My Perspective - First day of my career

By Jim Palmer

The other day, someone asked me about my first job out of college. It was then that I realized a fun little work milestone was fast approaching. 

Thirty years ago, on Aug. 1, 1996, I walked into the office of the Pope County Tribune in Glenwood, Minn. I arrived a few minutes before 8 a.m. I wanted to be early... but not too early. I wore a new blue polo shirt and a pair of khaki pants that I had purchased the night before. I wanted to look professional, but not overdressed. I was nervous, but excited... and ready to get settled in. It was the first day of my career in journalism.

The Tribune was located in  an older brick building.  It had a front counter with the latest copy of the newspaper on it. Nearby was a fax machine and a police scanner. And each desk had a large desktop computer on it.

I met a few people at the interview the week before, but met the rest of the crew on that first day.  They were all friendly and helpful  from day one and they quickly took me in. It was a fairly tight knit group.  They showed me my office, where I had my own desk, my own camera, and my own computer. I was feeling pretty good.

On that first day,  the publisher (and my boss), John R. Stone, brought me to the Rotary Club meeting in town. There, I met some important people like the mayor, the high school superintendent, and a bunch of local business owners. I felt about 20 years younger than everyone else in that meeting, so was a little intimidated... but it was good to meet these people on day one. Many would become friends as well as important contacts in my career.

It was an interesting time to be working at a small town newspaper office. I started in journalism right in the middle of a fairly large technology shift in the industry (and the world). The biggest changes were happening in photography and desktop publishing.

That first year, every photo that we took was taken with a film camera and that film was developed in a darkroom. We scanned every negative so we could have them on our computer to modify, re-size, etc. Digital cameras would come a few years later and, after they improved enough in resolution, would eliminate film and darkrooms.

We had a large “paste-up table” in the middle of the office where we would assemble the pages each week. When I started, we would print out stories and photos, cut them out and paste them on the pages. This was kind of a transitional phase between old-school physical paste-up and modern fully digital desktop publishing. We had early versions of the desktop publishing so we would print them out in chunks to fit parts of the pages. Each article and photo we printed out was put through a wax machine so it would stick on pages. This method was a little clunky, but far easier than it had been a decade earlier, when everything was manually assembled at the paste-up table. A few years later, we could digitally layout just about everything on our computers and print them out on a full sheet.

My official title was Sports Editor. After a couple of weeks on the job,  the high school sports started practicing at our local high school. I would spend many hours at that high school and other area high school gyms, tracks, courses and auditoriums in that first year. Although attending and reporting on sporting events was a big part of my job, I was also very much involved in the news end of things (common at small town newspapers). I covered school board and county commissioner meetings, and liked to write feature stories about people when time permitted. I loved the variety.

When people bring up journalism, I often talk about the first year of my career. I feel like I learned more about journalism, writing and photography in that first year than I learned in the four years in college. I worked really hard and spent a lot of time improving my writing and photography. This first year set the tone for the rest of my career in journalism. I remember feeling a little lost in the first few months at the job, but by the time my one-year anniversary came around I was feeling much more confident.

Working for a small-town newspaper office fresh out of college was one of the more interesting experiences of my life. By the end of that first year, I had a much better grasp on what community journalism was all about. I also learned how local government worked, how important non-profits and volunteers were to a community, and I met all sorts of interesting people.

During my six years at the Tribune, my title changed from sports editor to news editor and then to managing editor before I made the move to Senior Perspective and other ventures. I worked with some great people at the Tribune and had a great experience. I am thankful for the opportunity to learn and grow.

And it all started 30 years ago.

Cookbook photos

We are getting our next “More Lifelong Favorites” cookbook together (coming in the fall) and we are in need of some more photos, and some recipes in certain categories. Some categories that we could use more recipes include beverages, ethnic foods, non-food items, and breakfast foods.