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My first job's last day -- and that fabulous smell of coffee-paper-ink
Published: 3/29/2012 3:57 PM
Last Modified: 3/29/2012 4:14 PM

This is the front page of the final edition of the Laurel Leader-Call, the first newspaper I ever worked for.

My first job was as an office clerk at Mississippi Auto Auction. To this day, I still have no idea what it was that I did every Monday night during the auction, except fret and sweat profusely because I had no idea what it was I doing that night.

That was my first job with a paycheck; but my first real job, meaning my first as a newspaper reporter, was at the Laurel Leader-Call in Laurel, Miss. -- the paper my grandparents have had a subscription to for decades.

Yesterday, I found out that Thursday would be its last edition. Having published daily since August 1911, it was folding for good. Of course, it makes me sad.

Allyn Boone, who was once editor of Mississippi magazine and now works at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel (Mississippi's oldest art museum, thank you very much), was my feature writing professor at the University of Southern Mississippi. She encouraged me to meet with the publisher of the Leader-Call and apply for a part-time job there in February 1996, which I was fortunate to be given. That summer, I was hired full-time and worked there until fall semester of my senior year at USM.

My editor was Murray Windham, the features editor, and she was fabulous. Mostly because she put up with my neuroses.

The first column I ever wrote was for the Leader-Call, and I wrote as silly then as I do now -- and no one stoned me for being different. That says a lot about that little town, I think.

Pardon the impending schmaltz, but I did a lot of growing up in the six months I was at the Leader-Call, and I'll miss it now that it's gone -- and always chastise myself for not popping in to just take a whiff of the place, of the ink and paper and coffee that, to this day, is still one of my favorite smells.

This may seem a little self-serving, considering I work at the World, but wherever you live -- Tulsa, a surrounding hamlet, wherever -- please, please, please read your local newspaper. Whether you've ranted that it's too liberal or too conservative, it's still your town's paper, a lifeline to goings-on in your neighborhood and beyond. It's a business woven more deeply into the fabric of your community than you may realize.

OK, down from my soap box, I'm gettin' dizzy. I'm off to scan the last Leader-Call online.

Peace, love and final editions ... XOXO

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seesay (11 months ago)

Well, phew! Seeing the headline "my first job's last day", I thought maybe this was your first job and you were telling us it was your last day. Glad that's not the case, Jason.

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Living Wright

While other kids were watching "The Smurfs," Scene Writer Jason Ashley Wright was tuned in to "Style with Elsa Klensch." By fourth grade, he knew he wanted to write, and spent almost three years publishing a weekly teen-oriented magazine, Teen-Zine -- circulation: 2. After earning a degree in journalism from the University of Southern Mississippi, he became the medical reporter and teen board coordinator for the Hattiesburg (Miss.) American, a Gannett newspaper. Eight months later, with visions of Elsa dancing in his head, he applied for the fashion writer position at the Tulsa World, where he began working on Aug. 3, 1998. He is now a general assignment reporter for Scene.

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