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YEARS
YEARS
• April 2010
Gunnison Country Times
Never a job, A lively place to begin a career but a privilege by Stephen Woody
by Joanne Williams
I started in October 1971, hired as editor of the Gunnison County Globe, paid $60 a week. Had no car, rode a bike for all in-town stuff, which was impressively cold when there was a fire to cover at midnight. The Globe was operated by Jim and Sue Fink, printed on a sheet fed press that occasionally Joanne Williams’ first day on the caught fire; Michael beat, in the fall of 1971. C. Callihan, later the state’s lieutenant gov., was the sports writer. Bill James bought the Globe in 1972, Bill King in 1973, and Perkins Sams in 1975, combining it with the News-Champion in 1975 to create the Gunnison Country Times. We hired cartoonist Rob Pudim, who did political cartoons for several small newspapers in the state, to produce weekly cartoons about local issues for our editorial page. We reported ambulance calls; a piece that listed driver’s licenses that would be due soon; Wilma Dunsmoor reported news from Sargents; Margaret Flick from Quartz Creek; Pauline Stadjuhar from Crested Butte; and Grant Houston from Lake City. Dennis Steckel’s “A Tip of the Hat” reported on Gunnison Farm Bureau News. The Gunnison Bank & Trust had a full-page weekly ad that honored a local student. Photos were taken on film, developed and printed by the person who took them, often overnight, transferred to “halftones” (which created a series of dots, similar to current pixels). Articles, halftones and clip art (for ads) were typed, cut and pasted and laid out by hand on newspaper-sheet-sized grids, transferred to aluminum plates that wrapped around cylinders of a newspaper press. Ink was transferred from the plate image onto the individual sheets or rolls of paper. Before Perkins Sams bought the Globe and the NewsChampion and combined the papers, the Globe was printed in Montrose, and we would drive the laid-out pages down late Wednesday, stay till it was printed and drive it back to Gunnison for distribution Thursday morning. In the ’70s the communities of Gunnison and Crested Butte (and Gunnison County) were immersed in the controversies of: -land use planning (the County’s proposed “impact zoning,” downtown planning in Gunnison) -molybdenum and uranium mining -the high cost of housing -repeated elections to allow public television to be broadcast locally -rising sales taxes and property taxes -funding the development of a recreation center in Gunnison -the possibility of public transportation between Gunnison and Crested Butte and locations of terminal sites -proposed federal designations of national wilderness acreages -locations of batch plants and gravel pits -psychological profiling of police hires in Gunnison -concern about possible hyrdroelectric projects, and water siphoning from the Gunnison Valley to Wheatridge -remodeling of the courthouse and costs to do it -geothermal energy exploration -trash collection -disgruntlement about TV reception -conflicting opinions on development of a ski area (Marble’s) I got to be in the middle of it as a very young editor and reporter, in a community that was very forgiving as I learned the ropes. Whether it was writing obituaries about people I’d come to care for, or those of their children, “Cook-of-the-Week” columns, reports about potential developments, taking photos of 50th anniversaries, of the Cattlemen’s Days competitors from the press box above the chutes, high school wrestling, or the Cowbelles’ petting zoo, I got to be part of a community that was, and is, matched by no other. It never was a job; it was a privilege. (Joanne Williams was hired by Gunnison County in 1979 to staff the Planning Commission, and has been director of the Community Development (formerly Planning) Department since 1983.)
I was the Gunnison Country Times’ first advertising manager. Frankly, I wasn’t much good at it. I was fresh out of college and missing those friendships so much that it was difficult to concentrate on what we now call “revenue streams.” Too many temptations from up the road in Crested Butte and too many “fishing streams” near Gunny. I was also the Times’ sports editor and did a middling job at that. My father, William Woody, was a limited partner with James Allison, two newspaper publishing veterans who, with Perkins Sams, the majority owner, bought three Gunnison newspapers and formed the Country Times in 1975. (They also purchased Buena Vista’s newspaper.) All three men have passed, Mr. Sams most recently. The Times’ publisher was Bradley Sams, one of the most charismatic people I’ve known. She tackled the job head on, usually with humor and a boisterous laugh. She enjoyed kicking back with the staff and on press days, there was always beer and food handy to culminate a week’s work of community journalism. It was a lively place to start a newspaper career. The Sams’ invested a lot of money in the Country Times. They completely renovated the building, bought a new, right-out-of-the-crate six-unit Goss Community Press that my father selected — since his strength was on the production side of the newspaper business. We also enjoyed the very latest in typesetting equipment. Those three weekly newspapers in Gunnison — the Courier, the News-Champion and the Globe — were consolidated into one flag. For a time, there was some arcane rule that had to list all the names in the newspaper’s masthead and the poor lady who answered the phone said: “Good morning. The Gunnison Courier, News-Champion, Globe, Country Times. May I help you?” A
Stephen Woody, taking time out from hustling advertising accounts to check out a local fishing hole.
