Mike Emery was the last man standing at another area newspaper until he joined the Western Wayne News in 2022 as a reporter and layout editor. In this episode of the WWN podcast, Kate talks with Mike how and why he became a journalist, the importance of building trust with sources, the ways layout and pagination decisions can affect a newspaper reader’s experience, and the pivotal role a newspaper serves in an area like Wayne County. Enjoy!
Transcript
Mike Emery: I’m Mike Emery and I’m a reporter for the Western Wayne News.
Kate Jetmore: From Civic Spark Media and the Western Wayne News in Wayne County, Indiana, I’m Kate Jetmore. As a native of Richmond, Indiana, I’m excited to be sitting down with some of our neighbors and listening to the stories that define our community.
My guest today is Mike Emery. Mike is a reporter and layer editor for the Western Wayne News. He’s been a full-time journalist for 35 years and involved in the industry for 40 years.
An Ohio native, Mike studied at Butler University in Indianapolis and has spent 30 years since graduation working for Indiana newspapers wrapped around a five-year stint in Virginia.
Mike is married to another Western Wayne News journalist, Millie Martin Emery and they live in Richmond. Welcome, Mike. Thanks so much for joining me on the show today.
Mike Emery: Thanks. I appreciate you having me.
Kate Jetmore: Well, let’s begin with your background in reporting and journalism. How did you get your start and what brought you to the area?
Mike Emery: Well, I think like most journalists, I got my start reading newspapers. We had an afternoon newspaper in the Columbus, Ohio area, and you come home from school. And I think probably first was mostly the sports section.
You could read about what happened the night before or whoever, what games and read the comics and things like that.
But I think that sparks kind of an interest in how the news is developed and how it’s brought before you.
I think really something that stands out for me also is in sixth grade, we took a field trip to the Columbus Dispatch and somehow I just thought it was so cool that we saw them putting things together and printing and then you take the bus back to school, walk home, and then it was right there, like ready for me to read it.
It just kind of like seemed magical, I guess, a little bit. You know, newspapers are often referred to as a daily miracle or in our case, a weekly miracle here at Western Wayne News, but I guess it kind of did seem a little magical that you know you’re downtown and you see the part of it that’s being put together and then by the time you get home it’s there on your doorstep and I think that was kind of cool and you realize people get to to be at these events and see things and experience the things that then other people are reading about and I think that kind of sparks an interest.
Kate Jetmore: For sure, that sounds like a really formative moment. I mean do you do you is that part of connecting the dots for you that field trip to the newspaper?
Mike Emery: Oh definitely. I think it’s it’s the first time you I really saw anything other than you know pick it up on the porch and take it in and like read about the things that you’ve seen before and obviously there’s an interest because you’re doing the reading every day or however often and you see all that information and it’s information that’s important to you or that you’re interested in or you wouldn’t be picking it up every day and reading it.
And so then it’s like, whoa, there are people that, you know, there are people out there doing this, and they’re putting it together before it ends up in our hands.
And I think that that sparks something for probably everybody who gets into this profession.
Kate Jetmore: For sure. And at that point, did you start to imagine yourself as one of those people?
Mike Emery: I don’t know if it was quite that early, but I think it brought me into a situation where you realize that you can do things like that.
And I think the sports was kind of the first interest and you’re like, oh, somebody goes to these events and talks to these people and makes these stories and makes these reports.
And you’re kind of aware of it. And then you take kind of the next step in high school because we had a journalism class and then a newspaper.
So I think that’s when you finally are like, you know, this is really something that I want to be able to do and I want to try to do in the future.
Kate Jetmore: And when you went off to Butler, as we said in your bio, did you study journalism at Butler?
Mike Emery: I did. I was actually a radio and TV major, but I did study journalism. It was a journalism minor.
And I wanted to keep up with the journalism, the writing part of it, as opposed to just doing radio.
I wasn’t as much interested in the TV part, but I thought the radio part, like doing sports broadcasting was interesting.
And I got on campus and I knew I, at one point, wanted to get involved in the newspaper. So I waited like one issue or something to kind of adjusted.
