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Newspaperman.

An edi­tor once told me, in the sort of bass-ackwards man­age­ment advice I’ve come to think of as Thor­oughly Hoosier: “It’s always tricky to write some­thing about some­one who’s dead that isn’t 100 per­cent com­pli­men­tary.”

Noted, chief. So, on with it.

Jim Bar­bi­eri died this week. Chances are you didn’t know him. I didn’t know him, but I knew a lot about him. A good friend of mine, Bob Cay­lor, worked for him. I write this with a fat file before me, mostly let­ters from Bob, but with lots of clip­pings and pho­to­copies of the incon­tro­vert­ible evi­dence that his boss, Jim Bar­bi­eri, edi­tor of the Bluffton News-Banner of Bluffton, Ind., was, well, a real piece of work.

The obit linked above tells you so lit­tle: James C. Bar­bi­eri had served as the News-Banner’s pub­lisher, editor-in-chief as well as reporter and edi­to­r­ial writer dur­ing his more than 50 years with the paper. He was 77. All true, but such a thin, pas­tel pic­ture of what Bar­bi­eri was — an old-time edi­tor of a small-town daily, with all that entails. When I first became acquainted with his work, it wasn’t unusual for him to have writ­ten every word on the front page, and this was one of those old-fashioned front pages, clut­tered and crammed with sto­ries in 9-point type (although he took all the pic­tures, too). You’d turn inside, and he might have one or two signed edi­to­ri­als. It’s hard to imag­ine he had need of a staff, he worked so hard, strad­dling the town like a colos­sus, up on every pos­si­ble story, and then some.

Small-town news­pa­pers run by a dif­fer­ent set of rules than the New York Times. These rules include, but are not lim­ited to:

1) Every­one who wants to be in the paper, can be, with their name spelled cor­rectly.
2) Every big story can be local­ized some­how.
3) News will be placed in its proper per­spec­tive.

As to that last one, here’s Bar­bi­eri on a barn fire, under a six-column, two-deck, 48-point head­line read­ing, no, scream­ing: 40-MPH Wind-Whipped Super-Blaze Destroys 2 Lock­wood Barns, Machin­ery; $500,000 Losses This was under a six-column kicker: 3 Big Trac­tors Among Dozen Imple­ments Plus 2 Trucks, Car in Toll; Dar­ing Fire­men Ward Flames From Propane, Gaso­line; Save House, 4th Barn.

OK, that’s just the dis­play type. Here’s the lead:

Dri­ven like a molten arrow by 40-mile-per-hour gale winds, one of the largest and most spec­tac­u­lar fires of mod­ern his­tory here cat­a­pulted through three large barns at the Richard Lock­wood place on the Elling­ham Pike, devour­ing build­ing struc­ture and machin­ery in super­heated flam­ing gulps Thurs­day after­noon in a little-precedented ram­page of destruc­tion.

New graf:

It was like some­thing from the other plan­ets.

The story goes on. And on. And on. I think in word counts these days, and I’d esti­mate it at 2,000 words, min­i­mum, maybe closer to 3,000. The Chicago Tri­bune might write that much if the mayor were caught in bed with a 9-year-old boy, but prob­a­bly not. And hav­ing started at a gal­lop with those super­heated flam­ing gulps, it never really slows down — “erupt­ing streams and 4th of July bursts of shoot­ing flames and encir­cling smoke” … “black­ened by the ultra-heat but not aflame” … “swal­low­ing and blast­ing in the inferno.” And my favorite: “rural holo­caust.”

Nine grafs later: “But the fire­men appeared like pyg­mies con­fronting King Kong as they hus­tled about try­ing to defend against and peck blows at the super­fire under the com­pul­sion of the tremen­dous wind.”

And that was one story. He prob­a­bly wrote five oth­ers that day, plus the edi­to­ri­als. I don’t know what his hours were, but it’s safe to say he was never home for long. One of my favorite sto­ries about him was the one Bob told about the sec­re­tary who mis­tak­enly bought decaf for the office cof­feepot, while Jim spent two days walk­ing into walls and won­der­ing why his usual 70 cups a day were fail­ing him so utterly.

