Editors' Day Issue University Kansas Lawry Kansas
The University Daily
KANSAN
Saturday, Oct. 3, 1981 Vol. 92, No. 30
Scott City editor left mark on Kansas John Boyer named to Hall of Fame
By CALDER M. PICKETT Professor of Journalism
You don't read a whole lot anymore about the men and women who are out there in the small towns, running their stores, teaching in the schools, editing the newspapers. The "Press" section of Time magazine will treat some mighty newspaper that's making it or some one-mighty one that's gone under. You can cross a state like Kansas and go through many a town whose journalism would never seize the imagination of a big-name writer, in large part, I have a hunch, because we just don't know about the things that happen to people unless the things and the campaigns involve somebody of the size of Ben Bradlee or Otis Chandler.
I was reminded of much of the above when I sat down last week to compose a tribute to the person who is being added to the Kansas Newspaper Editors Hall of Fame this morning. I had gotten a bit away from my own heritage of being a hick printer's devil on a laptop, but now I am being told my students this for years I seemed to have forgotten the names like Ed Howe and William Allen White, small-town editors far more important in our history and in our imaginations than many of the big boys who were functioning in the big cities. Today, we are talking about a great company that has been elected some of you to this honor. His name: John Boyer, of the Scott City News Chronicle.
Scott City is out there in Scott County, not far from the Colorado line. It's about due north of Denver, at 10:45 a.m.
moving traveler may never stop there, and many 'would just say, with a sniff, "Western Kansas." But John Boyer made his mark on that story by describing his experience in Western Kansas, and his biography is a sizable one.
He was 67 when he died, back on November 2, 1972. He died in the Scott County Hospital. He was a Nebraskan, born in Pawnee City on July 14, 1905, the only son of Dr. and Mrs.W.R. Boyer. His oldtid wasn't anything about it, but he went to the University of Nebraska, played on the
Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame, Page 4
football team there when the Cornhuskers beat both the Illini of Red Grange and the Four Horsesmen of Notre Dame. He was a sportman and he remembered played baseball against Satchel Paige when Paige and the Kansas City Monarchs were on tour.
HE ARRIVED in Scott County in March of 1930, and on August 8 of that year, married Juanta Gilland. His sons, Bill and Jim, and seven grandchildren survived him.
John Boyer had worked for more than 40 years in Scott City journalism. He had been president of the Kansas Press Association in 1962, and that year he and the News Chronicle won the KPA sweepstakes award. During his tenure he visited every newspaper in the Sunflower State. His obit said he had been a scoutmaster in Scott City, Kansas, and was also president of the county Red Cross chapter, was active in the Lions, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Scott County Golf Association.
But nothing was written about his reviving the RPA golf tournament, about being honored by a club that he was a part of.
son, Bill, wrote that his father had been on the city council long enough to see to it that the city had natural gas, and that he was on the city fire team. Bill Boyer said that "one of the biggest grassy fields in the county" designated to hit the first golf ball off the new grass greens at the Scott County Country Club."
And he revived the county historical society, did research into area history, brought in Indian dancers from La Junta, Colo., pushed for a new swimming pool. The summer of 1972, not long before his death, brought an editorial comment that he wondered what had happened to the season;
"It wasn't all our fault, what with being in one clinic and then another, and not feeling too strong in between. But it seems like a person could do a little better than we did . . . Anyway, we had a wonderful summer, and excellent crops. everything is going to mind you," he said, but not off everything I had planned. It just goes to show that one person isn't too darn important after all."
AS A TEACHER at the University of Kansas, I remember visits by John Boyer, back when, maybe, we paid more attention to the papers of a Scott City. I hadn't really read the Boyer editorials, and I offer you a few passages from some sent along by Bill Boyer:
"The federal government has things going that you wouldn't believe, in addition to its shamful military budget. One of our local men, who has made several trips to Washington, D.C., on a boat, said they would visit the capital city, and visit one or more of the bureaus. Each of us then would understand
On government and taxes:
See BOYER page 4
John Boyer
Student abilities increased through newspaper courses
By JOE REBEIN Staff Reporter
There is a movement under way to make the newspaper as much a part of the classroom as the chalkboard, pencil sharpener and American flag.
"Newspapers in Education," a program started at the University of Iowa in the late 1950s, has grown into a national program designed to increase students' awareness of the newspaper and to show teachers how they can use it as a classroom tool.
"The newspaper in the classroom bridges the gap between the classroom and the real world," John Guenther, KU professor of curriculum and instruction, said this week.
"The newspaper makes learning more relevant, provides a great deal of motivation and increases the student's reading and writing abilities."
Guenther is an advocate of the NIE program and has designed "Our Living Community," a program used nationwide and in Canada to bring the newspaper into elementary and secondary schools.
John Guenther, KU professor of curriculum and instruction, explains the use of newspapers as a classroom tool.
The program teaches students to compare their communities with other communities by comparing newspapers. The program also teaches students the events and events by using past issues of newspapers.
AN EXAMPLE of the program is adapting a comic strip to reflect local issues. The program was designed for secondary students as a supplemental regular classes or as a specialized mini-course.
Guenther calls the newspaper a "living text-book" that can be readily adapted to teaching concepts and skills by providing up-to-date information that bring the real world into the classroom.
"It's not hard to convince newspaper publishers that everybody ought to use their papers more effectively. What is hard is to make sure they don't bother the neighbor," said Resources are hard to come by."
Four Kansas newspapers already have fully developed NIE programs. The Wichita Eagle-Beacon, Topeka Capital Journal, Salina Journal and Hutchinson News all employ full- or parttime staff members who try to bring the newspaper into the classroom.
Carla B. Smith, the Eagle-Beacon's education coordinator, said her job was to get teachers comfortable with using the newspaper in the classroom.
Smith said teachers were using all parts of the papers—the want ads, weather, comics and news—to increase students' reading, writing and math skills.
The Eagle-Beacon, which has had a NIE program since 1968, has hired a school teacher to teach
"But once we have introduced them to our program, they really expand it and make it better."
"A lot of teachers are textbook-oriented."
Smith said, "It's much easier to touch on the textbook than we are able to use in a classroom."
GUENTHER HAS OUTLINED five goals that a NIE program should achieve:
-To provide all American children with the opportunity to understand the characteristics, needs and preferences of their peers.
*To stimulate young people to acquire a broader, deeper understanding of the problem and issues that confront the culture in which they live.
press as an institution indispensable to popular self-government.
*To foster a love for reading and to develop and reinforce the cognitive and judgmental abilities that are required to read discriminately and to think reflectively.
*To foster the habit of regular, reflective and discriminating reading of the daily newspaper as a means of maintaining social contacts.*
TO ATTAIN THESE GOALS, Guenther and other NIE supporters have held workshops that bring the educators to the newspaper for a tour of the classroom to bring to bringing the newspaper into the classroom.
"Every paper has to develop a program that will fit their trade area," Guenter said. "Most newspapers can have, within a year NIE workshops and workshops offered and materials selected."
*To generate concern among young people for
critical issues problems and to nurture
the well-being of them.*
Debbie Morrow, director of training and educational services at the Capital-Journal, is in charge of establishing the NIE program in all Stauffer Communications. Inc. papers.
She said that the interest from the smaller dallies had been "suggestive" but that few were interested.
"The NIE program is very big on the East Coast, but a lot of newspapers aren't aware of it."
NIE stresses that the program can't be limited to just the larger daily papers.
She said, however, that once the programs were explained, most of the editors became
"We're trying to maintain the interest in newspaper reading," she said. "By fostering the young people's interest now, we are making sure there are newsreaders in 10 to 15 years."
CAROLYN TERHUNE, promotion and research manager for the Capital-Journal, is in charge of the NIE program, which was established in Toopea in 1973.
"We've had very positive feedback from the teachers who have used the program." Terhune
See NEWSPAPERS page 4
Flint's 'rumpled charm' will survive renovation
By SCOTT C. FAUST
Editor
Change is coming to the University Daily Kansan not with a whip, but a bang. Or, rather, a rattle—from the incessant jackhammer that coat the stairs of Flint Hall with chalky dust and has left stony shells on the second floor and in the west end of the building.