mouthful. The name, Gunnison Country Times, was all Bradley. She wanted, as I recall, a community paper that represented the “Gunnison Country” and the times the citizens lived in. It’s unique, and apt. I’m envious, too, of the clever Times’ modern-day slogan: “Printing all the news we know about.” The only real difficulty I recall in my short stint there was how the Sams family had put a fence around their property, which included the Taylor River. It was within their rights and lawful, but it was hard to sell advertising to local merchants. “Oh yeah,” the refrain began, “you work for those Texans who fenced the river.” It was an objection that most advertising peddlers don’t have to overcome, but it did provide motivation. One of my favorite stories is taking my college pals, when they came to visit, to the Bath House in Crested Butte, where everyone walked
around without clothes, typically after a full-bore day of skiing. I did this because I knew they would go back to Texas and tell our mutual friends: Woody lives in a place where he skis all day long and then goes to a place where everyone’s nekkid. Every time I go through Gunnison en route to somewhere else I’m reminded of advertising accounts that I called upon. Like Peterson Hardware, my favorite account. Charles Peterson ran a good business, used advertising wisely and his son, Dr. Craig Peterson, is a respected urologist in private practice here in Montrose. I see the old Klinkerhaus Building, which was at the time Gunnison’s leading store. Leo Klinker was a hard guy to sell. The Safeway store opened while I was there — brand new, with corporate big shots flying in for the ribbon cutting. Page one news. I thought it peculiar at first, but later part of the community’s charm, how stores closed early on Friday afternoons so shopkeepers and citizens could watch the Gunnison Cowboys play football in the Western State College stadium. That year, the Cowboys didn’t have a very good team and went several games without scoring. When they did score — and it was on the wrong end of a 48-6 loss — the Times noted: “Cowboys Score Touchdown.” Big news, akin to a vaccine discovery. I made friendships while there that have endured. I believe Chris Dickey and Steve Pierotti do an outstanding job of publishing a community newspaper. I’m flattered they would ask for a few thoughts from some of the Times’ “alumni.” And yes, I’m a paid subscriber. (Stephen Woody is a journalist, newspaper publisher and cancer survivor who has published community daily and non-daily newspapers in Wyoming, Arizona, North Carolina and for the last 13 years, the Montrose Daily Press.)
P.D. Sams and objectivity: a volatile mix by Steve Kinney
My short sojourn as a journalist in Gunnison taught me everything I needed to know about news — and about life, for that matter. Idealism, greed, truth, snobbery, romance, scenery and sports swirl around my memory like a whirlwind when I think back to the three years I experienced in the Gunnison Country 30 years ago. It was my second stay in Gunnison and my second newspaper job when Joanne Williams hired me as a general assignment reporter for the Times in 1978. A decade had passed since my expulsion from Western State College, and I arrived intent on gaining a measure of redemption along with a regular paycheck. Joanne was the finest editor a green reporter could hope to learn under. She was a brilliant intellect, fair to a fault, unbelievably industrious and a highly principled taskmaster. Her principles put her sideways
with Perkins D. Sams, the oil tycoon who then owned the Times. Because Joanne was courageous as well as principled, she tangled frequently with the chauvinistic and irascible right-wing publisher. When, inevitably, Joanne left the Times and I was thrust into the role of “interim editor,” P.D. informed me in no uncertain terms how the paper was going to cover any sort of news involving the U.S. Forest Service. “Don’t you ever forget,” he seethed in his guttural West Texas drawl. “Those little men in the green suits are Public Enemy Number One!” This was an era of pitched battle between molybdenum mining giant Amax and anti-mining environmental forces centered in Crested Butte. Government agencies like the Forest Service did their best to referee the conflict. The newspaper, of course, was supposed to remain neutral, accurately covering both sides of the public policy debate. At least that’s what I’d learned in Journalism 101.
It wasn’t long before I found out, as Joanne had, that objective news reporting could not possibly coexist with P.D. I left the newspaper, and Sams installed as editor a guy who previously wrote for “Drill Bit” magazine someplace in Texas. I went happily to work for P.D.’s competitor, Gil Hersch, at the Crested Butte Chronicle. A few months later I moved on to my next newspaper stop in Scottsbluff, Neb. While in Gunnison I loved the skiing, the golf at Dos Rios, fabulous scenery, genuine cowboys and wonderful nightspots like the Oasis Bar, River Inn and the Last Chance. I’ll never forget the place, or the energetic people who live there. I hereby raise a birthday toast to the Gunnison Country Times. Prost! (Steve Kinney was an editor, writer and photographer for the Gunnison Country Times and the Crested Butte Chronicle from 1978-81. Now a resident of Duluth, Minn., he works in investor relations for an energy company.)