Rule No. 2, about local­iza­tion? No one could do it like Jim. A plane crash over the Indian Ocean with no Amer­i­cans aboard? Look for it on Page One, because “Bluffton-made Franklin Elec­tric sub­mersible motors” are being used in the hunt for the black boxes. I hold in my hand a 10-paragraph Bar­bi­eri story about the jail in Cov­ing­ton, Ky., which was sadly out­dated only 15 years after its con­struc­tion. And this is news in Bluffton why? Because the Cov­ing­ton jail was “hemmed in” by the river, but the new county jail in Bluffton has a “5.84-acre tract in a project based on cal­cu­lated inmate pop­u­la­tion growth plus adapt­abil­ity for expan­sion beyond that if ever nec­es­sary.”

As for Rule No. 1, let it only be said that the News-Banner was a prime source for one of my sum­mer dog-days peren­ni­als — a roundup of all the enormous-vegetable news from the sur­round­ing area.

But Jim didn’t just fol­low these rules. He made up his own. He’d been around that town about as long as any­one; why shouldn’t he be in charge? When the sher­iff had a heart attack in office, Jim decided he needed to go. And started run­ning spec­u­la­tive sto­ries about who might suc­ceed him should he decide to retire after his “pun­ish­ing” car­diac event, and how risky it is to be a county’s top law-enforcement offi­cer with a bad ticker.

Well. It turned out the sher­iff only wanted to stay in office long enough to see ground bro­ken on the new jail, so his­tory would record that it hap­pened under his watch. A res­ig­na­tion for health rea­sons was timed to coin­cide with the gala ground­break­ing. Jim stayed on mes­sage until the end:

…the sher­iff is expected to raise a small sym­bolic amount of already loos­ened turf — not enough for overex­er­tion — as he turns the first spade Fri­day in the ground­break­ing cer­e­mony…”

(This became known, in a small way, in our own small news­room orbit, as the “pre-loosened shov­el­ful of dirt” story.)

I’m going on and on, and I haven’t even got­ten to my favorite, about what hap­pened the night he got a call from a fam­ily who had an unwel­come vis­i­tor. (Why call the police when you can call Jim?) Again, a multi-deck head­line:

N-B Writer’s Cov­er­ing BHS 100 Years Inter­rupted by Man Hal­lu­ci­nat­ing on LSD, Rural Wells Fam­ily Alarm (The kicker: Asked about ‘Down­ers,’ Guns, Help; Killing Talked)

The lead:

This reporter had been cov­er­ing events all Sat­ur­day after­noon at the Bluffton High school 100-year cel­e­bra­tion and was about to go into the cafe­te­ria for the alumni ban­quet when the phone rang at the high school. Over the next four hours this writer was drawn away from the his­toric edu­ca­tional mile­stone and fes­tiv­i­ties — deal­ing with a young man who was hal­lu­ci­nat­ing on LSD.

Jim drove him around for a while, and then to the hos­pi­tal. Then he went back to the high school and fin­ished that assign­ment, before bang­ing out 2,000 words or so on the trip­ping guy. Just another day at the office.

Jim didn’t keep this pace up for his entire career; he slowed down a bit at the end. For the longest time, all I noticed about him was his con­vo­luted prose, his goofy Page One trib­utes (Happy 50th Birth­day, Bluffton Bridge!), his ele­va­tion of a barn fire to a rural holo­caust. He didn’t really gain my respect until his paper was sold to a local chain; they owned a bunch of lit­tle dailies out in “the region.” The head of the com­pany had polit­i­cal aspi­ra­tions — he wanted to be gov­er­nor — and I expect he thought his own news­pa­pers would back him up on it, like a rural Cit­i­zen Kane. Wrong-o.

It was hard not to notice the News-Banner’s edi­tor didn’t think much of his new pub­lisher. Every poll that showed him doing badly ended up on Page One. I don’t remem­ber all the details, but it was plain Jim thought of his new boss as any­thing but a news­pa­per­man wor­thy of col­le­gial respect. As the publisher’s star fell, Jim was right there with the pre-loosened-shovelful-of-dirt sto­ries. What was the pub­lisher going to do, fire him? Fire Jim Bar­bi­eri? You might as well try to fire God.

If there is an after­life, and a God, I expect Jim is talk­ing to him now. I don’t know what final dis­po­si­tion of his case will be — as I said, I only knew him by rep­u­ta­tion — but I expect that what­ever it is, Jim will file some­thing by dead­line. I can’t wait to see the head­line.

Posted on Monday, April 3rd, 2006 at 12:20 pm in Media. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


19 responses to
“Newspaperman.”

  1. Claire said on April 3rd, 2006 at 2:18 pm

    Fab­u­lous post. Thank you!

