Where has the last half decade gone?

I wasn't quite sure what I was getting into back in June 2005, when I reported to work for the first time in the Capital Press main office in Salem, Ore. Frankly, I wasn't sure if I would fit in here. These people were pretty serious about their agriculture here, and I was not, by training or experience, an agriculture journalist. I had worked in the mainstream media for my whole career before coming here.

But, looking back, I had a few things going for me. I grew up in an agriculture business (the aerial spraying business); I went to an ag school (Oregon State, where the journalism department that I got my degree from was based in the ag building); and I'd spent 10 years in California, which was one of the states we cover and was part of the operation I was tasked to oversee at the time.

I certainly did not know if I would still be here 5-years hence. I'd only held one journalism job for at least 5 years up to that time, so the odds were probably against it. But I passed the 5-year mark last month. So, I've spent a little time looking back, in self reflection, this summer. I admit I am disappointed that I've let my contributions to this blog languish. While farmers and other agribusiness professionals and people just plain interested in topics related to their food have grown more active in their blogging, I've been nearly inactive here. Much of my attention for the last year has been on our main website, with some time devoted to our other social media efforts, like Twitter, Facebook and editing videos from our staff that we post on YouTube.

It seems I keep relearning the lesson that you can't do everything. I know I certainly can't, at least not without a whole lot of help. I appreciate all of those who have helped the Capital Press report news about agriculture here, on our website, on Twitter, on Facebook, on our other blogs, and in print. Part of what makes working for the Capital Press so exciting is that we are continuing to look for the best, most innovative ways to help the people in Western agriculture do their important work of growing, or contributing to the growth of, food and fiber. There are lots of good stories out there.

We've changed a lot of things in the 5 years I've been here. We changes our logo, or printed page design, or website design, we went from zero blogs to three (the newest one devoted to helping ag business with digital marketing) and changed the way we we zone our print editions.

I can't say for sure what the next 5 years will bring. But I can safely predict that the ways we continue to cover agriculture will continue to evolve, just as agriculture itself continues to evolve.

Thanks to you, for checking out those stories in our various venues. And thanks to my Capital Press bosses and colleagues for making this such a great place to work for the last 5 years and allowing me to play with your digital and print toys.

FBI files: Cronkite collaborated with war protesters

The man widely credited for turning American opinion against the Vietnam War ... was working behind the scenes to do just that.

Continue reading.

Walter Cronkite, 1916-2009

Much has been said and written in the past 12 hours or so about the death of Walter Cronkite, who was dubbed "the most trusted man in America" in a national survey.

Certainly Cronkite was one of the pioneers of the business, being the first to anchor a regular 30-minute network newscast and helping to make network news a dominant force for decades. He also provided a comforting and reassuring voice during some of America's most turbulent moments, including the assassination of President Kennedy.

Some of my favorite memories of Cronkite were actually of Johnny Carson's parodies of him on the "Tonight Show." I remember one in particular in the early '80s, when Johnny delivered the newscast that Cronkite might have wished he could and called new anchor Dan Rather a "pretty boy."

I heard Brit Hume say last night that Cronkite was part of an era of journalism that has also died. But I think he was actually among the first to usher in the present era of introducing opinion into television newscasts. Remember that he came out firmly against the Vietnam War in his broadcasts, at a time when injecting such opinion into news just wasn't done. Sure, the sharing of opinions by Cronkite and others in his era was much more subtle than it is for the network anchors of today. But the political bent of the anchors of that day was generally well known -- so much so that by the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan was touted for his ability to "go over the heads of" the national media.

While you could still respect Cronkite, John Chancellor and others even though you sort of knew where they were coming from, later generations of newscasters and even print journalists have taken their brand of opinion-based journalism to a whole new level, and their industries have suffered greatly as a result. When Cronkite himself began engaging in full-throated activism in his later years, it caused many of us to see his entire body of work in a whole new light.

So it's certainly appropriate to call Cronkite a pioneer in the news business. But when it comes to his legacy, it's fair to say that it didn't stop being shaped when he went off the air.

[ The observations in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Capital Press as a whole. ]

Time has escaped from the bottle

Where has the time gone? June 13 marks my 4th anniversary at the Capital Press, but in many ways if feels like I just got here.

Perhaps that is because the Capital Press, our parent company the East Oregonian Publishing Co., and some of our sister papers are fortunate to have some staff members with long tenure. It's not unusual to have people stick around these parts for 10, 15, 20 years or more.

