For Wilshire Baptist Church
It was a colossal failure — the biggest of my just-budding career: My first edition as editor-in-chief of the college newspaper was dead.
We were starting the semester with new technology and an off-site vendor to produce the paper. The formula to convert typed story drafts into typeset newspaper columns didn’t work, and the result was every story was too short. We didn’t have enough news to fill the newspaper, and it was too late at night to produce more news.
I could explain the change in technology but it wouldn’t make sense today because this was several generations ago in the evolution of print technology. Bottom line: We had a problem and there were only three solutions: print a paper with giant blank spots on the pages; enlarge all the text like it was printed for children or vision-impaired readers; or cancel the edition and work out the bugs. It was probably close to midnight when I made the hard decision to pull the plug.
I doubt I slept much that night because the first thing I had to do in the morning was explain to the journalism faculty why there wasn’t a morning newspaper. I recall standing in the hallway of the journalism offices with the department chairman, faculty advisor and other professors listening as I explained the whole ordeal. I recall some agitation, but not so much because they were in it with me. They had chosen and approved the new technology, and the vendor was a former student.
I recall walking to morning classes after that, seeing the empty newspaper boxes and thinking everyone was looking at me, when in reality I was anonymous outside the journalism department. However, that afternoon I had to explain it again to all the paid student newspaper staff and the unpaid student reporters who had worked so hard the day before on that first paper of the semester.
The newspaper did return to the boxes eventually. I don’t recall if it was a day or several days or a week later, but there was an editor’s note on page two apologizing and explaining the delay was caused by “the installation of a new computer production system,” which was true. And the first paper came out in time to report the big news of the week: the retirement of the longtime university president and naming of his successor, the first inauguration of Ronald Reagan, and the release of American hostages in Iran.
The rest of that semester is a blur of daily newspapers and slogging through some difficult classes to the finish line and graduation. After commencement, I took a five-day break — three days in San Antonio with friends and two days moving — and then I started my first full-time newspaper job where other people were making the big decisions and running the show.
I came across the memory of all this last week as I was researching something else from the past. As bad as that event seemed at the time, it hadn’t haunted me through the years. It wasn’t on my resume; I didn’t carry it from job to job throughout my career. Considering that I didn’t remember it until now, I doubt anyone else who was there at the time remembers it today.
And in the grand scheme of things, me and the failure weren’t such a big deal after all. The front page of that newspaper says, “Vol. 83, No. 60,” which means the paper had been going 83 years up until that edition, and it’s been going 45 years since then. My tenure is just a small, typed comma on the timeline of the history of that publication; the paper with the editor’s note has yellowed just like the newsprint wrapped around old mementos in my attic.
Still, it’s interesting to look back occasionally and recall bumps in the road and reflect on and even be grateful for what was learned from them. It’s also good to be reminded how time has a wonderful way of healing us. Time adds distance to disappointments and smooths the sharp edges of past mishaps with the excitement of new experiences. And, if we believe God is the creator of time, then we can rest in the knowledge that God is in fact the great healer.