Articles | Brome Hill

February 2, 2013
by Chris Steinbach 1 Comment

Catching up with the times

Any good newspaper reporter knows well the terror of waking in a cold sweat at 2 a.m. and dreading an error that’s about to land on readers’ doorsteps.

So it’s not too hard to imagine how someone in Greensboro, N.C., felt Friday when he or she realized the News & Record had misspelled its new owner’s last name in a headline on the front page. BH Media Group, a subsidiary of billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway, bought the 122-year-old newspaper, which sells 58,000 copies daily and 86,000 Sunday. It had been owned by Landmark Communications of Norfolk, Va., since 1965.

Warren Buffett

The newspaper announced the deal in a one-column headline that said: Buffet media buys paper.

Of course, misspelling the last name of one of the world’s richest men attracts plenty of unwanted attention in today’s world of social media. I read some snarky comments.

It was the timing of the mistake I found interesting. It comes on the heels of an announcement made this week in the newsrooms of at least some Lee Enterprises newspapers, including the Quad-City Times, to eliminate copy editor/page designer positions at those newspapers. Those jobs will be consolidated, I’m told, at regional hubs in Lincoln, Neb., and Madison, Wis. Copy editors and page designers at the hubs will paginate pages for the Times and the other newspapers, which most likely includes the Muscatine Journal.

To the best of my knowledge this has not been announced publicly by the company or any of the newspapers involved. And I didn’t call to confirm it, but if anyone with knowledge would like to have a say, I’ll approve on-the-record comments that appear in the moderation queue for this blog.

The move to regional design hubs isn’t a big surprise. It has already been done by other companies, including Gannett Co., which has a regional design center at the Des Moines Register. I spoke Friday with a former Lee colleague who now oversees a regional publishing center for another newspaper chain on the East Coast. And Lee had already been experimenting with a design hub in Munster, Ind.

For the companies, it makes sense because it can help keep their expenses more in line with revenue, which has diminished in the past decade. And if you are the editor of a newspaper, losing your copy editors — as bad as that may be — is still better than losing reporters, the people who gather and report news. Good reporting isn’t something that can be done from far away.

But make no mistake, this will not be good for the newspapers or the communities they serve. For the same reason a copy editor in Greensboro didn’t know how to spell Buffett, it’s likely a copy editor in Madison, Wis., may someday misspell Eisele Hill or any of several other Muscatine landmarks with names that are difficult to master. These mistakes are easy enough to make as it is and will become more common as more and more copy is read by faraway eyes.

Institutional memory is a hard asset on which to place value, but it will be lost over time, I fear, when editing and design work is being done far away — often by people who are young, inexperienced or hurried because they have other pages to produce for other newspapers.

The other big downside to regional design hubs is what the move may mean for deadlines. Most likely, deadlines will be earlier than they are now because not everyone can have the last pages to be done at night when many newspapers are all being produced by one crew in a central location. Moving deadlines to earlier at night could mean that a lot of high school and other local sports might not get into the next morning’s newspaper.

And that could alienate readers at the expense of cost savings for the company.

It all makes me happier than ever to no longer be a part of the only profession to which I ever really wanted to belong. To me, it was always more than just a job. But I don’t miss going to work every day and wondering if it would be my last to have that job. That is the dark cloud under which I imagine many of my friends and former colleagues still go to work every day.

I wish them well and I hope they find better days ahead. But for many of them, I don’t think those better days will include regional design hubs.

January 14, 2013
by Chris Steinbach 2 Comments

Even better than he once was

Three guys on bikes: Charlie Harper, from the left, Chuck Vesey and Bob Hayes, all of Muscatine, still ride thousands of miles annually. Their average age is 71.3.

Toby Keith ought to meet Bob Hayes.

And, for that matter, Chuck Vesey and Charlie Harper. But for today, the spotlight is on Hayes, a 69-year-old retired Muscatine accountant.

While the country music superstar sings the anthem for how lots of people age, Ain’t As Good As I Once Was, Hayes is riding a bicycle faster than ever.

He retired 4 1/2 years ago after working 28 years for HNI Corp. and its subsidiaries. In 2012, he bicycled 4,000 miles and he set a personal record during the roller races held Saturday at Harper’s Cycling & Fitness in Muscatine by going two miles in 7 minutes and 22 seconds.

“That’s my fastest time ever in 20 years,” Hayes said afterward.

And he set his record a little more than two years after suffering a stroke that forced him to relearn how to do many things.

I started thinking about Bob, who has become one of my many friends through the Melon City Bike Club, as I began preparing to give a program for the Muscatine Eldercare Consortium. I will be the group’s speaker at noon Wednesday at Valley View Assisted Living.

It’s not likely that those who care for aging Americans encounter someone like Hayes every day, but he epitomizes the way everyone should work at aging. And his recovery from a stroke, I think, shows how anyone — regardless of age or condition — can physically get stronger.

“I work at it. Let’s put it that way,” Hayes said. “But it’s fun work. It’s not a chore.”

Hayes has always been active. He started playing tennis in high school and still plays three or four times a week. He started biking seriously in 1975 because he wanted to ride on the Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.

“I thought I was getting old,” he said. “I thought if I was going to do RAGBRAI, I better do it before it was too late.”

