National Newspaper Week — October 1-7 — slipped by me this year. I hope, it’s not too late to offer a few memories of my career in that industry.

I began reading newspapers as soon as my reading skills allowed me to do so. My parents subscribed to the Des Moines Register and our hometown weekly, The Ellsworth (Iowa) News.

The Register’s daily front-page political satire feature, Potomac Fever, puzzled me. I was too young to grasp the satire.

Comic page humor, however, was more easily understood and I became a fan of Little Debbie and other comic strips.

As my reading skills increased I began reading news articles but struggled with phrases like “Red China” and “cold war.”

Our hometown newspaper was more exciting because I knew some of the people whose names I saw in the social news columns. After a party for my seventh birthday I even read my own name in the Ellsworth News.

When we moved to nearby Jewell I was the young nerd who faithfully read the Jewell Record each week. At that time I also became a carrier for the Webster City Daily Freeman-Journal.

Life went on and in high school I was selected to serve on the school newspaper staff. I began thinking that a career as a news reporter might be exciting.

One afternoon late in my junior year one of our English teachers had a heart-to-heart conversation with me. She apparently had observed that the thing I most wanted out of high school was myself.

“Arvid,” Mrs. Riskedahl asked, “have you decided what you want to do with your life after high school?”

“Well, I thought I’d like to become a newspaper reporter,” I answered with a bogus self-assurance.

“That’s wonderful; I think you would be good at that,” Mrs. Riskedahl said. She knew I was not a candidate for the National Honor Society so she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. “If you will promise to follow my guidance, I will help you become ready for college-level English courses.”

So it was that I signed up for Mrs. Riskedahl’s college-prep grammar course for the fall of my senior year. To make a long story short, she instructed and challenged and I followed and many times over the years I have recalled Mrs. Riskedahl’s words and rules as I sit at a keyboard.

As it turns out, my newspaper career was detoured by a part-time job at the county seat radio station which led to a full-time job writing radio news. Seven years later, however, circumstances led me to become the sports editor of the local newspaper, the Webster City (Iowa) Daily Freeman-Journal.

This job served as a springboard to a position selling newspaper advertising at the Sioux City Journal where I eventually became the advertising director. That job prepared me for the position of publisher of the Creston News Advertiser, a small daily newspaper in southwest Iowa, in 1988.

In 2000 I became executive director of the Iowa Newspaper Foundation. I loved the job but met some irremediable challenges; after six years I went back into newspaper management.

The industry was changing quickly and my values of fairness and integrity were fading from the company for which I was working.

At age 59 I became so disillusioned I walked away from the job, ending more than three decades in an industry I loved. A few months later I went to work for The Salvation Army.

The newspaper industry has undergone vast changes over the past two decades. The good news is that there are still excellent companies and individuals publishing quality weekly and daily newspapers.

Every week I read three weeklies and one daily (physical) newspaper and every day I read an online newspaper. I admire the individuals who remain committed to serving their communities and regions with quality journalism.

As I read these publications I often think back to the joys and challenges of producing a quality newspaper and to the amount of pleasure reading a newspaper has provided me over the past seven decades.

Our nation needs quality newspapers today more than ever.

Arvid Huisman can be contacted at huismaniowa@gmail.com. ©2023 by Huisman Communications.