Bill Small Jr., the Citizen’s assistant publisher, invited me for an interview when I wrote him in the spring of 1960 because I was getting out of the Air Force.
He reserved a room for me in the Pioneer Hotel, a block south of the downtown building the Citizen shared with The Arizona Daily Star at 208 N. Stone Ave. That site is now part of a large hole where Pima County officials claim they will someday build a county-city courts building.
|
|
Small and I met in his office before he drove me in his Thunderbird convertible out Broadway past the eastern city limits at Wilmot Road, then back downtown along Speedway.
He offered me the night police reporter job for $105 a week, and I accepted. That was $25 more than I’d made in 1957 at the Times-News in Twin Falls, Idaho, and more than the Air Force was paying me.
Most of all, Tucson was a lot warmer than Omaha, Neb., where my wife and I had just spent a terrible winter.
The editorially conservative Citizen was Tucson’s top paper then, both in circulation and in news coverage. George Rosenberg was managing editor, with Clyde Lowery as his assistant, Tony Tselentis as news editor and Baird Thiessen as city editor.
Chief photographer Bernie Sedley, who later ran for mayor, oversaw his photographers - and the Tucson Press Club - from his Citizen office.
The all-star writing staff included Don Schellie, a genuinely nice guy whose columns Tucsonans loved; Asa “Ace” Bushnell, a versatile writer who kept coming back to the paper like a homing pigeon; nationally known novelist and movie critic Micheline Keating, and Western novelist Leslie Ernenwein.
One of the first cops I met here was the Tucson Police Department’s night desk sergeant, a guy from Bisbee named Clarence Dupnik. Forty-eight years later, he’s our sheriff.
In 1961, I switched to the day police job for a year before covering city hall for three. Then I became City Editor Tom Duddleston’s assistant. That went fine until I read an article by our editorial page editor about his recent trip to South Africa, which had been paid for by that country’s government.
I immediately told the entire newsroom I thought his assertion that South Africa’s happy colored people enjoyed apartheid was an embarrassment to the Citizen and its staff.
That led to my quick demotion and a return to reporting. Assignments included covering defense attorney F. Lee Bailey’s handling of the second murder trial of serial killer Charles Schmid and visits here by baseball great Jackie Robinson and defeated California gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon.
Realtor Roy Drachman told me about his efforts to assemble enough land south of Tucson for Howard Hughes’ aircraft plant, now Raytheon Missile Systems. A young Don Shropshire, the brand-new head of Tucson Medical Center, helped me research and write a series on rising health-care costs.
When I took a year’s leave of absence to teach journalism at the University of Arizona, it was canceled when Ted Turpin, an ex-Citizen employee and I bought the weekly Green Valley News for $13,000. We later bought the weekly Nogales International for $40,000.
Despite the ups and downs, I’ve had a soft spot for the Citizen, even after it was purchase by the Gannett Co. in 1976.
Bill Small Jr. has passed away, along with Cooper, Schellie, Sedley, Keating, Ernenwein and many others.
But George Rosenberg, Clyde Lowery, Tom Duddleston, Ace Bushnell, Tony Tselentis and I meet once a month for breakfast. Our Citizen memories often interrupt our discussions of world issues.
It’s tough to think that Arizona’s oldest continuously published newspaper will probably die soon. None of its 65 employees worked there when I did, yet many are friends.
Although I hope they land on their feet, I fear they won’t.
Contact Steve Emerine or e-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com. Emerine, a Tucson resident since 1960, has run Steve Emerine Strategic Public Relations since 1994. He is a former local newspaper reporter, editor and columnist and served as Pima County Assessor from 1973 to 1980. He is a regular Monday guest on the John C. Scott radio talk show, which airs from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. and from noon to 1 p.m. weekdays on The Voice KVOI 690-AM. This column appears weekly in Inside Tucson Business.
Comments
steve emerine wrote on Jan 26, 2009 8:44 AM:
Bill. I remember Dianne's mother, Yndia Smalley Moore, the former historical editor, who dropped by the Citizen newsroom fairly often to say hello or pass along a historical perspective for us to consider. And Bill Small Jr., as Dianne notes, was a prince of a man.
Bill is absolutely correct about the demise of political coverage by the Citizen and the Star. Each paper's political reporter regularly attended the Monday lunches of the Young Democrats of Greater Tucson and the Tuesday lunches of the Pima County Republican Club. The usually covered the speakers but even on the rare occasions that they didn't, they realized the advantage of talking to members of both clubs about the local political scene. Then the all-knowing consultants convinced the Star and Citizen that non-subscribers weren't interested in political news. Each time one paper cut back on political or local government coverage, the other soon followed suit.
And you can see how successful that advice has been in increasing circulation. The Citizen's numbers are less than 40 percent of what they were in the 1960s, and the Star has barely doubled its circulation while the population has increased five-fold.
We will all be poorer if one or both goes out of business.
Thanks for reading and writing, Bill and Dianne. You both understand what's happening. "
Bill Heuisler wrote on Jan 23, 2009 5:34 PM:
The Citizen seemed to lose its way when the papers began to blend and stopped covering local politics in depth.
I remember when local political clubs hosted reporters often, and when reporters attended Lions Clubs and Business Clubs to hear Mayor Corbett or Murphy, Mo Udall, Dennis DiConcini, Governor Babbitt and others. Now nearly extinct, candidate press conferences became debates (even fistfights). Candidates were tested, it was informative and it was fun.
Now the papers don't bother. Too bad.
Bill Heuisler "
Dianne M. Bret Harte wrote on Jan 23, 2009 1:59 PM: