Knight says: ‘Fare thee well’

Bill Knight column for 10-28, 29 or 30, 2021

 I’m sorry to add to too many goodbyes, but after almost 2,000 columns since 2008 and 23 years of weekly radio commentaries, this is my farewell.

When Western Illinois University’s Library asked for decades of my material for its regional writers archives, an old friend said, “When did our past become someone else’s history?”

Maybe it always was.

Philip Graham was publisher of the Washington Post and Newsweek in 1963 when he said, “Let us today drudge on about our inescapably impossible task of providing … a first rough draft of a history that will never be completed about a world we can never really understand.”

I’ve been in journalism since I was 16, when I covered high school football in my hometown, roaming sidelines, getting details from an understanding coach, writing it up and dropping it off at the brick building on the corner of the town square where printers running Linotypes opened windows on nice days.

That weekly’s editor had come to a class to recruit someone for a few bucks per story; I was the only volunteer. Looking at the articles now, they’re accurate but overwritten and needed quotes but aren’t bad for a guy whose experience had been phoning in statistics to area newspapers’ sports desks.

In college, I worked at the student paper and helped launch “alternative” publications. Afterward, I went to a chain of weeklies, and then started a Midwest weekly tabloid before landing at the Peoria Journal Star, where I covered concerts, reviewed movies, wrote features, and handled the environmental beat, with interruptions to work at a Washington, D.C., weekly and for a San Diego newspaper union, and then doing radio features and public-radio commentaries while I taught journalism at WIU.

It seems like ages, yet a blink. After more than five decades, offering perspectives has been a privilege: exhilarating and exhausting.

Now, I thank all the editors and – though relationships, recognition and even awards have been nice –especially readers: the reason writers write. Some write like gardeners, planting and pruning with precision and patience; others like construction workers, building foundations, erecting “load-bearing walls,” and trying to ensure the text has decent “plumbing.”

Regardless of the results, efforts exist – persist – to inform or engage minds beyond social-media silos or TV blather. Columns are a small part of what makes communities think and talk: civic conversation-starters. As Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Arthur Miller said, “A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.”

My departure isn’t “This Could Be the Last Time,” as the Rolling Stones sang. I’ll still write for a monthly or two. I may return to an unfinished novel, pen something on aviator Frank Hawks, and work on a book of Carl Sandburg journalism; re-read musician/author Kinky Friedman’s quirky mysteries; plus play with our granddaughter and just play more.

Overall, things in journalism have changed, some profoundly, but it’s still a collective effort, even with fewer people part of the process. There are dangers of communities becoming “news deserts” with too few local voices singing praises, barking objections, and sharing beliefs.

            Looking back, I still believe in the social-justice teachings of my church, that most Americans are caring and courageous, that journalists should “give voice to the voiceless and hold the powerful accountable,” that it’s OK to be an “aginner,” as Mom used to say, because mouths shouldn’t be shut but open (an aunt commented, “Everyone’s entitled to their stupid opinion”).

I still believe in summer baseball in parks large and small, that Bruce Springsteen, the Grateful Dead and NRBQ are rock ‘n’ roll necessities, that homemade ice cream is one of God’s gifts, and, as Kinky wrote, “When you die and go to heaven all the dogs and cats you've ever had in your life come running to meet you.”

Finally, in the words of reporter/editor Stanley Walker, “What makes a good newspaperman? The answer is easy. He knows everything. He is aware not only of what goes on in the world today, but his brain is a repository of the accumulated wisdom of the ages. He is not only handsome, but he has the physical strength which enables him to perform great feats of energy. He can go for nights on end without sleep. He dresses well and talks with charm. Men admire him; women adore him; tycoons and statesmen are willing to share their secrets with him. He hates lies, meanness and sham but keeps his temper. He is loyal to his paper and to what he looks upon as his profession; whether it is a profession or merely a craft, he resents attempts to debase it.

“When he dies, a lot of people are sorry, and some of them remember him for several days.”