WHITE RIVER VALLEY — This week is National Newspaper Week and it made me think about why being in this business is important to me.

I have had other jobs outside the newspaper business but none grabbed me as this one did years ago. I found my niche so to speak.

There are several reasons I think this business became my career and not just a job. One, I firmly believe a free press preserves our nation's democracy. Two, it's a people business like none other because of the variety of stories we write covering everything from business, education, religion, politics, crime to human interest. Three, it isn't boring -- there's always something to get the adrenaline going.

I had a co-worker once say when we were discussing our work, "What else is there?" It does get in the blood -- the racing to get a story before deadline, the sound of a press running, the constant creation of a new product either daily or weekly, the knowledge of knowing the work you do can help sustain a democracy or help a family who has lost their home to a fire by making the public aware they need help.

My first newspaper job was with the Enterprise Journal in McComb, Miss., in the 1960s, and it was there that I learned not only the ethics of journalism but the importance.

I worked on the classified ads desk and wrote a weekly business advertising column titled, "Shop Talk." There have been a lot of changes since that time both in putting a newspaper together and the way they are run. That was a family owned newspaper. Oliver Emmerich, the publisher/owner was well known across the state.

Today many newspapers are owned by corporations and this made some changes in the work place.

Technological advancements also made many changes to the way a newspaper is put together. However, despite the changes that came along, journalism itself has remained the same. A reporter's jobtoday is pretty much the same as a reporter's job when I went to work at the Enterprise Journal.

I not only worked a classified desk and wrote a column there, I also worked in retail/display advertising at three other newspapers, the Casa Grande Dispatch at Casa Grande, Arizona, and two Arkansas newspapers the Daily Sifting Herald at Arkadelphia, and the Hope Star at Hope.

I also wrote an advertising column at the Star titled, "Ad Venture."

Then I moved over to the editorial side at the Star and this is where I found my real niche -- I loved journalism from day one.

I was a single mom who had a four year-old in day care, a teenager in high school, and I was working full time as a reporter.

That should be enough for anyone to have on their plate, but I loved reporting enough that I went back to college to study journalism. My first round of college had been as a sociology major. This time it was a different experience and I enjoyed every course even a tremendously large book and study on the history of journalism. I read every page of that history book. I didn't read every page of the other history courses I took in college.

I would do homework until 2 a.m., get a few hours sleep and get up to get the kids off to day care and school and get to work at 8 a.m.

It was an exhausting time but I crammed two years of journalism courses into as small a time as possible by not taking summer breaks.

Later becoming an editor made a change at work -- I was most often going over reporters' stories and making decisions about what to run and what to not to run. I also had to get even more acquainted with the legal ins and outs of publishing a newspaper -- what could or could not be published to save the paper from any lawsuits.

I still covered some stories like a major crime in Hope that I've always remembered -- a young woman was shot five times early one morning by a man who stole her pickup and raced toward Little Rock. We were on the site of the murder and I was in touch with local law enforcement officials to get the story shortly after the murder happened.

Later that morning within minutes of our deadline with the story as we knew it was written -- a law official called me to say Little Rock police had caught the alleged perpetrator.

This was one of those hold the press times, while I called the Little Rock Police Department. I had an officer call me back almost immediately to give me the details.

We ran an hour late on the press deadline for our afternoon daily but we had the full story of not only the murder but the capture.

I have covered a variety of stories through the years. My biggest job at the Star as a reporter was covering politics -- Bill Clinton in particular. While I enjoyed writing political stories and covering a president as well as the few crime stories that came to me to cover, it has been feature or human interest stories that I have enjoyed most.

I have met some remarkable people from a 72 yearold blind lady of Hope who lives alone and manages quite well to a more recent story for the White River Valley News on reclusive artist Tim West of Winslow.

Newspapers serve a very important role in a community, and I have always hoped readers enjoy the stories I do as much as I enjoy writing them.

I simply love the work and so do all the reporters and editors I have met through the years.

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Pat Harris is managing editor of the White River Valley News.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 10/08/2009

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