Then I went down and they needed people. And so I visited the office and they gave me some stories and I started doing stories.
And then the second semester, they had me be the sports editor for the paper. So I was the sports editor for five semesters starting that first year.
It kind of, I guess the paths kind of opened up sophomore year toward the spring, but the department got a call from the Indianapolis News that they needed a stringer to work in high school sports.
So I applied for that and I was able to get that job. So then that was a good way to be introduced into the industry part time and work in it.
I mean, you know, for kind of a stupid sophomore in college, that’s a pretty high level group of people to be working with.
Kate Jetmore: Yeah, that’s a huge opportunity for sure. I guess I didn’t realize, Mike, that you had kind of gotten your start through sports, that that was the door that you walked through.
So how many years were you sort of dedicated only to sports?
Mike Emery: So I did. So I started as a sophomore in the spring, like right after the end of the school year, and I did that for about three years.
And then I got a job at the newspaper in Noblesville in the sports department. And so I was there a total of 12 years, but it was about six or seven of them mostly focused on sports.
Kate Jetmore: Okay.
Mike Emery: And at that point you did the reporting and the writing and then you also did the layout. And so pagination, which is using the computer to put everything together altogether without having to have it through old school methods like pasteups and lead and all that kind of thing.
It kind of changed how everything worked. And I really like enjoyed doing that.
So I was doing both ends. And as we added people who were just paginators and copy desk individuals, I kept doing both.
And so I was the last one who was going to be transitioned.
And so at that point they were kind of like, you know, which way do you want to go and I kind of went into the design aspect and started doing the pagination and so that’s basically what I did for pretty close to 20 years and how I actually ended up at the Palladium item in Richmond in 2007.
Kate Jetmore: Well that answers one of my questions which is sort of how did you end up in the area. And you know I grew up in Richmond Indiana, the paper my hometown paper was the Palladium-Item, and I can imagine that you witnessed so many changes during your time there and between you know beginning there and now. What can you share with us about how that process unfolded?
Mike Emery: Yeah mostly it’s a painful process. So when I got there about 2007, there were like… The best I can remember, there were like 21 people in the newsroom.
And we probably had 200 or so overall in the entire company and then it started a little bit, you know, kind of a few things were taken away and then like the press was taken away and that got rid of everybody who was involved in running the press.
And then there were a few cuts and whatnot. But then eventually it just got to the point where like my job got taken away.
So that’s when I got back into the reporting, the news reporting, because I was there were 12 of us doing 13 jobs, and they cut down three of the jobs.
So I was able to sneak into the one job that hadn’t been filled when my job disappeared. So then there were 10 and then we went down to eight and then there was a day we went from eight to four.
Kate Jetmore: Oh my gosh.
Mike Emery: And then we went to three. We went to two and then we went to one, and essentially that’s when I left to come to Western Wayne News after doing that.
I was like alone basically for a year, a year and a half, something like that.
Kate Jetmore: And what was that year? When did you hop over to Western Wayne News?
Mike Emery: Yeah, so I came here. I started December 1st of 2022 at Western Wayne News and it was nice. I tell people that it was nice to actually have a staff meeting with other people instead of standing in front of a mirror and saying, what do you have today? Or what are you going to have for the next issue? Or what are you working on?
That was essentially it. We had some supervision in Muncie or Lafayette depending on when it was, but they’re more involved in their own papers where they’re located.
Kate Jetmore: Right, of course. And as you witnessed, not only witnessed but lived through… that paring down and shrinking of the Palladium-Item.
At what point did you realize, oh my gosh, this paper is dying? It’s disappearing.
Mike Emery: I would say when we went from the eight to the four.
Kate Jetmore: Okay.
Mike Emery: Because you see things going and we understood there obviously was the downturn. You know, there was like economic downturns and you saw how the industry was changing with the internet.
I mean, there’s so many different advertising venues for advertisers now with direct mail and things that they can do more efficiently than a newspaper in some instances.
So you kind of got the idea and you’re like, but you’re always like, oh, we can’t get smaller than this.
