Reflections: Newspapers and me
Allan Winkler has been involved with newspapers and local news since he was young.
I’ve been interested in newspapers for as long as I can remember.
My love affair began early. As a youngster, I was given a toy printing press and put out a one-page paper for my family. When I was 11, I took over a paper route from a friend and delivered the Newark Star-Ledger in my hometown in central New Jersey. My father considered the paper so bad he wouldn’t allow it in the house, but I do recall being fascinated by an article about Christine Jorgensen, who had one of the earliest sex-change operations. Instead of the paper I delivered, we got the New Brunswick Daily Home News, which wasn’t much better, but it was ours.
In college, I subscribed to The New York Times, and I’ve continued to do so for my entire life.
In graduate school, my sister became an editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education, a news outlet for the academic profession. With her help, I began to publish book reviews and other pieces and discovered that I loved the instant feedback of seeing my work in print very quickly.
Some years later, when I was teaching at the University of Oregon, in Eugene, I began to submit op-ed pieces to the Eugene Register-Guard. Much to my surprise and delight, they printed them regularly. I discovered, though, that my colleagues in the history department weren’t happy about this, telling me that not only would this not help my case for promotion and tenure, but it would count against me, for it was taking me away from the more important work I should be doing. I ignored them and continued writing until I began to feel that $25 a piece was too little. Eventually, the editor relented, paid me a little more and our relationship continued. At the same time, I discovered that the Portland Oregonian was willing to have an occasional piece.
Some years later, after I had come to Miami, I had a Fulbright to teach at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. While there, I read Barack Obama’s book Dreams from My Father, which talked about his Kenyan roots. I wrote a piece about Obama and the book, which was published in the Nairobi Nation and later in the Cincinnati Post.
Some years after that, when the United States found itself at war in the Middle East, I was contacted by both the Boston Globe and Newsday in New York to write op-ed pieces about wartime propaganda, and I was happy to comply.
Then came Barack Obama’s wonderful keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Everyone was overwhelmed, but no one really knew who Obama was. I called the Boston Globe, told them I had a piece about Obama, rewrote the lead and the Globe published it the next day. I was delighted.
But I must say that the best experience I’ve had writing has been with the Oxford Free Press. And that is largely due to the incredible job done over the past year by our editor, Sean Scott. He has written five or six compelling pieces each week, edited everything that the rest of us have written and kept us all on target. Sean is leaving for another job in Maine, and we will miss him dearly. But the best of it is that he has made writing and working with the paper fun, and for that, like everyone else, I am genuinely grateful.
Allan Winkler is a University Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Miami University, where he taught for three decades. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Oxford Free Press.