Thinking back to his 31-year-old self, Hayes says: “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

And what he knows now is that he plans to never quit biking. “It’s more rewarding today, knowing I can still do it,” he said.

More on the roller races: I didn’t see results from the races Saturday at Harper’s. But it’s likely Charlie or Greg will read this. Maybe one of them will post the results below this in the comments.

January 10, 2013
by Chris Steinbach 3 Comments

Church serves up meal fit for kings

Russell Kulp, an employee at MCSA, works Wednesday evening to serve a meal to residents at the Muscatine shelter. The meal of ham and potatoes and too many side dishes and desserts to count was prepared and delivered by members of the United Methodist Church in Illinois City, Ill.

Comedian Dana Carvey became famous for his Saturday Night Live skits about the Church Lady.

It was a funny character … some even might say, “Special.”

But for the Church Lady to really have registered in this part of the world, Carvey should have included a few cooking segments. Everyone knows, in the Midwest, church ladies can really cook. And some of them from the United Methodist Church in Illinois City, Ill., proved it Wednesday with the feast they prepared and delivered for residents at MCSA.

The meal consisted of a giant roaster filled with ham and potatoes, along with homemade bread, numerous salads and at least four or five cakes. It was honest-to-goodness church food: Jello salad mixed with bananas and pea salad and Watergate salad. Yes, you could question the nutritional value of a salad made from pistachio pudding, canned pineapple, Cool Whip and marshmallows, but when added as part of the entire meal — mmmmmm goood. And very filling.

Everyone who wanted to eat — I’m guessing at least 40 of the 56 residents at MCSA — were fed Wednesday night. I know this after helping Russell Kulp, the shelter’s evening-shift employee, serve the meal.

It was a new experience for me, but not for everyone else. The members of this church have been fixing and delivering a meal to MCSA once a month for a long time. It’s something longtime residents — mostly those who live in the Men’s Dorm — anticipate and make sure not to miss.

Even though this was my first time to help with this meal, I knew about the culinary skills of the members of the Illinois City UMC. The church annually serves a Labor Day breakfast I usually attend with other members of the Melon City Bike Club. It also holds a harvest bazaar every fall at which they serve some of the best chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and homemade noodles you will find anywhere.

It has to be a lot of work for what can’t be a really large congregation. And it’s definitely appreciated by everyone at MCSA.

January 3, 2013
by Chris Steinbach 2 Comments

Getting past writer’s block by looking back at 2012

Clockwise from the lower-right corner: Mark Evans, Dan Rose, Chris Steinbach, Dave Humeston and Julie Rose were among the Muscatine bicyclists who stopped for a break at Reason’s Locker in Buffalo Prairie, Ill., during a ride last March.

This morning, I’ll let you in on a little secret: Many of the things that get posted early in the morning in this little corner of the Internet are often written the night before.

Such is the case with this installment. The only problem is what seems to be a temporary case of writer’s block. And the only cure I’ve ever found for that is to just write until you find something — then go back and revise.

So, since it’s only Jan. 3, I’m hoping it’s not too late to just start writing about 2012, because that’s what I’ve done. March was my most-productive blogging month in 2012 with 56 posts, according to WordPress. They included posts about:

Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim, a 1978 Muscatine High School graduate, being chosen by President Barack Obama to lead the World Bank.It was one of my most-read posts of the year and I’m pretty sure Brome Hill was the first place in Muscatine that the news was reported.
Bill Decker, superintendent of the Muscatine Community School District since 2009, being one of five finalists to interview for the same job in the Cedar Falls Community School District. He stayed in Muscatine, but this was another scoop for Brome Hill.
Two new shops that had opened up in the 200 block of West Second Street. Doc Cindy’s Doll Hospital & Shop at 207 W. Second St. and Simple Solutions Nutrition Club at 201 W. Second St. are both still in business.

In my slowest month, I wrote one blog post. But I averaged 19 per month for the year. And I have good reason to expect to write even more this year. In December, I wrote 49 posts. This will be my 11th post in January. That equals nearly four posts per day. Doing that consistently should enable Brome Hill to have more days like Tuesday, Dec. 18, when I posted four stories and had 173 unique visitors. They visited the blog an average of nearly three times per person on Dec. 18.

Clearly, the secret to driving traffic on a blog is to post consistently and often. So that will be a goal for 2013. Another goal: Get more of you to post comments.

Writing more blog posts should also result in an increase in photos. Here are some of my favorites from March 2012:

Lunch served at the Button Factory Woodfire Grille to Kiwanis Club members included homemade pie of almost every imaginable flavor. They were baked by Maxine Calvert, 76, of Muscatine, mother of Guy Calvert of East Moline, Ill. He owned the Button Factory at 215 W. Mississippi Drive with his wife, Jan. The restaurant has since gone out of business.

Yang Guoqiang, the Consul General of People’s Republic of China in Chicago, spoke in March at a luncheon held at Geneva Golf & Country Club in Muscatine.

Charlie Harper, from the left, Carol Ward and Chuck Vesey loaded bikes on a nice Tuesday afternoon in March at Harper’s Cycling & Fitness for the tailwind ride they held to celebrate Charlie’s 76th birthday.

Brome Hill

Stories and more from an old Iowa farm boy and recovering newsman

Category Archives: Articles

Catching up with the times

Even better than he once was

Church serves up meal fit for kings

Getting past writer’s block by looking back at 2012

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