Nowadays, I find myself looking back more and more to my college days.
Back then I had decided to become a newspaper journalist. I’d taken a typing test to prove I had the skill to type at least 40 words per minute. And I passed, although with a few typos. So I began taking the courses would-be journalists were taking at Ohio University.
Don’t remember whether I was a sophomore or junior, but I became an intern at the Athens Messenger during one quarter. It allowed me to learn if I truly wanted to make a career in the newsroom business.
My assignments were not challenging. In fact, they were a bit on the boring side to be honest.
Notebook in hand, I’d go to meetings of civic groups and write about the guest speakers – Lions, Rotary, Kiwanis, etc. Often, the speakers would talk about foreign trips. Or maybe a speaker had been with the Peace Corps and could talk about his or her experiences in Africa or South America.
I didn’t have a car and so would hitchhike to the Messenger building, which was located on the outskirts of Athens. That would have been circa 1972, long before you’d find a personal computer on a newsroom desk. The reporters and editors had to make do with a typewriter.
Well, I guess interning was a satisfying experience. I didn’t abandon journalism. Worked as a reporter and editor for twenty-plus years at daily and weekly newspapers in Ohio, Florida and North Carolina. Plus, I won some reporting awards in Florida and North Carolina.
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I’m Mike Staton and I’m an author with six published novels. Three are sword and sorcery novels, and the last three have American Civil War settings. The latest, which debuted on May 1, takes place during Reconstruction in North Carolina, and stars a newspaper editor, and his wife, a graphic artist. It’s part of a four-book series that will see my main characters head westward into the American frontier in the final novel, now being written. I’m currently writing that fourth book, which I’ve titled ‘A Wyoming Dawn: A New Beginning.’
Writing Wranglers and Warriors 