Loving Loudonville: A look back at Jim Brewer's dedicated and storied newspaper career

LOUDONVILLE − Throughout his career, Jim Brewer has personified local journalism.

He isn’t just the face of the Loudonville Times-Shopper; he is the heart and soul of his hometown paper.

For decades, Brewer, 75, served as editor of the Loudonville Times. After retiring in March 2014, he returned to continue writing for the publication, which merged with the Shopper in 2017 to become the Times-Shopper. As he has always done, Brewer profiled local residents and wrote feature stories.

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He stuck with what he considered the essence of local journalism — covering council and school board meetings.

“I started out in high school covering sports,” Brewer said. “In college I covered sports and also did some newswriting.”

He credited one of his Ohio State University professors, Tom Gaumer, with steering him into what would become his mainstay.

“He exposed me to local government and that has become my bread-and-butter,” Brewer said. “I’ve really enjoyed doing that. I’ve spent a lot of my time in very satisfying work, covering Loudonville council, Loudonville school board, Perrysville council to some extent, and occasionally township stuff.”

It seems fitting, as the Loudonville and Mohican Area Times-Shopper closes, that Brewer's story be the subject of a piece in his longtime newspaper.

His writing and coverage of the Loudonville area will continue in print and online in the Ashland Times-Gazette and Wooster Daily Record.

A fork in his career path: Teaching or journalism at OSU?

His early influences included his grandmother, Relda Stevenson, and her best friend, Marjorie Robinson, who taught English and journalism at Loudonville High School.

“Mrs. Robinson, when I was a sophomore in high school, said, ‘You are a good writer. You should consider a field where you would use your writing.'”

Brewer’s grandmother thought he should go into teaching.

“If I had been a teacher I probably would have made more money and ended up retiring at least 10 years before I did,” Brewer said.

But that’s all water under the West Main Street bridge.

Brewer’s first writing assignment came in 1964, covering a Loudonville High football game for the Loudonville Times. The paper was then owned by Lindsay Williams of Rittman.

Brewer graduated from Loudonville High in 1966 and went on to earn a journalism degree in 1970 from Ohio State University. While in college, he served as sports editor for the student newspaper, The Lantern.

“I had the pleasure of interviewing Woody Hayes the year that Ohio State was rated No. 1 by everybody and went up to Michigan and got their clocks cleaned,” Brewer said. “Of course, he was not in a good mood.”

Jim Brewer finds a home in journalism

Note: This section was changed to fix an error. Bill McKinney had purchased the Times and set up an office on East Main Street. His last name was incorrect when this story first published March 19.

Once he was out of college, Brewer joined the U.S. Army Reserves, serving for six years. Before starting basic training in June 1971, the Mansfield News Journal hired him to run the paper’s Ashland office.

“I covered the Ashland school board, Ashland City Council, Sheriff’s Office and other things,” he said.

The following March Jon Truax, who had a printing business in Loudonville, asked Brewer if he’d be interested in buying the Loudonville Times. For Brewer, that might as well have been a rhetorical question.

“I did the news side and he did advertising and production for eight years,” Brewer said.

In 1980, Brewer sold his interest in the Times to Truax and went to work for the Flxible Company doing tech writing.

“Problem was that was a boom-and-bust era for the Flxible,” Brewer said. “Essentially, after about a year, I doubled my money. But, two years after that, I was laid off.”

In 1983, Truax invited him to return as editor of the Loudonville Times, where he would remain for more than three decades and a few changes of ownership. The best thing to come of that, Brewer said, was after Bill McKinney bought the Times and set up an office on East Main Street.

Brewer, 75, thought it made the paper more accessible to the public and served readers better, even a few disgruntled ones.

That included one reader who was adamantly against streetscape, a plan to revitalize downtown Loudonville.

“He actually threatened me over the phone because I wrote things in favor of it,” Brewer said. “There were all sorts of controversies over the years but I seem to have weathered them.”

Loving Loudonville and all it has to offer

After retiring, Brewer and his wife, Sharon, traveled extensively for a year. Back home, a private slice of land in the Mohican-Memorial State Forest, they devoted more time to gardening.

“We now have 350 registered daylilies planted around the house,” he said. “We have a healthy deer population and the deer just love to eat daylilies. So we’ve moved all the daylilies close to the house and we’ve put an electric fence around the flowerbeds. It worked largely, but not completely.”

Brewer has four children, Jennifer Portz and Angela Sponsler of Loudonville; Jocelyn Roach, of Henderson, Nevada, and Sgt. 1st Class James Brewer, who is serving in the U.S. Army in South Korea; and nine grandchildren ages 7 to 22.

Brewer is a member of the Gardener's Guild of Loudonville, United Methodist Church of Loudonville, secretary of the Ohio Daylily Society, and a former member — for 30 years — and past president of the Loudonville Rotary Club.

He also served 21 years on the Loudonville Public Library board, including several years as president, and served as president — and later treasurer — of the Loudonville Youth Association. Brewer coached little league baseball for five seasons, youth soccer for 10 seasons and served three separate terms on the Mohican Area Community Fund board.

At the urging of then Ashland Times-Gazette general manager and editor Ted Daniels, Brewer returned in 2015 to write freelance for the Loudonville Times. He plans to continue covering local politics and people.

For him, it’s all about Loudonville.

“One of the nice things about my career is that Loudonville and the Mohican area are pretty nice places,” Brewer said. “It’s a good place to work and a good place to live.”

This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Jim Brewer remains dedicated to journalism and serving Loudonville