Herding Stringers

By this time my folks had moved to Omaha where they took jobs at the Council Bluffs Nonpareil, a daily newspaper with a union shop. My dad was employed as a printer (compositor) and Mother as a linotype operator.

They had never belonged to a union and it took some getting used to. The plant was not air conditioned but windows could be opened to take advantage of any breeze. One day a gust of wind blew out the flame on Mother’s gas- which heats the metal that is molded into type. She got up to re-light the pot and almost got fired. That was a machinist’s job and the union steward made sure the rules were followed. Some 30 to 40 minutes later the machinist got to her problem and corrected it. The union feather bedding was kept intact but it put Mom well behind in her daily output of type.

Having graduated at mid school year, the regular recruiting of students didn’t take place but I did get an offer of a short term job at the Custer County Chief in Broken Bow, Nebraska. The title was news editor but it consisted mostly of editing country correspondents’ copy from some 100 “stringers” in this western Nebraska trade territory, which stretched nearly 100 miles into the sand hills.

The regular news editor was spending his time working on a special section called the Hereford Edition. In that cattle country, advertising could be sold and stories written in a section that dealt exclusively with Hereford cattle.

Most of the copy I dealt with was the “Grandma Jones was feted at her 90th birthday by her family” type of material but some got more interesting.

One correspondent related all the details of a pinochle party, including who won high, low and what was served for lunch. At the end, as if it were an afterthought and the writer questioned whether it should even be included, she mentioned that during the evening an explosion in the house blew out the windows in the kitchen. Hard news was not easily recognized by the stringers.

In another situation, the stringer had the good sense to call in a possible murder. I drove nearly 100 miles to find out the death was ruled a suicide but it showed me the immensity of the territory covered by a country newspaper in western Nebraska.