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Older reporters need reminding of readers' ages
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Posted by editor Mon Oct 1, 2007 14:10:01 PDT
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0 responses 0 comments I keep reminding myself that the vast majority of living Americans don't remember most of what I remember about national and world events. That's because I'm 80 years old and this year's college graduates, for instance, are 24 years old on the average. In fact, more than half our present population was born after January 1972. This is important for me to keep in mind because in my writings I tend to refer to the past as if everybody lived through it like I did.

College graduates in the class of 2007 were mostly born in 1983, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. They have no first hand recollections of the Watergate scandal, the Vietnam conflict, the glamorous heyday of Marilyn Monroe or the matrimonial adventures of Liz Taylor. For these recent grads, the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King took place in a distant age. 

My first on-the-spot memory of national issues goes back to the election of 1932, when Franklin D. Roosevelt ousted Herbert Hoover from the White House. The only reason I recall that campaign is because my mother, an ardent Republican and Hoover supporter, worked in the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines. After the Democrats took over in the wake of the Roosevelt landslide, her job disappeared. Even a 5-year-old understood what had taken place and why. Today the typical 24-year-old is apt to be hazy as to whether Hoover came before or after Lincoln.

I bring this up, not to make you feel ancient, but because I believe the generational gap can be more of a plus than a problem in the news business, so long as everybody recognizes that the gap exists. Older journalists have the first-hand background to provide historical context when covering current events. Budding reporters, on the other hand, are more likely to be sensitive to the fact that young people have limited real time awareness of what we oldsters consider the recent past and therefore give more background information in their reportage. They fill in the blanks, so to speak, for their own age group. Although the legendary Walter Cronkite never got too old to keep up with the times in his reporting, I think good editors will always try to make sure their staffs represent a balance between the old and the young.

A couple of years ago I wrote a nostalgia piece about country musician Spade Cooley who murdered his wife near Tehachapi. Because this happened several decades ago, I should have foreseen that many readers would have no idea who Cooley was, even though he had been an entertainment giant in the early days of TV. I mentioned this to my local friend, Dick Baxter of Stallion Springs, who has just written a book about his colorful career as manager of show business luminaries, including the late Dale Rogers of western movie stardom. Although Dale and her husband Roy, often referred to as “King of the Cowboys,” have been gone for less than 10 years, Dick is surprised at how fast their public recognition has faded, mostly because such a big segment of the population has been born since Roy and Dale were marquee headliners.

“More and more when I mention Dale Evans somebody asks me what he did,” Baxter told me sadly.

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