An elderly reader of Illinois’ smallest daily newspaper called to complain.
She had no gripe with the Eldorado Daily Journal’s reporting on the school menus or with the coverage of a grisly local murder. And she certainly had no problem with the paper’s thorough reporting on Eldorado High School’s Lady Eagles softball team.
No, she was irked because the delivery boy had tossed her paper onto the roof of her house instead of on her front stoop.
What is the paper’s top editor going to do about it?
Drive over, climb up and get that paper off the roof for her, that’s what.
Daily Journal Managing Editor Terry Geese, 57, relates this little tale of his own derring-do as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a newspaper exec to retrieve the errant paper.
As natural as dropping off the paper on the way home — as he did recently — when another reader complained that the Journal wasn’t delivered that day.
In an era of 24-hour television news, screaming media punditry, the Internet, lofty “meaning of it all” reportage and big-city Sunday newspapers heftier than a newborn baby, there is a whole different category of journalism going on in places like Eldorado (pronounced el-doh-RAY-doh). It’s closer to the ground.
Drop by to talk to a reporter at the Daily Journal office on Locust Street and, likely as not, you’ll have to wait. “He’s gone taking prom pictures,” says office manager Lee Poynor.
In a similar vein, “Right now, we’re just swamped with all the graduations,” says Geese, whose staff of five — three general news reporters, a sports writer and the sports editor — puts out a paper of at least 14 pages, six days a week. With a circulation of only 1,050, it has the distinction of being the state’s smallest daily.
Incidentally, it was sports editor Phil Knapper who was dispatched to take pictures of those finalists for the king and queen of Eldorado High School’s prom, this year based on the theme, “The Way You Look Tonight.”
Just as Knapper does more than sports, the managing editor does more than manage and edit.
Geese, who has been here four years, also is a reporter, photographer and writes photo captions and headlines. In addition, he lays out the Journal, which is an evening paper, Monday through Friday and a morning edition on Saturday.
Wait, there’s more: Geese also has the responsibility of keeping the battery of the newsroom’s one and only cell phone fully charged.
Furthermore, his dingy, crowded workspace appears to be the graveyard for the paper’s discarded computer equipment, broken-down office furniture and burned-out fluorescent light bulbs.
“At a little place like this, you have to be able to do everything,” says George Wilson, the paper’s publisher. Top boss Wilson, 55, still answers his phone, “This is George,” the same as he did when working his way up from a reporter’s job at the Eldorado Daily Journal of the mid-’70s.
At the Journal’s storefront office, gold paint on the window says, “Eldorado’s Home Town Newspaper Since 1911.” This pedigree doesn’t seem to impress the newsboys sprawled outside on the sidewalk on a sunny day after school has let out.
The boys are rolling the papers for delivery from their bikes. Suddenly, sports editor Knapper sticks his head out the front door.
“Hey, Mike, I forget to tell you to call your mom,” he says to one of the paperboys, Mike Respondek, who is about to set off on his route of 207 homes in this community of some 4,500 souls.
Purchased individually, readers pay 50 cents for the paper. The paperboys make 10 cents for each one they deliver.
They say they can make up to $300 every two weeks, an impressive wage when measured against a reporter’s starting salary, which isn’t much more than twice that.
Sports editor Knapper, 34, a big man in a baggy black polo shirt, blue jeans and Nikes, puts out three sports pages daily, 6 to 8 pages on Saturday. He even manages to dispassionately cover publisher Wilson’s son, Chris, a talented pitcher for the Eldorado High School baseball team.
Knapper says the biggest stories he has covered in his career were the Eagles at state baseball tournaments in 1996 and 2000.
“There are seven or eight schools we cover regularly,” says Knapper, who is starting his 11th year at the paper, where he has worked since graduating from Southern Illinois University, after one misguided year selling insurance.
Developing stories
The events of a recent afternoon illustrate the versatility required of everyone at the Journal.
“I was at the softball game when I heard the explosion,” he explains. “A couple of the girls’ dads are volunteer firemen, so I asked a couple where they were heading.”
