From soybeans to spuds, let's chat

Hopefully, you’re reading the editorials running this week about how newspaper readers and journalists tend to speak different languages.

We need desperately to get ourselves connected.

In that spirit, and with the same goal, I’d like to tell you a story …

Many summers ago, I accepted a job as executive sports editor for the Herald & Review newspaper in Decatur, Ill.

It was a terrific move, in part because we inherited or hired a large and talented staff, because we had exciting things to cover (University of Illinois, pro sports in Chicago and St. Louis), and because folks in the area were sports crazy.

But the most important piece of that wonderful pie was the boss, Editor Tom Blount.

It is not an exaggeration to say Tom changed my professional life forever.

He was an ex-Marine officer with a flat-top haircut, voice like a bullhorn, and a demeanor that suggested he might suddenly whack a copy editor upside the head.

He had a whole bunch of rules which seemed odd when I arrived in the soybean country of central Illinois — things like never using team nicknames for high school games, no “alphabet soup” (too many things identified only by initials), and no more than 39 letters in any headline.

“That’s one and half times through the alphabet,” Tom hollered. “If you can’t say what you need in 39 letters, you’re in the wrong business.”

I came to appreciate, and then buy completely into most of Tom’s rules — although we fought over a few (once I had some job security).

One of my rare victories: He didn’t want us to use the abbreviation UNLV for the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. His logic was that there was also a University of Nevada in Reno.

Yet I won, by convincing him that our readers would be more confused by the formal name, since sports fans pretty much all knew the school as UNLV.

Store that phrase: our readers.

BUT LET’S go back to the beginning, when I was hired.

I visited Decatur, and on my third day in town, Tom offered me the job.

I was excited.

Then suddenly it wasn’t all peaches and cream. I got handed a criticism that turned my craft upside down.

“You’re a hell of a writer,” Tom said. “I really enjoy your stuff. But this is central Illinois, and sometimes you come across like an essayist for The Atlantic magazine.

“We don’t have many folks here who subscribe to The Atlantic, and read it on their tractors.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant, so he spelled it out.

“You can be so much better if you write like you’re having a conversation,” he said. “Pretend you’re in a coffee shop or a bar with a group of people who live around here.

“Write like you would talk.”

Then came the Tom Blount punchline: “If our readers don’t feel like you’re talking and listening to them, you lose.

“Besides, if you start using long and fancy words, I’ll kick you in the ass.”

Yes, sir!

Yikes, I’d been hired for about 30 seconds and my butt was already in jeopardy.

Yet here we are, years later, and Tom’s words remain my gospel.

A conversational writing style is now part of me — and how I hope to make a connection as though we’re just chatting in line at the grocery store.

Because as Tom would say, it’s YOUR newspaper.

•••

Steve Cameron is a columnist for The Press.

A Brand New Day appears Wednesday through Saturday each week. Steve’s sports column runs on Tuesday.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com.

Twitter:@BrandNewDayCDA