Kate Jetmore: Right, impossible.
Mike Emery: We can’t get smaller than this. How are we, there’s no way we can do it if there are fewer of us than this.
So I think at the time that it went from eight to four it was pretty much like, you know, the writing’s on the wall.
But then it’s like, you know, ride it out as long as possible and try to do the best we can because places like Wayne County and Richmond deserve to have a newspaper. It has an important function within the community.
Kate Jetmore: Absolutely. Yeah. How would you define what that function is, Mike?
Mike Emery: I mean, I think, you know, there’s always informing, obviously, and that takes any kind of different roles because you can just tell, we kind of a lot of times look at the crime as an informing thing here, at least, you know. It’s information, but does it really change people’s lives? Or, you know, have a massive impact on their day to day?
And maybe not, but then you also have the things with the government and how your money is spent or how things are going to really impact you and then there’s also the other kind of impacts like business openings, know, people love restaurant news.
Kate Jetmore: Of course they do.
Mike Emery: You know, things like that. You know, there’s a lot of different things. It can be entertainment informing, but you know, I think as when you’re a small itty-bitty group, I mean, even though we seem huge compared to what I left here, you know, I mean, we have two and a half reporters. You have other people, you know. Like right now there’s like five of us in the building. It’s amazing, but we’re still a really, really, really small staff.
So you have to really kind of look at what’s going to have an impact on people and what do they really need to know about things that really affect them and the life of the community, like, you know, future of the community.
And then I think you have the duty to watch what’s going on, especially with like the government and things. And at least be in the meetings, you know. If I’m at a governmental meeting, a lot of times I’m the only person there. And some of them are on the local WCTV TV station or you can watch them on YouTube afterward but you know how many people are doing that? So you really are the eyes and the ears of the people a lot of this time in a lot of these situations.
Kate Jetmore: Yeah, I actually wanted to ask you, Mike, about those meetings that you’ve just referred to. I mean, I can imagine that if the goal is to bring that information to your readers you probably have to attend and sit through quite a few of those meetings, so I guess my question is how do you take that information and digest it and present it in a way that’s useful, interesting, and compelling for your readers. Especially when, you know, you’re covering something that most people might consider arcane or dry.
Mike Emery: Yeah, they’re not always the most exciting.
Kate Jetmore: Surprise!
Mike Emery: Imagine that. But I think, you know, part of our job is to weed through things. I mean, not everything that goes on in a meeting is gonna end up in a story.
Not everything has a major impact and a lot of them like our county commissioners oversee the county employees. So a lot of things that they talk about may be important to some of their employees, but maybe not to everyone in general.
Because it’s policy or whatever, and so a lot of times then you kind of look for things that, all right, if it’s something that’s gonna require a lot of expense or use of taxpayer money, maybe put some notes in about it, but if it’s just, you know, from now on we don’t want them to park in this parking spot or whatever. You know, that doesn’t really impact the public so much. So you can kind of weed through some of that and try to find the stuff that you think has the most impact on the the people that are going to be reading the story and then or what is most interesting. You know, there’s some of those go-to things like like food, dogs, anything that has anything to do with dogs.
Kate Jetmore: Yeah, you’re like, did you say compelling? The first thing I think of is dogs.
Mike Emery: So there’s been a lot of discussion about animal control, animal welfare, things like that. I mean you can’t go wrong with that, because people are really interested in that. And i’m not sure you can always make a lot of it compelling but you know how does it impact the people and then hopefully maybe they find that compelling when they understand how something is going to affect them.
Kate Jetmore: I can imagine that after all these years, and you’ve been doing this for decades it’s now, that, as you said, when you, you know, weed through the information, you sort of sort through it and make decisions. I’m sure a lot of that process is just second nature to you now. They just, you just know what goes in and what doesn’t go in.
Mike Emery: Yeah, I think you always are learning about it, because I’ve really only been a news reporter, I guess 10 years now.
Hard to imagine that it’s been that long actually.
Kate Jetmore: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s a big, it’s a big change. I mean, you’ve been in the industry for, for decades, but to go from, I mean, you still do some layout, but to kind of go from the pagination, as you said, to being a reporter and being on that side of the office, right?
