By Joel Thurtell
My old friend, Francie VanderMolen of the Berrien Springs Journal Era, sent this item from the current issue of the weekly paper:
30 Years Ago
September 26, 1979
Mr. and Mrs. John Gillette of Berrien Springs have bought The Journal Era from Charles Mierau. Joel Thurtell is the new editor of the paper.
Hard to believe it’s been 30 years.
The Journal Era was the best newspaper gig I ever had. It was a failing newspaper when John and Pat Gillette bought it from Charlie Mireau in fall, 1979. The true number of paid subscribers, once Pat weeded out all the freebies, was around 700.
Schrader’s, the town’s super market, had dropped its two-page ads long before the paper changed hands. There was just no credibility. The paper was cribbing its news — yes, plagiarizing from the Benton Harbor Herald-Palladium and running press releases from the local school verbatim.
It was our job as the new custodians of the JE somehow to win back readers, convince the people of Berrien Springs, Eau Claire and environs that The Journal Era was serious about reporting in those communities.
A year and a bit more later, when I resigned to become a reporter with the South Bend Tribune, the JE’s paid circulation was approaching 2,000 and Schrader’s was back in the centerfold with its double-truck grocery ads.
Much of our success came from the fact that neither John, Pat nor I were formally-trained journalists. John and Pat were University of Michigan English majors. I was a historian by undergraduate and graduate school training. We didn’t play by the J school rules because we mostly didn’t know what they were. If a story sounded interesting, that was good enough for us.
Guess it was good for readers, too.
Those were exciting times. We were trying new things every week in that newsroom in that old brick building on Ferry Street. Each week, I’d hear that we’d picked up a few more subscribers. It was terrific validation.
My rule of thumb was that our newspaper ought to surprise people, it ought to make them think and it should always be suspicious of government and business.
As I watch the bigger papers flounder, I wonder if the newspaper industry doesn’t need an infusion of energy and alternative approaches from people who are not trained as professional journalists, people whose minds are not suffocated by rules about what is news and what is not.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com
