“Huge in the business”

by Jeff Leen

I have always believed that becoming a complete journalist requires five skills, learned in a particular order: writing, writing on deadline, reporting, investigative reporting, and strategic thinking. When I got to the Columbia Daily Tribune in the summer of 1980, I thought that I knew how to write (I was an English major, after all) and I thought I knew how to write on deadline (I was a procrastinator, after all), but I knew nothing about reporting. Or being a journalist. Carolyn White taught me, and Jan Winburn taught me, and Mike Jenner taught me, during 18 event-filled months that changed me and set my life’s course.

From Carolyn I learned to dream big and think big, to approach journalism with the maximum of passion and ambition. From Jan I learned that nothing counts if you don’t pair passion with craft, if you don’t try to make every sentence count, and about “putting things in context” and “the nuclear option.” From Mike I learned about skill and speed and professionalism, about getting up every day and doing it, mainly by observing the fastest and hardest working journalist I’d ever seen.

I’d learn from watching Virginia Young and Randy McConnell cover government with an energy and insight that seemed inhuman; Steve Friedman, Ken Fuson and Mary Ann Gwinn (then King) write crystalline features that could have appeared in Esquire; Chris Conway and Andy Maykuth write news with a hard brilliance and impossible elegance; Ed Dorian cover cops with an unflappable poise. And Bill Marr and David Griffin made it all more beautiful than any other newspaper in America, with Nick Kelsh photos. We even had a Washington correspondent, Reid Detchon. All of them made me better and want to be better still. That is how I ended up pulling so many all-nights on that couch in the conference room.

The memories are too many and come too fast: discussing the perfect lede with Ken Fuson: “Columbia public school teachers are burned out, bummed out and broke.” And Steve Friedman: “Here’s a scoop I’d rather lick than write.” And: “If you ate bacon this morning stop reading.” If you can still remember a lede after 40 years, it must be pretty good.

And always talking about journalism, journalism, journalism, as if it was the most important thing in the world. Over greasy but great burgers at Booches. Over pizza at Shakespeare’s. Over a hot ham ‘n beef at Henry J’s. Over beers at the Cork and Dart. Over Irish Whiskey at the Blue Note.

“You’re huge in the business,” Chris Conway would say after a good story, the greatest compliment you could get.

“We’re always putting everything in context,” Ed Dorian mused. “Let’s put the universe in context.”

“Never just say something occurred,” Carolyn would say.

And:

“You have to be paranoid about making mistakes.” I was, thanks to her.

I remember talking with Chris Conway about dioxin spills, Ozark Wonder Weed and where to find a secret virgin forest. I remember Andy Maykuth writing the most incredible story about the killing of a bully in Skidmore, Mo., and then writing equally as well about a grocery store. I remember Ken Fuson writing about kids with cancer with a poignancy that never became sentimental. I remember Debbie Kaplan writing about an old poet at the Tiger Hotel and you could feel the mortality coming out of every sentence. And so many others, more than I can count.

Most of all I remember Carolyn White, leading us all and inspiring us all. Still the best editor I’ve ever had, after 40 years. Why her, some people have asked me? Well, every circus needs a ringmaster. But, more than that, inspiration is the rarest coin of the realm, the one secret ingredient that pushes the mediocre to the good, the good to the great. She pushed me. I still remember the day she came to me after reading a 5,000-word story I wrote in a nine-day blue streak of all-nighters about a banker who was going to prison in Kirksville, Mo. I wrote it for an audience of one, her.

She was smiling, and she was pressing my draft to her chest with both arms, as if she was cradling a baby.

“Oh, Jeff,” she said, smiling that big Carolyn White smile.

And I was launched, from mediocre to good.