I mean, it seems like a really big responsibility to be kind of the filter that information runs through. And then the general populace is receiving the information that you deem necessary.
Mike Emery: Yeah, and I think that one of the neat things about papers, smaller papers, even like like the 35,000 city daily papers you know that have maybe 10,000 circulation, or used to at least, if you do a lot you get to do a lot of different things, different parts. And I think that’s always kind of appealed to me, and I’ve kind of moved through some of the different parts but even now I do do most of the pagination for our paper, so I report and gather information and write like three, or three and a half days, and then I spend a couple days putting the paper together as well. And I think one of the things I really liked about the pagination when I first started doing it was you impact a lot more than if you just write one story. Because the placement, and how you make the page look, and the headlines that you can put on it, really has has a lot of impact on how people read the paper.
They go into details. There’s things like eye flow and hierarchies and things, you know, like little design buzzwords, but you really can kind of guide people through the whole paper and what they’re reading and how they’re reading it.
Kate Jetmore: Yeah, for sure. I’m so interested. I’m so glad you brought that up because I’m not a designer. And it makes so much sense what you’ve just said. And of course, I’ve experienced it as a reader, but it’s not something that I’ve really ever thought about. So that’s really interesting.
Mike, I wanted to shift to my final question actually as we start to wrap up, about your sources. So Wayne County is, you know, a tightly knit community where we often know our neighbors, right?
And so I can imagine that there might be a scenario where you know your sources quite well, or you get to know your sources quite well.
So I’m curious how you go about keeping an objective distance so that you’re best able to report on what that source has to tell you.
Mike Emery: Yeah, that can be a challenge. One of the other nice things about these smaller papers is you do get to know people in the community and you see them out and about just not in their official capacities.
You run into people at the grocery store or the symphony or wherever, you know, you get to interact with people other than just while you’re digging for information.
But I think in a lot of ways that can be helpful because you have to have a relationship to be able to get information and you have to build some trust, and at least they have to be able to trust us with information and that.
You know if they give us a little more, if they give us more and say, like, all right, I can tell you a little bit more so you understand, but we can’t have this released yet, you know, like work around it. You have to have some of that trust and you have to build that trust. So I think the relationships are really important. And you need to have that because you need them to pick up the phone.
You know, I talked to the sheriff yesterday when he was driving back from Washington, DC in his car. And you know, you need him to see that and not go throw it away when he sees who’s calling. You know, you need him to pick it up and and be willing to talk to you for a couple minutes or find out what you need or whatever. But yeah, you can’t get to the point where where you’re not gonna ask a question or you’re not gonna pursue something.
And I think that for the most part everybody understands that I have a job and I always understand that they have a job and so you kind of know that like sometimes I’m gonna ask questions they don’t want me to ask and sometimes I’m gonna get answers that I don’t want, because they’re gonna say you know like I can’t tell you that. Or you know, we’re not ready to release that. Or you’re like come on. But sometimes you can, you know, if you have some trust you can negotiate a little bit to find out. So I can say all right, well, what I really want to know is you know is the public in danger or you know is there somebody out running around who’s just randomly shooting at people or something. You know, if they can’t tell me like the details of a certain situation, but then they can say, all right, I see what you’re getting at. So yeah, we can say, you know, no, there’s no danger to the public. We believe this is an isolated situation, even though at first they said, you know, oh, I can’t tell you what happened. But you can kind of scale it down a little bit to get to a point where at least you’re giving some necessary information to your readers. Or the people that are following you on Facebook or whatever. However you’re, if it’s something you’re updating. And you can get the information that they really need but maybe not all the information that you’d like to have, using our favorite who, what, when, where, why, how.
Kate Jetmore: Right, right. The art of crafting the perfect question. Well, Mike, I want to thank you so much for joining me on the show today I really appreciate you taking the time and it was great getting to know you better and getting to know what it is you do. And I want to wish you and your family all the best.
Mike Emery: Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me. It was a lot of fun.