When I started working at the Capital Press in June 2005, it was something of a homecoming. I had worked at East Oregonian during vacations from college and joined the staff at the Pendleton-based daily in the Hermiston, Ore., bureau as my second job after college. When I first started working in the newsroom's photo lab in the summer of 1985, Mike Forrester was the editor-in-chief at the East Oregonian. He later become editor and then publisher of the Capital Press. Although he retired shortly before I came to the Capital Press, he still stops by from time to time as chairman of the Capital Press board and one of the owners of the company. I was seeing familiar faces from my first day of work at the Capital Press.

It doesn't feel like 24 years since I collected my first paycheck for this company and it certainly doesn't feel like 4 years since I got here. The only way I can quantify the passage of that time was that my daughter, who was born when I was in East Oregonian reporter back in 1991, is now 18. About the time I started my job as associate editor for the Capital Press I also attended her 8th grade graduation. Now, this month, she earned her high school diploma.

There is another obvious sign of the passage of time since my early days with the company. There is a black-and-white photo hanging on my office wall of me and four other photographers who were covering the Pendleton Round-Up in one of those summer/fall periods at the EO in the mid to late 1980s. The people who stop by my office and look at that picture don't seem to notice that I'm one of the people in it. And if I tell them I'm in the photo they usually can't tell which guy is me.

Well, the picture is black-and-white and it was taken a few years, and more than a few pounds, ago.

Still, there is some comfort in marking the passage of time, the changing of seasons, on familiar ground. So much changes and yet much remains the same.

I wish to thank my family and many friends for welcoming me back home in the summer 2005 and sharing so many special occasions with me these last four years. I look forward to many more special times.

I also wish to thank the Capital Press and East Oregonian Publishing Co. families who have extended so many professional opportunities to me over the years. I have gained a lot of experience and understanding of journalism and agriculture in the newsrooms of the East Oregonian, Hermiston Herald and the Capital Press. I also appreciate my colleagues and coworkers who have been receptive to the things I've suggested here based on things learned in other newsrooms and communities in the West.

And I also offer my thanks to all of you who stop in here at Blogriculture to check out what we have posted here. I've learned so much from the comments and interactions with my fellow bloggers too.

Four years. Wow. I can't believe how quickly the time has passed.

Oh, and if you are looking for anniversary gift ideas, the traditional fourth anniversary gift is fruit or flowers (I prefer fruit). The contemporary fourth anniversary gift is supposedly electrical appliances (and my iPod is showing it's age). Or is this my 24th anniversary? Funny, there is not traditional gift suggest for a 24th anniversary, according to my online website resources, but the modern gift suggestion is musical instruments. I have forgotten all I ever knew about playing the saxophone and I don't really have room for a piano, but I think the ever-musical iPod idea would still work.

OK, so I won't hold my breath waiting for the gifts.

The end of an era, however short it was

The Tehama Today section, whose content I produced for the last year that I was at the Redding Record Searchlight, is going defunct after a little more than two years of publication.

Sure glad I knew about Capital Press.

Idaho ag reporter wanted

The Capital Press is looking for an Idaho-based reporter to cover agriculture issues in the state and throughout the West. See the job posting here on JournalismJobs.com.

Pizza and poll numbers go together

During the last presidential election — actually during the last four (five if you count college) — I was working at a general news, or mainstream, newspaper. This is my first presidential election working for an agriculture weekly. The pace is decidedly different.

Election Day is always a big day at mainstream papers and is generally a long day for staffers, particularly editors. Lots of pizzas will be consumed in newsrooms around the country today as journalists work to report the most up-to-date news and election results from the presidential race right on down to local boards and commissions.

Here at the Capital Press, we are not so wrapped up in political coverage. For one thing, our paper won't come out until Friday, so everyone will know who won what where (except perhaps for the Washington state gubernatorial race). And since we cover four states, the hyper-local races, which may be highly important to some of our readers, will be of absolutely no interest to most of our readers. So our political coverage will be confined to reaction to the results in the presidential race, a couple of U.S. Senate races, some statewide races and a ballot measure or two.

Another contrast between the Capital Press and the mainstream press, is that the mainstreamers will be burning the midnight oil to get results out while our staff will be working a pretty normal schedule today. But if you are an election news junkie and a capitalpress.com reader, I'll be posting some of the major election results for you tonight on our website. Maybe I'll order a pizza to make the experience seem a little more like old times.

A summer/fall vacation

I'm back from a week's vacation, which probably sounds pretty strange to people who work in agriculture. This is the the busy time of year for most people in agriculture. A summer vacation for a farmer or agriculture business in the northern hemisphere is pretty much impossible.

