The year 2026 marks 55 years that I have been either a full-time or part-time professional journalist. I began as sports editor of The News-Democrat and Logan Leader in late January 1971. Over a three-decade-plus span with that newspaper, I also held the titles of assistant managing editor, managing editor, and editor. I also had a stint as editor and publisher of Al Smith’s newspaper in Brentwood, Tenn.
I was on the air for WRUS radio broadcasting sports for about 40 years, including five years full-time in both news and sports.
And for the last 17 years, I have been editor of The Logan Journal digital news publication. In truth, the last few years I have been alone in writing and publishing what most people know as The LoJo. Our son Trey, who was the original publisher, is so busy as head of the web division of a large international online corporation and also teaching web classes at SKYCTC that he has no longer been able to create ads for The LoJo.
For many reasons, including that my 80th birthday is on the horizon, I am going to limit the scope of The LoJo in the future and will emphasize the parts of an old-fashioned newspaper that I’m hoping readers miss. These include school news, business stories, weddings, births, anniversaries, coming events, and full obituaries. Sports, of course, will remain a focus.
We’ve tended to call The Logan Journal a ‘newspaper’, but the newspapers that most of us grew up with were all-encompassing. During my years at the N-D& L, I sometimes would write 40 or more stories a week in the combined two editions, ranging from news briefs to investigative stories to editorials. In addition to sports for six schools in Logan County, I was responsible for 10 governmental meetings a month, business news,l ots of Tobacco Festival stories, and innumerable political stories.
I loved covering politics on the local level along with the late WRUS Hall of Famer Don Neagle. Fiscal court meetings were sometimes a three-ring circus. Republicans were hard to find in the Land of Logan in those days, but factions abounded in the Democratic party. Judge-Executive Bob Brown headed the larger group; their detractors were loosely united around patriarch Clyde ‘Red’ Sanders with magistrates Clyde Nolan Sanders, Harold Prince and Ronald Starks their spokesmen. Then when they had reached a closed-door agreement, word would get out that the Browns and the Sanderses had experienced a ‘love-in.’
Meanwhile the elder statesmen of the political parties, Republican Lawrence Forgy and Democrat Karl Dawson. enjoyed each other’s company immensely, especially while they were making fun of the magistrates during fiscal court meeting.
Politics are not fun on a state and national level anymore. I am relieved to say, however, that I believe our local elected officials still are more interested in the public good than any political party’s prominence.
Anyway, beginning today, The Logan Journal is no longer the place for political news, disagreements, accusations or threats, It’s not a venue for readers to learn of crime and punishment or law and order. Editor Chris Cooper and her staff do a very good job of reporting on them in the News-Democrat & Leader. They cover governmental meetings; we don’t.
Neither will The LoJo be a place for debating controversial issues like tax rates, land use planning, or uses of public property. Newspapers have editorial pages, and WRUS, which is one of Logan County’s greatest assets, reports on most issues. Station Manager Chris McGinnis offers the Feedback program five days a week, and he welcomes comments by listeners. The station’s full-time staff—Chris, Myla Porter and Lucas Celsor—are involved in countless worthwhile community groups and are in tune with the heartbeat of the cities and the county.
The sad truth for a newspaper junkie like me is that the internet has done to print newspapers what Walmart’s arrival did to locally owned small businesses. There is still a place for them, but with a dramatically reduced impact than in the past.
When I was working for Al Smith Communications in the seventies and eighties, we had two editions a week in Logan County, usually totaling from 40 to 50 pages weekly. Now, the N-D&L only has one edition a week. The last two weeks, the lone print newspaper in Logan County has consisted of eight pages each.
We’re certainly not alone in this. Two newspapers I read daily for many years, the Park City Daily News in Bowling Green and The Courier-Journal in Louisville have reduced editions, pages, staffs and days published.
As much as they would like to do so, those who now manage these print newspapers simply don’t have space to cover everything they would like to anymore. Chris has hired a very capable sports reporter now. His pictures are very good, and his stories are informative. But he doesn’t have room for weekly in-depth coverage of all the teams. And there’s very little space for Lifestyle stories like engagements, weddings, births and anniversaries.
That’s where I want The LoJo to go, filling those needs and desires. I also hope to increase local business coverage dramatically.
In our 17 years publishing The Logan Journal, we have never charged a cent for readers to log on. It’s always been free and still will be.
To support our endeavors, we’re going to begin charging for business stories and briefs, non-profit/church briefs, lifestyles stories, and obituaries. We will have varying rates for different services. Price Funeral Home and Kirby Funeral Services Russellville are now paying to have all of their obituaries published without charge to families involved. Beginning now, other funeral homes or families can pay to run an obituary. The rate will be $20 without extra costs for a picture or length of the document.
You can see a rate chart for advertising in an accompanying post. It can be found now in the Advertising section of The Logan Journal at http://www.theloganjournal.com/Advertising.aspx
I have met/interviewed four presidents (Ford, Carter, Reagan and the older Bush), five vice presidents (Rockefeller, Mondale, Gore, and the aforementioned Ford and Bush) and a flock of Congressmen. I spent a Sunday afternoon talking with Fred Thompson, the actor and U.S. Senator who was President Nixon’s lawyer during the Watergate hearings. Mitch McConnell and I have had several lengthy conversations, and another great Kentucky senator, Sen. Wendell Ford, was a frequent source. I developed friendships with Louisville Mayor Harvey Sloane and Lt. Gov. Steve Henry. Harvey and his wife Kathy gave us a wedding present, and Steve and his wife, former Miss America Heather French, would meet me on Saturdays at the newspaper as they traveled to western parts of the state to change their babies’ diapers.
Heather is one of two Miss Americas whom I interviewed here. The other was Phyllis George, the first woman panelist for the NFL on CBS who was married to Gov. John Y. Brown Jr.
I covered one political presentation where the speakers were Muhammad Ali, Colonel Sanders and education reformer Ed Prichard. I went to a stopover in Louisville by Sen. Mark Warner, who was a Republican running for president. I was more interested in meeting his wife, legendary actress Elizabeth Taylor, who had the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.
News stories are not always fun, though. Among the controversies I have covered:
*Consolidation of Logan County Schools
*Sale of the right to provide hospital service by the county to a private firm
*The transfer of ambulance service management from the government to for-profit providers
*Legalizing the sale of alcoholic beverages
*Reducing the number of magisterial districts in the county
*Election contest suits in 1977
*The Russellville water crisis as the century turned
*Four-laning U.S. 68-80
*Phasing out “Kiing Tobacco’
*Construction of a new jail (twice)
*Construction of a new Justice Center
*Expansion of public water throughout the county
*Judicial reform that created district courts and ruled that judges must be attorneys
*Closure of Lake Herndon and Wildcat Hollow
*Transfer of emergency services dispatching from Russellville to the county
*Industrial discharge of PCBs into Mud River
*Tax rates for library, school and health districts
*Valuation of property for taxation
*Murder and involuntary manslaughter charges
*Places of entertainment licenses
*Numerous zoning change and eminent domain disputes
*Concerns about pollution believed to be coming from the landfill and the rendering plant
*Effect of the arrival of Walmart on locally owned small businesses