I'm a newspaper guy

I was talking to my good friend Edub last week about folks we used to work with at the Bozeman Chronicle who had gone on to work for larger newspapers.

We laughed about a rookie reporter at the paper who had struggled with the writing, couldn’t meet deadlines, and left after less than a year. Edub said he thought the guy was still working for the Boston Globe.

Then he looked at me with a grin on his face and said: “And you’re working for the Phillips County News.”

It’s true. My journalism career hasn’t exactly seen a meteoric rise. The Bozeman Chronicle, where I worked for 20 years, was the top of the heap for me. Until the Chronicle dropped my column in wake of the corona virus, I’d been associated with that paper for nearly 35 years.

Before that, I was sports editor for the Livingston Enterprise for a couple of years.

I’m proud to have worked for both papers.

But it wasn’t pride that kept me here.

At the Chronicle I wore numerous hats as features editor, however it was the title of outdoors editor I most coveted. What other newspaper job could be better than that? Outdoors editor at a newspaper in Montana? Really?

While there are plenty of other places and jobs to aspire to as a news reporter, for an outdoors editor Montana can’t be beat.

Among other things, I covered the initial bison hunt, the outbreak of whirling disease on the Madison River, and the fires of ’88 in Yellowstone Park.

I’ve written about big fish, record-book elk, and eating rattlesnake.

For years I had wanted to float the length of the Yellowstone River, and in 2005 I was part of a joint Chronicle effort to do just that.

Bigger newspapers didn’t call to me the same way they did to other reporters. This was where I wanted to be.

When the Chronicle dropped me I considered quitting. Some folks suggested I start a blog. A magazine offered me a monthly slot.

But I’m too much a newspaper guy, and what I write is a simple newspaper column

The Phillips County News has run my column since we moved to Malta in 2006 and I very much appreciate that. I hope the column continues to run in the PCN until either I, or the paper, tip over.

Frankly, the newspaper industry has been on a downward trajectory ever since I arrived. I wonder if there’s a connection?

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected].