Tag: Nondoc

Friends, colleagues honor Michael McNutt in NonDoc retirement celebration

Michael McNutt tells a story as he addresses the audience at his Nondoc retirement ceremony

Michael McNutt’s retirement celebration from the NonDoc online news organization was under way earlier this week when he shared a story with me from almost 30 years ago and said I played a role.

A story for which I had no recollection.

Michael is a friend and former colleague at The Oklahoman who served as the newspaper’s Enid correspondent for probably a decade before moving to the Oklahoma City newsroom.

McNutt’s retirement ceremony, organized as a fund raiser for NonDoc, was outstanding.  I’ll come back to it.

As for the memory that he shared with me, McNutt recalled that I was assigned to help him conduct a focus group for The Oklahoman in northwest Oklahoma in advance of the 1996 presidential election. Michael said that I called him on the day of the focus group and alerted him that I was going to be a no-show because my wife and I were having a baby — in Abilene, Texas.

I don’t recall the focus group assignment, but I do recall that on June 18, 1996, Paula and I received a call that the baby we hoped to adopt was to be born that very day in Abilene. We jumped into the car, drove 330 miles and arrived at Abilene’s Hendrick Medical Center in time for the birth of our son, Ryan.

Anyway, it was a story that took me back to that milestone event, and obviously was an event that stuck in McNutt’s mind over the remainder of his reporting and editing career.

A St. Louis native, McNutt worked as a reporter and editor for The Oklahoman for nearly 30 years. He had a distinguished post-newspaper career, as well, working for an Oklahoma governor and a state agency, before the recent tour with Nondoc.

NonDoc honored Michael with this week’s celebration because he is retiring as managing editor of the enterprising, not-for-profit online news organization that fills a lot of holes left behind by the decline of traditional newspapers.

McNutt’s retirement celebration brought me and about 75 others to the Will Rogers Theater events center on Monday evening.

Michael McNutt with Mick Hinton, a former colleague at The Oklahoman.

Throughout his 40-year journalism career, Michael earned the respect of his colleagues, as well as elected officials across the state and of the people he really served — readers of his reporting and editing through the years.

I didn’t work on a day-to-day basis with Michael at The Oklahoman, but I got to know him as a thoughtful, approachable, empathetic person, as well as a baseball fan who remains devoted to his St. Louis Cardinals in both good times and bad.

A University of Missouri graduate, McNutt began his journalism career for the Rolla, Mo., newspaper before taking a job at the Enid News & Eagle in the 1980s. His wife, Kathryn McNutt, is also a longtime editor/reporter and veteran of The Oklahoman who now works at OKC’s Journal Record.

McNutt told me that he left The Oklahoman’s Enid bureau position in 2000 to become an editor and reporter in the paper’s OKC newsroom. He held editing positions on the state and city desks, and also covered the state capitol for eight years.

After leaving The Oklahoman in 2013, Michael served as spokesman and communications officer for Gov. Mary Fallin, before assuming the role of  communications director for Oklahoma’s Office of Juvenile Affairs. He took the Nondoc position about two years ago.

Former Gov. Mary Fallin shared the stage with Steven Buck, former administrator of the Oklahoma Office of Juvenille Affairs.

You could see evidence of the respect Michael earned in the audience at the NonDoc retirement ceremony. The room was filled with former newspaper colleagues, as well as state agency and elected officials, including former Gov. Fallin.

In fact, Fallin was a featured speaker, hailing McNutt for the work he did on her behalf, but also sharing some funny moments from his years on her staff. She was joined on stage by Steven Buck, who was OJA Administrator when Michael moved from the Governor’s office to that agency.

Buck shared his thoughts with me on the experience of working with Michael at OJA:

“When I found myself seeking a communications director for the Office of Juvenile Affairs, Michael quickly emerged as the best candidate. I had known him previously and greatly respected his work ethic but to serve as a lead advisor to me, I needed some one with great discernment, communication ability, confidence to hold me accountable and, of most importance, a commitment to mission and serving kids. There was not a single day in our work together that I regretted hiring him; he far exceeded my expectations and remains one of my most trusted colleagues.”

