uh journalism law that sort of thing are are are perfectly worthwhile but what you really need is exposure to the liberal arts I mean history and politics um um you you need some sense of of uh context and um how does what u u Joe Biden is doing how does it you know fit in with the historical pattern um and and the more of that you can get the better not just history I don't mean but um everything I mean look at science now I mean you know gosh um um I did I had very little science unfortunately but nowadays um if you have the least little aptitude for any kind of science get into you know a science program yeah it seems like today especially among the younger population there is a sentiment or an attitude of lack of interest in current events can you talk about the importance of being cognizant about what's going on in the world around us especially to our younger listeners gosh well I can certainly empathize with and understand why you might um you want to might want to tune all that out uh very easy to understand how how that could happen but listen you know this world is going to be what you all make of it and um I really sincerely think that um it's it's a cliche almost but people say we get the government we deserve I I I think that's absolutely true and uh waiting for other people to do the right thing is is is not a good bet uh it it's not easy it's not pleasant it's it's it's messy it's it's this it's that and you know and I guess we all one one Solace would be that we can't all do everything all the time so sure you know when you're when you're young and you're learning about um all sorts of of life things okay you're not necessarily studying the Federal Reserve board and it's interest rate policies I get that that and I and I I I think that makes a lot of sense but but as you as you go along in life I mean you acquire more responsibilities and U and and for a country to be successful um means that people got to got to take responsibility for what for what happens yeah and you spoke about your love for history or your interest in history has there been a figure in American history that's really reached out to you personally that's really very very you know one of the things I think is lots of historical figures have I mean you know you could who wouldn't be in awe of Abraham Lincoln I mean gosh what a um I find myself reading a a Lincoln book and I think how can I be spending my time reading yet another book about Abraham Lincoln but I mean he he he was just such a but I was a uh I was a huge fan of Thomas Jefferson and um he was such a Renaissance figure I mean he just as you know he was into everything he was not only a politician and a thinker but he was an architect he was this he was that he was a farmer he was a gardener everything that guy did he he he touched he he he he he he excelled at um and I I I I thought I had dealt with the fact that he was a slave owner um that's what rich people did in those days in the south at least and not just in the South but lot of places I'm a little less I'm a little less enamored of Jefferson than I than I used to be uh some recent research has has I think made his involvement with the slavery um situation A Little Less tolerable than than it might have than I might have thought it was I I think in his late last days Jefferson the research shows um you know he wasn't just a passive owner of slaves because he was in the South and everybody did it and he had to do it he he he actually became kind of a breeder and exporter of slaves I mean he the the record suggests that he made his way in the world after he was President by really basically breeding and selling slaves down the river as they used to call it uh to um Alabama and Mississippi and that's very Troublesome but but I find that an interesting thing that your perception of people changes over time I mean I mean I think that's healthy yeah that's true have you read any David Maka oh yeah I love his John Adams that's one of my favorite books would you recommend any books about the founding fathers uh to us his David McCulla uh um u a couple of anecdotes um um he he came to Hollands while I was President um and I think I'm right anyway his greatest book in my opinion is biography of of Harry Truman if you ever read The Truman biography you need to do it it's a great I have it I haven't read it yet it's a great book the other anecdote is that and maybe this affected my own thinking uh Mulla said he started out on that project to write a biography of of uh Adams and Jefferson who were of course contemporaries and famous ly died on the very same day the 4th of July the 50th 4th of July U 1826 and and Mulla said that the more he researched for that biography of the two of them the less he liked Thomas Jefferson and finally he decided that he couldn't write a biography the two of them that it was just going to be Adams U which I I found fascinating um and Adams he's a deeply human individual yeah um if you see his letters with his wife Abigail yeah they're really touching oh very much personal and you see his life it wasn't just what he did in office he had a lot of really touching personal relationships and stuff going on at home that affected him almost as much as what was going on in Philadelphia oh sure in Washington but yeah did you meet Mr Maka yes yeah uh try to get most of his books I have most of his books and I've read a good amount of them I just I love the way he writes he it just fabulous he he everything he does is good and as I say the Truman biography um uh is is is is just a remarkable piece of work have you read uh Americans in Paris uh I've got it I I have not read it I've really enjoyed it he's an American romantic almost he doesn't he realizes the fults with the nation but in his writings you get to see the base Spirit of America in his writings and I think he really translates that I think better than anyone y but uh yeah as we're wrapping up here we always have a series of questions we ask our interviewees what advice would you give to a young person a young adult somebody in their early 20s they don't really know what they want to do yet they're just trying to make their way in the world well as I was saying earlier um I I think don't be discouraged um that you don't know what you're doing um things these days especially are changing so fast I would just say be alert uh keep your eyes open take an interest in things be curious um I came to think that Curiosity may be one of the greatest qualities that humans can have have take an interest in other things and you'll find you'll find something that grabs you um don't necessarily rush it take your time um um wait and see what happens um but I I I think be alert that's the main advice I would have and be curious try to try to take an interest in in what's going on and what makes things tick and that's how you discover uh what you find really interesting is what you want to do the rest of your life yeah this final question it's a bidi but we've asked everybody this question and we normally get really good responses always very thoughtful and meaningful and they always reflect the character of a person and the question is what is the meaning of life to you personally a meaning of life gosh um I guess you want to look back um uh at the end of it feeling that you've made some sort of contribution um and that you've worked to try to have some sort of understanding of your very minor place in it all um what the bigger uh whether it's God or a um moving power or or or whatever your personal belief system might be but you've thought about that and care about it uh wherever you come out whether you come out a a a um a fundamentalist Christian or you come out a non-believer um you've you've given it a lot of thought and and tried to fit yourself into that into that larger picture and um that gives you I think a sense of accountability that we are all accountable for what we do and don't do um um and and that's what uh you want to be able at the end of your life it seems to me to look back on and be able to say boy I sure did screw up up my full share of the uh of of the time but um but it wasn't um for lack of trying I guess is a kind of a trite way to to put that it wasn't uh that I didn't care that I was indifferent um don't be indifferent well Mr rug it's been an honor to speak with you this oh I've enjoyed it very much thank you sir thank you