The Genesis of My Journalistic Integrity

Often something will happen to cause me to pause and reflect. One of those incidents occurred this week for me. I was sitting at my desk when my cell phone buzzed with an incoming text from my friend Mickey Thompson. The text read that the family of George Gurley had requested hospice for him. His time left on this Earth was coming to an end.

Let me set the stage and provide some background on the people in this blog post.

George Gurley was the editor and co-owner of my hometown newspaper, the Ada Evening News for almost 30 years. To say that he was a larger-than-life figure in our small town was an understatement. Even as a junior high school student, I knew who Mr. Gurley was.

I knew Mickey because he had been the sports editor of the newspaper when I was in high school and assumed the position of managing editor the year I got married.

Honestly, I knew who Mr. Gurley and Mickey were because of a third person – J. Don Cook. Cook was the photographer at the Ada Evening News until 1977 when he left to become the Director of Photography at the Daily Oklahoman. His award-winning photographs were legendary in Pontotoc County (probably beyond, but my world was pretty limited in those days). When I was in junior high, I participated in a 2-hour workshop that Cook conducted, and my interest in photography was solidified. Every day after school, I would search the Ada Evening News for Cook’s photos of the day. It was then that I started reading the sports and editorial pages.

Fast forward to 1980. I was a newly married 22-year-old living in my hometown. I was 12 hours short of a degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma. My husband had convinced me to drop out of school for a brief time to avoid driving the 63 miles back and forth from Ada to Norman on a daily basis, and I had agreed (much to the disappointment of my parents).

That summer, my husband and Mickey played on a local softball team. I don’t remember the details, but I suspect that Mickey mentioned that the photographer position at the newspaper was open, and I told him I was interested in the position. He must have set up an interview for me with Mr. Gurley.

In retrospect, I now marvel at what must have been Mickey’s power of persuasion. I was a 22-year-old blonde female whose only experience in photography was that workshop in junior high and one college photography class. I did own a 35mm camera, which my parents had given me for my high school graduation. Thinking back on it now, I realize that the portfolio that I brought to that interview was in a word – pathetic. What’s even more shocking is that I got the job.

Two weeks into the job, it was clear that I was way over my head. My interest and passion in photography were woefully inadequate to make me competent. I barely knew the difference between an f-stop and shutter speed. My composition was boring. My lighting was abysmal. Not only did my photos fall short of Cook’s award-winning talent, but I was even a poor substitute for my most recent predecessor.

Stories of Mr. Gurley’s temper and unwavering quest for excellence are legendary. But two weeks into my dismal stint as the photographer of the Ada Evening News, he didn’t yell at me or even fire me. He walked by my desk one day and asked me to follow him into the darkroom (remember this was four decades ago, pre-digital cameras, and we were still developing our black and white photos in a darkroom). In today’s current reality of the ”me too” movement, I can only imagine what readers are thinking. While I’ve had many “me too” moments in my life (including in Ada, Oklahoma), those moments did not come in the darkroom that day or ever at the Ada Evening News.

On that day 40 years ago, Mr. Gurley never raised his voice, but quietly gave me a 3-hour lesson on photography and developing techniques. That’s right, the publisher and editor of the newspaper spent 3 hours teaching a young, incompetent photographer how to do her job.

My photography skills improved immensely that day, but I also learned an important lesson about leadership that would serve me more than the photography skills ever would.

I only spent 18 months at the Ada Evening News. Ultimately, the lure of adventures beyond the borders of Pontotoc County, an overriding fear of being financially dependent on my husband, and a desire to have my own career led me back to the University of Oklahoma to finish my degree. This is by no means a judgment on others who made different choices, but my choice was to do what was best for me.

By the time I graduated, my husband and I were relocating to Oklahoma City, and months later I was hired at the Oklahoma State Department of Health, where I would spend the next 25 years in a career I love.

Honestly during the past 40 years, I haven’t thought much about my time at the Ada Evening News.. But I’ve thought a lot about those days since receiving the text from Mickey last week. What I remember is that while other similar regional newspaper pages were filled with stories about family reunions, the Ada Evening News reported on state, national, and international events, as well as local ones. I recall being in an editorial meeting where we were discussing the status of an article that one of the reporters was writing about the lasting effects of the meltdown of a reactor at Three Mile Island near Middletown, Pennsylvania a year earlier. I remember thinking, “Does anyone in Ada, Oklahoma care about Three Mile Island? Does anyone even know what a nuclear power plant does?”

But here’s what I learned when I was in those editorial meetings – we should care about what’s happening beyond our community, state and nation. We should have all of the facts presented to us in a non-biased, yet truthful manner, so that we can make informed decisions based on those facts. I learned that it’s alright to have opinions, even differing ones, but those opinions belong on the editorial page – not in a sensational headline or body of an article. I learned that correct punctuation and sentence structure are critical.

I was only a blip in the life of Mr. Gurley and those reporters. But my brief time many years ago working in a newsroom with interesting people who wanted to tell interesting stories with a leader who required excellence forged my idealistic viewpoint of journalistic integrity, heightened my sense of curiosity, and amplified my thirst for continued learning.

To be honest, that last sentence is likely to have been much too wordy for Mr. Gurley. So, here’s one that may have generated fewer edits with his red pen.

Thanks for the life lessons, Mr. Gurley. They have served me well. Godspeed.