That’s the highest of praise.

I thought Tres Savage, NonDoc’s editor-in-chief, did a terrific job as emcee of the event, which served as a fundraiser for the Sustainable Journalism Endowment. The endowment provides funding for NonDoc to operate.

McNutt was the final speaker of the ceremony and told an intriguing story about how he was ‘almost fired’ from his job as a new reporter for the Enid newspaper just because he did his job. Michael said he received a tip that Enid city councilors met in secret at a local restaurant before each Council meeting and, along with a newspaper photographer, he “crashed” the meeting.

Michael McNutt speaking as Tres Savage, Nondoc’s Editor-in-Chief, looks on.

After his story appeared in the next day’s newspaper, a group of councilors marched into the editor’s office demanding that he be fired. The editor stood behind his reporter and told the elected officials to “follow the law.”

As for me, I had a terrific time at McNutt’s sendoff, greeting lots of my former Oklahoman colleagues, sharing time with both Michael and Kathryn and laughing at some of the stories I heard.

It was like a grand reunion.

Thank you, NonDoc, for giving him such a well deserved retirement recognition and to my friend, Steve Buck, for inviting me to sit at your table.

We’re all better off because of the work that Michael McNutt did over his career.

BONUS CONTENT — While Michael told me a story about an event I didn’t recall, I also shared with him about the first — and only — time I visited his office at The Oklahonan’s Enid bureau. Since I was from the “home office” of the paper and worked in the opulent (now former) newsroom along Broadway Extension, I had visions of McNutt working out of a similar abode in Enid. However, it turned out that he worked in a tiny office in a corporate building that was like a 1960s time capsule. I’m not sure exactly what I expected, but today all I can see in my mind is the bright green shag carpet in his office.

DOUBLE BONUS CONTENT — As I was visiting with Kathryn McNutt, along with other well wishers, someone brought up Michael’s avocation of making a daily, early morning run, no matter the weather. She told us that when the weather turned cold and the terrain ice covered, she made sure he wore baseball cleats on his run. One of the speakers at the retirement event spoke of once confronting a man in his neighborhood who was running in early morning darkness and wearing a ski mask, hockey jersey and baseball cleats. It was, of course, Michael McNutt.

From left, Jim Stafford, Steven Buck, Michael McNutt

In my hometown, the long decline of a Fort Smith institution

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The Southwest Times Record building in what appears to be the early 1960s. (Photo courtesy of Southwest Times Record former employees Facebook group)

Here’s a bit of nostalgia for you. When I walked into the Southwest Times Record newsroom for the first time as an employee in 1978, I encountered a bustling community of talented writers, editors and photographers all scrambling to publish local news seven days a week.

The Fort Smith newspaper was a great place to learn the craft as my first job out of college. There are many folks among my former colleagues there whom I will never forget. I worked at the SWTR for five years in a variety of positions before moving to Oklahoma City and working for The Oklahoman for almost a quarter of a century.

My parents were among the 40,000 or so SWTR subscribers who fetched the newspaper off their driveway every morning. Established as the Fort Smith Times in 1884, the SWTR had a strong following not only in Fort Smith, but across a multi-county region of Western Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma.

So, it’s been disheartening to watch the SWTR decline as a community force over the past few years as the number of subscribers declined and employees were laid off. It’s a situation not unlike that in many other cities across the nation.

Now owned by industry giant Gannett, I’m not sure there remains a single Fort Smith-based editor or reporter chasing down local news stories.

In fact, my 90-year old mother, who subscribed to the SWTR in our hometown of Fort Smith for more than five decades, finally gave it up a couple years ago because the paper had so little local news. Sometimes she still reads the obituaries published online.

As for me, I’ve stayed connected to the SWTR by subscribing to the paper’s free emailed daily newsletter that allows a peek at its headlines and free access to the obituaries.