  2. Adrianne said on April 3rd, 2006 at 2:49 pm

    Nance:

    How well I remem­ber Jim Barbieri’s “rural holo­caust” account! I still have a copy of that Bluffton News Ban­ner front page float­ing around in my own news­pa­per morgue.

    Didn’t you once pitch a pro­file of Jim to one of the jour­nal­ism reviews, describ­ing him as “William Allen White’s addled copy­boy”?

    We will not see his like again!

  3. stevel said on April 3rd, 2006 at 3:24 pm

    Nance,

    You nailed it. The energy level of that man was ter­ri­fy­ing. Any­one decent in this busi­ness wishes they had a frac­tion of it. (Of course, a bit might be applied to the edit­ing func­tion.)

  4. Kim said on April 3rd, 2006 at 8:06 pm

    Bril­liant.

  5. Dave said on April 3rd, 2006 at 8:56 pm

    I used to work at a job that took me to Bluffton for the day. I often would pur­chase the Bluffton News-Banner, just because it was so chock full of news and so dag­gone enter­tain­ing, I felt like I knew every­thing about every­thing in Bluffton after read­ing it, and I barely knew more than two or three peo­ple in town.

  6. Jim said on April 4th, 2006 at 7:24 am

    I used to work for that local chain that took over the News-Banner. I didn’t know Jim Bar­bi­eri, but I know he was con­sid­ered a bit of a crack­pot. We used to love read­ing those head­lines — 3 (or even 4!)-deck ban­ner head­lines — with ham­mer heads. But it was true that Jim was Bluffton and he rep­re­sented an “old-school” phi­los­o­phy of local jour­nal­ism. I think many papers today are miss­ing the local, home­grown unique fla­vor. His weird local­iza­tions may have seemed amus­ing, but it was his way of say­ing, “Why should peo­ple in Bluffton care about this story?” Lit­tle ol’ Bluffton is a part of this world, after all, and prod­ucts made in Bluffton are used all over the place. I think there will always be a place for this type of jour­nal­ism, but it will likely be in blogs rather than in newsprint.

  7. Dave B. said on April 4th, 2006 at 10:11 am

    Nancy,
    Being orig­i­nally from Bluffton, and work­ing in Wells County for twenty some years, I feel like I could write about Jim for days. But just a few high­lights:
    Nearly 35 years ago some­one attempted to shop lift some­thing out of a Bluffton store. Patrol­man Carl Pace hap­pened to be in the right place at the right time. Jim’s head­lines were, “Offi­cer Pace sub­dued the crim­i­nal with the liq­uid chem­i­cal mace.”
    I once attended an eco­nom­i­cal devel­op­ment meet­ing in Oss­ian in which Jim attended. I remem­ber that Jim looked extremely tired. He appeared to be doz­ing off from time to time. I left that meet­ing think­ing that very lit­tle of impor­tance had been dis­cussed. Yet, the next day Jim wrote nearly a page about that meet­ing. I remem­ber think­ing “were we at the same meet­ing.”
    When I was in high school there was a drive-in the­atre two miles north of Bluffton. In the back there was a huge wooden pole about 75 feet tall on which the flood lights were mounted. One night some kids used a cross cut saw to cut the pole down. Jim wrote about that inci­dent for weeks and weeks…about the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion and juve­nile delin­quency, etc. The case remains unsolved. I always wanted to tell Jim who the cul­prits were, but I guess I waited too long.

  8. Dan said on April 4th, 2006 at 1:41 pm

    Here’s a Obit by Bar­bi­eri in 2002 I saved because it was about a friend…

    Bob Mat­tax Obit, by J. Bar­bi­eri

  9. alex said on April 4th, 2006 at 1:55 pm

    I inter­viewed at the News-Banner with Bar­bi­eri when I was first out of col­lege. This was 20-some years ago, and even at that time he looked like he was 80 — disheveled, stooped-over, ema­ci­ated. Clearly this was a man who couldn’t be torn away from his work for such unim­por­tant things as sleep­ing or eat­ing. He really did live in the news­room and it was quite appar­ent he expected the same sort of devo­tion from a new hire, along with alle­giance to the GOP. We didn’t hit it off, but it was a mem­o­rable inter­view.

    My dad still sings Barbieri’s praises as a jour­nal­ist, and indeed the man had an incred­i­ble mind. One day while my dad was at an event in Bluffton he got chat­ted up by this funny look­ing lit­tle guy and didn’t think any­thing about it. The next day it was a lengthy front-page story in the News-Banner. My dad was awed by the detail and clar­ity of the story, which told of my dad’s involve­ment in a busi­ness ven­ture in Fort Wayne. The Fort Wayne media hadn’t been get­ting it right at all — and that was despite note pads and tape recorders and much ado about inter­view­ing.

