I have some thoughts...
-first published in Substack blog “The “Last Editor” on August 5, 2025
…(and I'm going to share them on Substack).
Today is my 66th birthday
Birthdays can be a time of reflection—a time to think about decisions we’ve made and the path we’ve taken through life. I’m lucky as I look back over all those years to say I’m happy with my path. I’ve had a fulfilling career, I love my family and I’m very content in my desert home in California. So on what should I reflect now? It’s gotta be journalism.
I have to be honest and say I’m not content with journalism.
I’m viewing it mostly from the sidelines now, still contributing a bit here and there, but not an active leader in the field as I once was. I definitely miss the daily rush to deadline and the excitement that always brought me. I dearly miss the interaction with young journalists working to make a place for themselves in the field and trying so hard to get it right. And I decidedly miss the chance to make important decisions about coverage, choosing the right path that clears any ethical hurdles and delivers what the audience needs us to deliver. I can’t really write an ongoing series of essays about my longing to meet a deadline or mentor a student—that would get boring pretty quickly. But I can write about how well journalism is serving its audiences. So that’s what I’m setting out to do on this birthday of mine.
I’m calling this series of musings “The Last Editor.”
The phrase comes from the late, great Kent Collins. He always called the anchors at KOMU-TV “the last editors” because they were the final set of eyes that could edit or stop a story they didn’t think was quite ready for air. I always loved that idea—that one person could make a split second, last minute decision to save journalism. So, if it’s not too pretentious of me to say so, I’d love to be journalism’s “last editor,” working to save it from embarrassing itself in front of the audience—or much worse.
I know I can’t fix journalism from the sidelines.
But I want to raise some questions, play the skeptic, and suggest some ways we can all work together to make it better. My goal is not to point fingers or scold. Instead, I’d rather take something that didn’t work as well as it should have and think about how we might have done it better. I might also have some fun with thought experiments about how journalism might work in a different world. And I’ll definitely hand out praise where it’s well deserved.
The plan is to keep this all free.
I know a lot of people need Substack to make a living. I don’t. So the free subscription will get you most all of the content. If you really feel like you want to contribute a bit, there’s a paid subscription option for you. I tried to make it $1 a month, but the Substack minimum is $5—and that seems like too much for what I’ll be delivering. I was able to make an annual paid subscription at the minimum allowed rate of $30 a year, so that’s just $2.50 a month—not great, but better than $5. If you’re feeling generous, I’d be eternally grateful, of course.
Finally, an acknowledgement.
I doubt I would be doing this without inspiration from friend and Mizzou alum Dave Busiek. If you don’t know Dave, he led the outstanding KCCI-TV newsroom in Des Moines for 30 years as one of the country’s best news directors. His Substack, Dave Busiek on Media, is one I read every time there’s a new post. My intention is not to compete with his excellent writing, but to complement it with my own. I’ll be lucky to do it as well as he does.
That’s it for now. Working on the next post…