A woman with a strong voice answered the phone.

“Mr. Robinson?”

“Yes," I replied. 

“I’ve called to praise, not to complain. So don’t worry.”

“OK.” 

“It took almost three years to get used to the last editor of the Herald and I never really did agree with everything he said.”
 
She began a narrative about her personal life  that stretched back for more than the 58 years she has been a subscriber to the paper.  She has been (and still is) a community activist. Everybody in the office knows her name because she has given all of them advice.
 
After a minutes long review of her life and a capsule lesson in philosophy, she uttered the reason for her call:
 
“I want to know who you are and what your experience is.”

I promised her I would put something in the paper about it.
 
I used to work at the Herald, in 1970, as a reporter in the early 1970s. I had just returned from three years in the Army and was going to school, starting a family and working part-time.
 
My newspaper career really started years earlier, when I was 11. I needed a job so I could buy a bike. I intended  to go to  the White Center News and ask for work as a columnist (I had already started a monthly paper –The Hot Rod Exhaust—in grade school).
 
I walked up to the publisher, who was sitting in a big chair in the living room and said “Dad, I need a job so I can buy a bike.”
 
I was hired immediately due to my enterprising nature and name and a week later my first column appeared in the paper.
 
Through high school, I worked odd jobs at the paper as did all of my four brothers.  Midway through college, I was drafted into the Army and was assigned to the base newspaper in Frankfurt, Germany, then became editor of the Berlin Observer in 1968.
 
I came back to Seattle, finished college while working at the papers, then came aboard full time in 1972 as a reporter. Within two years, the company had grown to include papers in West Seattle, Burien, Des Moines and Federal Way and over time, I have done stints at all of them, in both advertising sales and as reporter, editor and general manager.
 
In 1980, I became general manager of our press division, then a very large commercial printing facility in Tukwila.
 
We sold our company in 1989 when Dad decided that 50 years as a publisher of community newspapers had earned him some time off.
 
At age 45, I still had an interest in working in the newspaper field and bought a small weekly in Monroe in 1990, where I was editor and publisher. We still own that paper, as well as one we started about two years ago in Granite Falls, and the original five other papers we publish, including the Ballard News-Tribune.
 
Now after about 40+ years of newspapering, a lot has changed. But my commitment to putting out good papers is unwavering.  The guy who first hired me still comes to the office daily, still writes a weekly column, takes pictures and offers well-seasoned advice on running the papers.