  10. michael mosettig said on April 4th, 2006 at 3:19 pm

    Dear Ms. Noll,

    I saw your col­umn on today’s Romanesko web site, and it brought for mem­o­ries that go back even beyond the 50 years of Mr. Barbieri’s career.

    My grand­fa­ther Edgar (Bat) Nel­son and uncle Ross Nel­son, both born and raised in Bluffton, started their news­pa­per careers on the News Ban­ner. My grand­fa­ther died in 1935 and was Sun­day edi­tor of the old Evening Star in Wash­ing­ton.
    Ross Nel­son was an edi­tor for many years on the Fort Wayne Jour­nal Gazette, where his daugh­ter Mary Jane worked before and dur­ing World War II. Ross, who died in 1960, ended his career as an edi­tor on the Indi­anapo­lis Star. Ross had one of the sad­dest assign­ments imag­in­able, cov­er­ing the death of their youngest brother in the inter-urban crash. Edgar and Ross are are buried with their spouses in Bluffton.

    As you can see from this address, I fol­lowed my grand­fa­ther into jour­nal­ism (includ­ing a year in Bloom­ing­ton), start­ing as a copy­boy at the Evening Star and for the last 23 years at the New­sHour with Jim Lehrer as senior pro­ducer for for­eign affairs & defense.

    Glad to see that the edi­tors of the News Ban­ner still are search­ing for the best angle on even the most obscure story. A good less for us all.

    Best wishes.

    Michael D. Moset­tig

  11. Bob Cook said on April 4th, 2006 at 3:48 pm

    Great post on Jim Bar­bi­eri. I remem­ber see­ing copies of the Bluffton paper com­ing into UPI’s office in Indi­anapo­lis (circa 1988-90), and I remem­ber as a young jour­nal­ist being stunned by the amount of words one per­son could crank out while also han­dling every other func­tion at the paper. In fact, I won­dered if Jim Bar­bi­eri also ran the printer. I remem­ber also being stunned at those scream­ing head­lines and sub­heads.

    Of course, we at UPI loved him in par­tic­u­lar because he kept us on long after pretty much every­one else had dropped us. Plus, guar­an­teed, if we sent a story with one of our bylines on it, he ran the byline. A lot of the clips I was able to sub­mit for future jobs came thanks to Jim Barbieri’s insis­tence on bylines. I never met the man, so I’m not sure if he kept the bylines because of a great respect for the work of a reporter, or so it didn’t look like he wrote every sin­gle word in the paper. Prob­a­bly both.

  12. MarkH said on April 4th, 2006 at 7:03 pm

    Nancy, may I add my thanks for this post AND the responses. I espe­cially enjoy your entries about news and report­ing, and this one is now my favorite. This entire post and more on Bar­bi­eri should be required read­ing for young reporters-to-be. It can be a fine thing to expend the energy report­ing a story to death, as long as it’s edited the same way. For bet­ter or worse, Adri­anne is right.

  13. Royal Calkins said on April 4th, 2006 at 10:10 pm

    While work­ing for one of the Fort Wayne papers in the late 1970s, I was sent to Bluffton to cover a strike at Franklin Elec­tric. Every­one I talked to said that if I wanted to get it right, I should talk to Bar­bi­eri.
    They were right. He knew every­thing about every­thing and every­body in Bluffton and he was glad to share.
    I started read­ing his paper after that and I remem­ber think­ing at times that it was a spoof. The kicker on the front-page story on the Three Mile Island nuclear acci­dent was some­thing awfully close to “Mayor’s secretary’s sis­ter (maybe sister-in-law) well out­side 10-mile dan­ger zone.”
    I remem­ber think­ing some of it was pretty silly, but I also remem­ber think­ing that I could believe every word.

  14. Carmella said on April 5th, 2006 at 6:10 am

    I’ve never heard of this Bar­bi­eri fel­low, but I’m lov­ing this post!! I wish I had known about him before his death. I’m also think­ing this would make a good movie, and Hal Hol­brook should star. Did any­one see him on the Soprano’s Sun­day?

  15. Dave said on April 5th, 2006 at 8:50 am

    Wow! You can’t see that kind of detail in Yahoo! news. That’s pretty spe­cial. I wish he’d sub­mit­ted his own obit before he went.