The result was a dramatic “Phil Knapper photo” splashed on Page One of the next day’s paper, illustrating the story of a huge fire and explosion at a recycling business on U.S. Highway 45.
The story about the fire was written by two-year Journal veteran reporter Eric Fodor who that day produced two other stories for the front page — ones about the fight over horse-riding in Shawnee National Forest and a chicken-and-dumplings fundraiser to buy a van for a disabled local teen.
Being accessible to their readers means Journal reporters are stopped at the grocery store or just walking down the street. “I never know what’s going to attract attention or produce a fuss,” Fodor says.
When a woman took exception to a news story about her sister, “The editor before me got punched in the nose,” Geese says.
“People come up to you with their life stories. People who wouldn’t even give you a second look, normally,” says Fodor’s colleague, reporter Brian DeNeal.
Both Fodor, 32, and DeNeal, 27, write weekly columns that, says Geese, are the best-read features in the paper.
DeNeal’s says his account of shaving off his beard “got the most comment of anything I’ve ever written, period.” Well, maybe not more than DeNeal’s account of a young man who makes clothes out of duct tape.
“It sounds so chintzy, but he was a real artist” says DeNeal, who was tipped to the heretofore hidden talent because “he was a classmate of my brother.”DeNeal says he gets paid by the hour: $9. He’s a local boy whose cousin, Travis DeNeal, formerly was the Journal’s city editor, features editor and news editor — all at the same time. Brian’s father, Gary, is the author of a well-regarded history of a legendary local murderer, “A Knight of Another Sort.” It’s the story of Charlie Birger, who was the last person publicly hanged in Illinois, on April 19, 1928.
Local color
Brian DeNeal, who also plays bass in a local band, the Woodbox Gang, has wavy brown hair to the middle of his back and is something of a character. His oddly affecting column can make much of his wounded cat, a walk in the woods or missing his turn on the highway.
Writing about a new exercise regimen, for example: “As we walked the moon shone on the standing puddles. We tried to stay on the highest ridges, figuring them to be the driest and less likely to cling to our boots.
“We finally made the old railroad bed and trudged home, feet heavy with at least a pound of crud for each boot.
“Tired and sweaty, back at the house I scraped the clay off with a jack handle and we drove off to see `Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets.'”
On most days, the front page is virtually all local news. Often, the contents of the paper have a time-stands-still feel.
To name only a few: The story of a man rescued from a tree; prominent Page 3 “birth notes’ with large photos of new local babies Cassidy and Karsen; coverage of every traffic ticket; a front page story on each local festival (“Ugliest Horse to be Honored”); a parade where only two people showed up.
But modern life intrusions include frequent stories about the proliferation of methamphetamine labs in the area.
There is more modernity: The Eldorado paper, like many small newspapers in the country, has not been family owned for decades. It shares presses and staff and most inside pages with the larger (circulation 5,500) Harrisburg Daily Register, 7 miles (through the tiny town of Muddy) to the southwest of Eldorado. Family ownership of the Eldorado paper ended in 1975; for Harrisburg Daily Register, in 1988.
Corporate parents
Both papers now are part of north suburban Northbrook-based Liberty Group Publishing, “the largest and fastest growing publisher of community newspapers in the United States” with more than 325 newspapers and shoppers in this country.
Managing editor Geese says the parent company leaves him alone to direct coverage as he sees fit. As if to underscore the point, if you click on the outline of Illinois on the U.S. map on the parent company Web site, liberty-group.com, the Eldorado paper doesn’t even show up.
As for tradition, one popular feature of the Eldorado paper is the “looking back” segment on the editorial page that reprints news first printed 100, 75, 50, 25 and 10 years ago.
Geese says not too long ago he took a call from a reader praising “looking back.”
“I’m in my 80s. I don’t like that new news,” the reader chided him. “I want more of the old news.”
Says Geese, “Only in a small town can 100-year-old news cause people to talk.”