It all makes you wonder when the hammer will fall and Gannett will halt publication of a physical paper for any remaining subscribers, leaving only online access.

Well, we’re close.

Screenshot

I received a notice recently that the SWTR was transitioning to a “mail only” newspaper with no more home delivery. Here’s what the email said, in part.

“Beginning tomorrow, look for your copy of the Southwest Times Record and our other regional publications to arrive with your daily mail. As announced in the Jan. 10 edition and in letters mailed to subscribers, the U.S. Postal Service will be delivering the Southwest Times Record to optimize resources amidst increasing digital readership demand.”

Now subscribers can read ‘news’ that is already at least 24-hours old when it arrives in the mail. What’s that old saying about nothing as stale as yesterday’s newspaper?

So, why am I writing this?

Well, it’s not a diatribe against the current ownership, because I see what’s happened to my old employer as a product of emerging technologies and a big change in how the public consumes news. Online access to news — much of it free — has removed the incentive to subscribe to a daily newspaper that lands on your driveway every morning.

I’m mourning the SWTR for its former employees and the folks who subscribed to the paper for decades. It’s like watching a close relative slowly fade away from an incurable cancer.

Here in OKC, I’m still a subscriber to The Oklahoman’s physical newspaper, which is delivered to my driveway every day but Saturday. Yet, when I look up and down my street as I pick up the newspaper each morning, I see no other papers on my neighbors’ driveways. None.

However, I’m confident the path determined for the Southwest Times Record won’t be a template for The Oklahoman. It remains an enterprising news organization, despite repeated rounds of staff reductions.

That notice I received of the SWTR’s “all mail” newspaper delivery prompted me to ask a couple of former colleagues and longtime SWTR employees who still live in the Fort Smith area their thoughts on what has become of their former newsroom.

Patti Cox was a longtime news editor at the SWTR with whom I worked on the news desk. She shared her perspective with me as both a former employee and a current subscriber.

“It is very sad turn of events for Fort Smith,” she said. “We still are taking the day-late-in-the-mailbox paper but not sure for how long or why. End of so many meaningful things like insightful, timely local news and commentary. Long gone are noisy newsrooms filled with reporters, editors, interns with common purpose and multiple deadlines.”

Carrol Copeland, longtime SWTR photographer and creator of a Facebook group called Southwest Times Record former employees that has 162 members, also shared his thoughts with me.

“Back in the day, we covered local news, and there was very little worldwide or nationwide news in it,” Carrol said. “Probably 80 to 90 percent of it was local news. At one point we had the Poteau office and the Van Buren office, and somewhere around 150 employees.”

That was then. This is now.

“There’s not even a physical location anymore,” Carrol said, who recalled tornadoes, spectacular crimes and criminal trials that he covered over the years. “I think it comes down to a lack of income. If you can’t sell advertising you can’t have people to work for you.

“Now that people are going to the Internet or Youtube for their news, no one is advertising anymore. The technology overtook them.”

How will the daily newspaper voice be filled for former SWTR subscribers who loved its local news angle? Digital news services that focus on local news offer some hope.

Here in Oklahoma City, we have Oklahoma Watch and Nondoc, among others, which are sort of complementary to The Oklahoman, for now.

In Fort Smith, there’s an online site called Talk Business & Politics that focuses on Fort Smith and Northwest Arkansas. It was started by a former SWTR editor. I read it first thing each morning five days a week.

Actually, as I think about it, I’m not sure folks aged 30 and younger will miss holding an actual newspaper because it’s likely they never read one on a daily basis anyway.

But for those who grew up with ink-stained hands, it’s a difficult transition.

“I just know I loved newspapers and the dedicated (mostly young) quirky stressed out folks who worked for them,” Patti Cox told me. “Grateful for the lifetime lessons learned there.

“Good memories, my friend.”

We’ll carry those memories with us long after the final edition is published. It’s coming.