Layne Bruce By ALANA DANDRIDGE Photo by ANTHONY WARREN
L
ayne Bruce is executive director of the Mississippi Press Association, and he has had many years learning the business. From the age of nine, Bruce saw journalism firsthand, watching his father, Roy “Spanky” Bruce, editor and later publisher of the Daily Times Leader, his hometown newspaper in West Point, Mississippi. By age 15, Bruce was working as a part-time photographer, and that early experience with journalism had an impact. “I spent a lot of time at the office,” Bruce said. “It instilled in me a love for the business, and I don’t think I ever had any doubt in my mind that it was what I wanted to do when I grew up.” He continued to work for the Daily Times Leader during his college years, attending Mississippi State University, where he studied communications.
26 MEEK SCHOOL
However, tragedy struck in the spring of 1993 when he was in college. His father died suddenly, and the devastating loss resulted in his withdrawing from school that semester. “I worried that maybe I needed to consider a different career path,” Bruce said. By the next fall he had decided to continue working toward a degree in communications. “I know my father would be proud that I got my act together,” Bruce said. After graduation, Bruce served as a reporter for the Starkville Daily News, as publisher of The Star-Herald in Kosciusko and as editor and general manager of the Glasgow (Kentucky) Daily Times. “For those who truly enjoy journalism and have a real curiosity about the community, the country and the world, there is no greater reward than that of doing a