  16. John Strauss said on April 5th, 2006 at 8:50 pm

    Nancy,

    I won­der if Indi­ana has any more like Jim Bar­bi­eri.

    For years, Kentucky’s most mem­o­rable edi­tor was prob­a­bly Larry Craig, edi­tor of the Green River Repub­li­can in Mor­gan­town. An ordained Bap­tist min­is­ter, Larry won numer­ous awards and rou­tinely took unpop­u­lar stands. Some­body fired a shot through his office win­dow, and the church he pas­tored was burned down. Nowa­days, he’s an adjunct pro­fes­sor of jour­nal­ism at West­ern Ken­tucky Uni­ver­sity.

    Thanks for a great post and these responses.

    John Strauss
    Indi­anapo­lis

  17. Dee said on April 5th, 2006 at 10:24 pm

    Fab­u­lous post, Nancy!

    I grew up in the Bluffton area and appre­ci­ate your taste­ful han­dling of a true one-of-a-kind guy/editor/publisher/reporter/photographer/town char­ac­ter. I haven’t chuck­led that much at such a true depic­tion in quite some time. Mis­sion accom­plished, Nancy. If you hadn’t said so, I would have sworn you knew him per­son­ally.

    And, note to Dave: I would almost bet that Bar­bi­eri DID write his own obit. There just may have been a lit­tle edit­ing applied.

  18. cindi pastore said on April 14th, 2006 at 9:45 pm

    Nancy,

    What you might be inter­ested to know is that my father had a won­der­ful sense of humor. Much of what he wrote was laced with that.

    You also might like to know that he full real­ized that other peo­ple didn’t write like he did. But i don’t think he much cared- this is how he saw fit to write, not in some jour­nal­ism school for­mula.

    He wrote his head­lines long because he real­ized that most peo­ple read not much more than head­lines. Then he fol­lowed through with detailed infor­ma­tion (that did tie in local with global as much as pos­si­ble) prob­a­bly in the hope that some­one would like to know as much and care as much about what he was writ­ing about as he did.

    You might also want to know that his view of a com­mu­nity news­pa­per was that it’s func­tion was to help the com­mu­nity and the peo­ple in it to thrive AND to sell papers in order to per­pet­u­ate the abil­ity to help the com­mu­nity. And he did so by pro­mot­ing all “good” causes in the com­mu­nity and also by report­ing thor­oughly and accu­rately and by edi­to­ri­al­iz­ing.

    You may also want to know that while work­ing hours all his life that would “kill” all the rest of us, that he never missed an event of his children’s or his grandchildren’s life. He was never too tired or too stressed or too busy to take time for those things.

    Regard­ing the men­tion of the “owner of the local dailies” becom­ing the pub­lisher, I’m really not sure how you could read from news­pa­per accounts that my father didn’t think much of him. I’m not say­ing he did or he didn’t, but what I am say­ing is that my father treated him in all accounts fairly and hon­estly. I believe you may be read­ing in a gen­eral feel­ing about the pub­lisher into what my father actu­ally wrote.

    I think what I’m try­ing to point out here is that my father wrote every word with the intent to make the com­mu­nity he lived in a stronger, bet­ter com­mu­nity. I’m sorry too, that you never knew him. You could have learned a lot from him.

    Cindi Pas­tore

  19. belinda l giordano said on April 5th, 2007 at 12:42 pm

    I have a won­der­ful mem­ory of Jim Bar­beri. I worked at Sub­way for 2 years and he came in for lunch quite often. I can tell you this, he never drove in. That won­der­ful man walked every where, whether it was for lunch or to get a heads up on a story to tak­ing pic­tures of all the new con­struc­tion and destruc­tion in town. When he came in for lunch, I could see him with his cam­era and his paper toil­ing over the next issue that he was to write and more times than once I’ve had to wake him up after the rush so that he could get back on track.( a lit­tle power nap never hurt any­one). He came in many times with his wife as well, such a sweet woman. To see them at their age be so lov­ing towards one another was the high­light of my day since it seems that it is so rare to see that these days. When his wife was hos­pi­tal­ized for her attack the whole town knew and we all prayed for her recov­ery. He was still out doing his job and still com­ing for lunch, walk­ing. I admired this man so much after get­ting to know him while I worked. It was so sad not to see him in for lunch any­more and not to see his head lines in the paper. It isn’t the same now that he’s gone (but not for­got­ten) but the news­pa­per and the news goes on with­out him.Thanks for the mem­o­ries Jim. God rest in peace.

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