Of late, workers have even begun to scrape away at the caulking on the exterior of the newsroom windows, like persistent psychopaths trivie to break in.
Before the renovation began in earnest this summer, the newsroom was one of Flint's main attractions for crowds of students rushing between classes. Now journalism classrooms are dispersed all over campus; Flint's first floor is quiet by comparison.
The old newsroom, with its stacks of bound Kansans, crooked frames holding faded awards and bulletin boards packed with both the serious and the satirical, is a spectacle whose time has come. Students not on the Kansan staff and those working on the paper for the first time always seem a little aweful by the organized chaos. The Kansan staff often slide in the scale before the 6 e.m. deadline.
ONE STUDENT OBSERVED in last spring's edition of the Jayhawk Journal, a magazine published every semester by magazine students, that the newsroom resembled a scene from "Alice in Wonderland." The editor scurries about like the Mad Hatter. Reporters are fellow participants in the manic tea party taking place behind the glass hallway windows.
John Bremner, Oscar S. Stauffer
Distinguished Professor of Journalism, has been known to pointedly refer to the newsroom as the "day care center," an epithet lent validity by the custom chairs and desks that cram the old room.
The Flint renovation that will give the Kansan a new home is far from being the first physical adjustment the building's tenants have had to make. In the early 70s, the third floor was converted from storage to air conditioned classrooms. Years before, the lumbering, annealing and drying out of the basement to a new KU Printing Service location on West Campus.
But this change is big. Alvin Toffler's "Third Wave" is making a belated splash on Mt. Orcad. The new Kansan offices will have more to offer than furniture and big offices. We're going
IN MANY WAYS, the Kansas has been living in the past, with clumped quarters where big windows turn Jayhawk Boulevard into a mural in motion and a jumbled mourn gakes background work investigate. Every day we find that a young woman printing service complains about "dirty copy."
The new newsroom, the first phase of the Flint renovation, should be ready in the spring, and as soon as next summer, more than 20 VDTs will be in use by Kansan reporters and editors. The new newsroom is being built again under the condition of our copy, and we won't be able to gripe about proofreading mistakes.
Just as it has on the many newspapers in Kansas and nationwide where KU journalism students go for internships each summer, electronic editing will speed up our process and
See KANSAN page 4
Famous editors fade away, but Emporia Gazette goes on
By MARK ZIEMAN Staff Reporter
EMPORIA—On a May evening 86 years ago, the brush new owner of the Emporia Gazez, 27-year-old William Allen White, rode through this midwestern town with a dollar in his pocket and the sense that he had "the world by the tail with a downhill pull."
In the first place, the new editor hopes to live until he finishes his book and wrote in his last edition on June 14, 2003.
“He hopes always to sign ‘from Emporia’ after his name when he is abroad and he trusts that he may so endure himself to the people that they grant him permission in words of the signature as he is of the last words.”
Today, Emperors and the Emporia Gazette are still proud of "the first words of the signature." Signs heralding "Emperor, Home of William Allen White" surround the city. Within the offices of the Gazette, memories of the "Voice of Mainstreet," still linger.
"I think the ghost of William Allen White is always there," Ray Call, managing editor and editorial writer for the Gazette, said last week. "We're in a real mess with mistakes or changes. People will say, 'Well,
William Allen White would never have allowed that to happen.
"It give us more pride than most papers. We're trying to build on his tradition."
TRADITION IS inherent at the Gazette. Revolving around White's old office in the center of the main room, mute typewriters, framed newspapers and autographed pictures—Herbert Hoo-town, Teddy Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland and—vividly present a visual history of the paper.
"What we want to do sometimes is make a little museum so that when we take kids through on a tour, they can see how things were long ago," Call said.
The Gazette is not as it was long ago, however. Technologically, video display terminals have replaced most of the typewriters. In 1900, William C. Dodge published a book about the paper's second-most famous editor, and the paper's second-most editor,
paper 3 seconde-most famous euros
See EMPORIA page 3