Bylines

By John M. Flora

After 45 years in journalism, I still get a kick out of seeing my byline in print.

I was reminded of that this morning as I walked out to the newspaper tube to fetch the morning paper because this is the day the special Outlook sections published.

This is the series of onerous writing assignments I wrestled with over the past four weeks. It wasn’t really hard work. For someone with my experience, the five assignments were no-brainers. I just resent being held hostage by people who are too lazy or too rude to return my phone calls promptly. I hated it when I was a reporter for The Indianapolis News and The Indianapolis Star and I hate it even more now that I’m theoretically retired and the time being stolen is my own and not that of an employer.

How many writers remember their first byline? Nearly all of us, I’d bet.

Mine was 45 years ago next month when I wrote an obituary for legendary news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow for The Indiana Statesman, the student newspaper at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Ind. That’s me at my desk in the Statesman office smoking a Viceroy and wearing my Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity badge. I think I knew, even then, that I was onto something – a fun, interesting way to earn a living that didn’t even remotely look like work to me.

I loved seeing my byline on a newspaper story then and I still do. I brought the paper in this morning, skinned off the protective plastic rain bag and paged through the four Outlook sections to find my stories. I also had three photos running in the section and was chagrined to see that they ended up on black-and-white pages, so the readers never got the benefit of their brilliant colors.

Indianapolis News photographer Nick Longworth once told a young reporter. “Never get excited about anything before the paper comes out. You’ll always be disappointed.”

Yeah, Nick, but after 45 years I still get excited, even though the final product usually falls short of my expectations. It’s still pretty damned cool to see my name in the paper.