News from bars and barbershops
By Mike Lange
Staff Writer
One of the toughest assignments during my years as a weekly newspaper editor in Skowhegan was finding reliable, competent help.
Granted, I had a lot of people approach me who said they could write. Unfortunately, the talent pool was pretty shallow and anyone with a glimmer of potential was quickly recruited by two competing dailies.
So I tapped the retiree market and hired Richard “Scoop” Plummer.
Scoop worked for the Central Maine Morning Sentinel for about 40 years, and one of his treasured assignments included coverage of President Dwight Eisenhower’s visit to Pittsfield in the 1950s.
Since Scoop was a fixture in the community, I hesitated to give him assignments per se. I would simply ask “What are some of the events you can cover?”
He was pretty flexible, but detested covering town governments or school boards. “I get more news out of bars and barbershops than I do out of a selectmen’s meeting,” he muttered more than once. And sometimes he was right.
Basically, he’d hang out in places where he’d get story ideas. In the morning, it might be the Pine Tree Restaurant that opened at 4 a.m. to serve the cop on the overnight beat and cab drivers. During the day, it might be Pop Hall’s barbershop. Any time after 3 p.m., it was over a glass of Dubonnet at the Midtown Hotel and Lounge.
He’d always have his notebook handy and surprise me with solid news and human interest features.
Fast-forward to 2014.
Tim Gallagher, president of the 20/20 Network, wrote a column for Editor and Publisher magazine a few weeks ago about the need to blend “old-time reporting with the digital kind.”
Gallagher cited polls showing that journalists “are spending hours each day on the Internet doing research, searching for sources, verifying facts and keeping up with trends on their beats. What happened to getting out of the office and working the beat by talking to people?”
He acknowledges that the ‘Net has been a huge asset to the media. “But you have to wonder what is lost when the discretionary reporting time we used to spend with people is given over to regular interaction with an electronic source that’s always on the record, but can’t respond to questions,” he wrote.
He has a valid point. I admit that I get mentally chained to the PC at times because I delve into stories that require a lot of research and verification. As a result, I sometimes “overwrite” by adding details that bulk up a story, but really don’t make it more readable.
Eventually, people are going to read more news on their smartphones and tablets than they are in a newspaper. But someone still has to gather it, and that’s where we come in.
Scoop Plummer knew his audience because simply he spent more time with them.
Granted, bars and barbershops aren’t the only places to pick up news tips.
But Scoop may have been ahead of his time without even realizing it.
Mike Lange is a staff writer with the Piscataquis Observer. His opinions are his own and don’t necessarily reflect those of this newspaper.