Frankly, that's one reason I didn't go to work for my dad in his aerial application (i.e. crop dusting) business. When I worked for my dad in my late teens, it was just impossible to plan anything with friends because you just didn't know when you would be able to get away from work. Evening events were out, even though we didn't work after dark, because we were always up and at it before it was light each morning to get the airplanes fueled and head out to remote airstrips to work in the calm conditions after dawn. We often stopped work in the middle of the day, as the rising temperatures were often accompanied by wind, making it impossible to spray.

But that didn't mean we were done working for the day. There was always work to do, like servicing equipment and cleaning. Oh, how I hated the cleaning. And it seemed there was always something to clean. If it wasn't washing airplanes, pickups or other service vehicles, then there was always the shop floor to clean. Then, as sunset approached, the winds would calm down, and it was back to spraying again until twilight.

Even on days when we woke up to windy conditions you could never venture too far on the off chance conditions improved later in the day. So, some days we did get days off, but you didn't necessarily know it would be a full day off until the day was done and you hadn't worked.

I didn't like the unpredictability of that sort of schedule. So, instead, I ventured into newspapers, where you work a specific schedule but cover unpredictable events. It seemed a good compromise. Oh, sure, sometimes those unpredictable events have meant canceled plans, like on Sept. 11, 2001, I had been on vacation that week, but got called in to work as the nation and the world tried to come to grips with, and the media tried to cover, the stunning enormity of the terrorist attacks on New York, Washington, D.C., and the airline industry.

Agriculture businesses, like my father's, have changed a lot since I was making my career choices. There is a lot more regulation and oversight of things like work schedules, moving the industry closer too general society's "norms." Who knows, maybe if I were making my career choice today I would choose a different path. But, as the saying goes, you have to make hay while the sun shines and in agriculture, you work with the growing seasons and the weather permit it, and you take time off to recreate in the off season.

Best assignment ever

I gave Capital Press intern-for-the-day Suzanna Schuck an assignment to write a blog post about her experience covering a story for a newspaper and being published online on a newspaper’s website. After some thought, I decided to give myself the same assignment. So here is my post about my impressions of working with our intern for the day.

When the day started – Friday, Aug. 3, 2007 – I was excited about heading to Portland to cover an event where produce grown by farmers in Hermiston, Ore., was being handed out -- including world famous Hermiston watermelons -- to folks in downtown.

It was exciting for many reasons. One is that I normally fly a desk in my job and don't get out of the office to cover stories very often. Normally that's just fine by me. Although I started out as a photographer and became a writer/reporter, I hung up my camera and notepad long ago to do the behind-the-scenes work. It was hard at first, but I grew to enjoy it. But every now and then it's nice to see if I can still think on my feet when out in the field.

As for coverage of Friday's event, I decided I was going to try something that is new for me, which is shooting video. So I played the role of multimedia reporter, shooting moving pictures and recording sounds.

But I knew my little experiment could be a complete bust if I messed up with the video camera or the digital audio recorder. Fortunately, I was able to find someone to help me out -- the Capital Press intern for the day, Suzanna Schuck.

That's what made the day especially exciting for me, because Suzanna is also my daughter. And this was our first opportunity to work together in an area where we have shared interests -- writing and media.

On this day I turned the notebook and still digital camera over to Suzanna.

We arrived on-scene for our assignment at 11 a.m., about an hour before the scheduled start. The watermelons, potatoes and cantaloupes were all gone by 1 p.m. And after a return to our "field office" and brief pause for lunch, Suzanna set to work writing her story. She and I reviewed some of the audio I had recorded to choose quotes to include in her story. And after a final edit, the story it was posted shortly before 4:30.

Most people who know Capital Press know it as a printed newspaper, which comes out on Fridays. So, ordinarily, covering an event on a Friday would mean that story can't get out to readers until the following Friday. But Suzanna was able to get a story covered and written before some of our print readers probably even had a chance to read the story previewing the event in the newspaper that was waiting for them in their mailbox -- if the U.S. Postal Service managed to get it to them Friday.

Suzanna has also been assigned to write a blog post about her experience and I admit I will be anxious to read what she has to say. I know she’s been working on it, but it isn’t quite a done deal yet. But speaking only for myself and my experience, it was a particularly poignant day. It was a day that gave me a glimpse at the past. Several of the people Suzanna and I talked to Friday were people I used to cover back in the early 1990s as a reporter for the East Oregonian and editor of the Hermiston Herald. The one and only other time I ever covered the Hermiston watermelon giveaway in Portland was back in those days.

Back then in 1992, Frank Harkenrider, who was there in the square Friday, was mayor of Hermiston, and DuWayne White, who hauled a pickup load of produce for this year’s event and helped with the distribution, was on the city council all those years ago. I believe, and my memory may be a bit faulty on the timing for this, but I believe the current mayor, Bob Severson, who served as master of ceremonies Friday, and current councilman Rod Hardin, who was also there, were on the city's planning commission back them.

And Suzanna was barely a year old.

I got to see some of the future as well. I met three young farmers who are fourth-generation watermelon growers -- Brianna, Christie and Chandi Walker who farm near Stanfield -- who are proudly carrying on their family's tradition.

And I saw some of the future of media as well, as journalists, regardless of their primary medium, were covering the event, like Suzanna and I were, with a variety of tools to capture words, photographs, sound and video.

A lot has changed since Frank Harkenrider and some folks from Hermiston starting what is now a tradition of hauling produce to Portland every summer. People have changed hats and changed roles. New people have come onto the scene and new generations have taken more active roles. Children have grown. Time has marched on.

I was glad to see first-hand that the tradition of giving away Hermiston produce has continued and grown over the years. But mostly I feel fortunate to be able to have shared some of my chosen profession with Suzanna.

For many years, our time together was limited because my chosen vocation took me far from home and family. That's one "tradition" I am happy to say has been put to rest. On Friday, what I do for a living and the Eastern Oregon roots Suzanna and I share, gave us a chance to work together and collaborate on a story about people giving to others. We saw lots of smiling faces as hundreds of people, perhaps more than a thousand, got a gift from the good farmers and folks of Umatilla County.

But I feel like I got the biggest give of all. A day sharing what I love with the person I love most in this world.

And Suzanna, thanks for your help. You did a great job. Of course my opinion is biased. As much as I worked with Suzanna on her story as an editor, the part of me that is a proud father far overwhelmed any journalistic objectivity I tried to maintain about her final work. In the end, I turned over her story and photographs to the other editors on the Capital Press staff to decide what, if anything, to do with them for any of our print editions.

Suzanna’s story and photographs appeared in two of the four editions of Capital Press for Aug. 10, 2007 – the two that circulate in Oregon. I also got a call from the publisher of our sister paper, the East Oregonian in Pendleton, who saw the photos we posted online. He wanted to know if he could use a Capital Press photo in a column he is planning for the weekend – one of Suzanna’s photos.

Knowing that Suzanna’s work was about to be published in a print newspaper reminded me of the first time I had my work published, which happened when I was in high school in Eastern Oregon. I got to know the sports editor of the local weekly paper, the Hermiston Herald, when we were both taking photographs at sports events – he for his paper and me for my high school’s yearbook. The sports editor, Bill Bighaus, was planning to do a story on two tennis players from my school, but he didn’t have a photo of them playing. He asked if I had any pictures of them, which I did. He published my first photograph several days later. It was the spring of my senior year in high school and I was 18.

Now Suzanna will experience that same rush of pride at seeing her name in print in a “real” newspaper for the first time. But it will not just be one photo, it will be several. And a story. And her work will appear in three editions of two newspapers and on at least two different websites. All that at age 16 in the summer before her junior year in high school. She bested the old man by a mile and by nearly two years. And I couldn’t be more proud to be shown up by my daughter.

That’s not to say I hope she will, nor would necessarily want her to, pursue what has been my career and turn this news thing into a family tradition. There are better paying fields out there for someone with the talents she has and is developing. But I am very happy that we got a chance to work together and be brought together by interests that at one time, when they were only my interests, contributed to keeping us apart. Fortunately a couple of years ago I was able to find a job that will allow me to do what I do a lot closer to where she lives that gives us the opportunity to spend more time together and see each other more often. And on Friday, Aug. 3, it also gave me the opportunity to work with her, try to teach her a few things and in return learn so much more about her and her interests and talents.

It all made for one of the best days I’ve ever had working and one of the proudest days I’ve ever had as a parent. Through my chosen vocation I have met a former president, covered presidential candidates, interviewed and photographed politicians, captains of industry and celebrities. I've covered Pac-10 athletics, professional rodeo and NBA basketball. But no assignment means more to me than the one I covered with my daughter and for which she got the byline and photo credits. Thanks for working with me, Suzanna. I had a great time.