From the Quill
Mississippi Press correspondent Steve Burtt has seen a lot of our great state during his career…”Having worked 18 years in the newspaper business at mostly family operated newspapers throughout the state, I’ve lived like a nomad for most of my life. I’ve worked in Jackson, McComb, Pearl, Greenwood, Charleston, Tupelo, Hattiesburg and now Jackson County. And newspaper work always gives you a good taste of the flavor and history of each section. I’ve been to the Sweet Potato Festival in the Sweet Potato capital of the world, Vardaman, and I’ve eaten catfish at the Catfish Festival in Belzoni. Heck, I even milked a cow at Dairy Day in Tylertown.”
Wesley Pruden, editor-in-chief of The Washington Times, recalls the golden age of journalism, laments the decline in major metro circulations and elevates The Commercial Appeal to Biblical status…”During the Civil War, as the Yankees closed in on Memphis, the editor took a few sticks of lead type and his hand press, commandeered a railroad car on a passing train headed south and for the next few months the newspaper was published in a half-dozen states. The Yankees ran it to ground in Alabama three years later. When I was a reporter on “the Old Reliable” in an earlier century, the newspaper was held in such high repute that once, when the bailiff of a Mississippi court couldn’t find a Bible to swear in a witness the judge sent him down to the depot for a copy of the Commercial Appeal. ‘Make sure it’s a fresh copy, with no fingerprints on it,’ His Honor told him. Try that with a laptop.”
Garthia Elena Halbert is moving from Columbus to Murfreesboro, TN, but not before she reminds the readers of The Commercial Dispatch how she earned her paycheck over the last year-and-a-half deciphering stories within stories within stories…”I borrowed the phrase from a well-loved and just as hated local journalist. That same journalist taught me, there’s always a story within a story, and somewhere in the midst of that is the ‘real’ story…So the story is I’m starting a new job. And the story within that story is I’m leaving the paper where my career began - the paper where they took a chance on an inexperienced college kid and molded my rough beginnings into the journalist I am today.”