Tom Martin: So long, Register-Mail

Goodbye, readers. I’ll soon be leaving The Register-Mail and the best job I’ve ever had.

Times change, and I will change with them. I’m grateful for this opportunity (and former Publisher Don Cooper for taking a risk on me) and for all the community support and involvement in The Register-Mail.

This job was seldom easy, but perpetually rewarding. The best things in life often require some discomfort and that truth was constant at the newspaper. Challenge after challenge presented itself through stories that needed to be told and changes disrupting the newspaper industry. The years stacked up quickly, 19 of them, since I started at this newspaper that in 2003 was grappling with reporting the pending the loss of 1,600 good-paying jobs with the announced closure of Maytag.

Recalling the big stories, starting with Maytag

We had already reported the long-time factory was closing, but how could we show the exceptional impact of this story when the final assembly line closed? We knew it had to be about the people who worked there. Someone suggested we publish pictures of the workers. We eventually decided to take head shots of as many of the 800 remaining workers as we could and put those into a mosaic of one worker’s face. That mosaic was the only image on the front page of that Sept. 15, 2004, edition with a headline “… end of the line”. I remember Don calling me into his office saying he’d just been interviewed by Editor & Publisher magazine, who wanted to talk about our front page. The front page kicked off an in-depth series about the workers and the impact on community.

There were so many big stories while I was here. We followed up years later with two in-depth series on growing poverty in Galesburg. The most comprehensive series was in 2015 when we took a deep look at domestic violence. We worked with Professor Jim Dyer’s journalism class at Knox College to go through thousands of domestic violence police calls and follow each call through the arrest and prosecution phase. What we found: Of 4,815 police calls over four years, 1,187 led to arrest. Of those arrests, 230 resulted in convictions for domestic violence.

The Maytag and domestic violence stories won a bunch of awards. In fact, we won hundreds of newspaper awards, were named the best newspaper in Illinois eight different times, and, in 2015, we won Best Newspaper in GateHouse. Journalists around the state knew about the newspaper in Galesburg.

Other award-winning news projects:

- International Adoption - 2013: We followed three families through a year of adoption efforts.

- Our Towns - 2016: An in-depth look at area towns with populations under 1,000.

- Flourishing Elsewhere - 2017:- A series tracking the percentage of top high school graduates who left Galesburg for college and never returned.

- Opioid addiction - 2019: A look at the impact opioid addiction was having on the community.

- Black Voices of Galesburg - 2021: The entire staff and stringers did in-depth interviews with 10 people of color about being Black in Galesburg.

Reacting to spot news: O.T. Johnson fire

But journalism is also reacting to unplanned stories. Spot news, such as fires and snowstorms can pull a newsroom together like nothing else. The O.T. Johnson fire of Jan. 23, 2006, brought reporters and photographers out of their beds overnight to cover the biggest downtown fire in the past 20 years. Beyond the enormity of the fire was the tragedy of a young man who died in the blaze. The staff was on the scene and covered all aspects the fire and the aftermath. A now historic Register-Mail photo of the flames leaping into the night was published by the Washington Post.

And then there was Aug. 17, 2011. That was when sitting President Barack Obama was planning to visit the village of Alpha. We’d planned our coverage weeks ahead of the event. When the day arrived, we had our best team of reporters and photographers stationed in Alpha. And then we learned from the press pool via Twitter that the president’s bus didn’t take the Alpha exit! We’d been hearing rumblings all day about a potential stop in Galesburg; in particular, we heard the Secret Service had called Galesburg High School. We sprang into action with the few staff members we had remaining, a couple of sports guys and a part-time photographer and sent them hurtling toward the high school (I rousted one out of a stall in the restroom — a first for me). Sure enough, Obama as big as life showed up at GHS, and we were there to capture iconic images of Obama interacting with the football team and the volleyball team. The banner headline: “The bus stops here!”

There was snowmaggedon in 2010 and the tornado that touched down in Cameron in 2015 and many, many other spot news stories, such as a downtown bank robbery, where the robbers changed clothes in a Hardees restaurant on East Main Street afterwards. Sad stories such as murders and other tragedies were among them, including in March 2013 when a pit bull killed a 7-year-old boy at a sleep-over.

That’s one of the stories I will never shake. As horrific as the event was, the newspaper’s coverage was perhaps the best journalism I’ve been a part of. I won’t go into detail and relive the event, but good journalism makes you feel at least a fraction of what those involved experienced.

The Register-Mail newsroom

That story brings me to the many talented journalists who passed through The Register-Mail during my 19 years. There are too many to mention, so I’ll trim it to those who I worked more than a decade with.

• Moving Jay Redfern to be my co-pilot was the best decision of my career. A Galesburg institution, Jay knows where are the stories are. Better yet, he always had a sense of how to handle stories, ethically and morally. And, he’s a fantastic page designer and photographer.

• Tom Loewy is the best interviewer I’ve seen, and he knows the best stories are about people. Loewy was the reporter who led our coverage of the dog attack.

• Rob Buck was the center of our newsroom, with reporters and editors buzzing around his desk about the this or that story. A workshop director once referred to Rob as a grammar ninja, which I evolved into the "Grammar Hammer." My favorite image is of Rob with stacks of hard copy results deep into election night.

• Lorraine Stone’s laugh will forever live in the old Register-Mail building on Prairie Street. Lorraine kept us all in line except when she didn’t. She was the heart of the newsroom.

• Mike Trueblood knew all the coaches, teams and players. If you were lucky, you’d get Mike telling stories about some of the characters through the years. He is a true professional.

And then there was Features Editor Lisa Coon, Sports Reporter Matt Wheaton, Photo Editor Steve Davis, Cops Reporter Robert Connelly and photographer Kent Kriegshauser and John Pulliam. And, in no particular order (some of the names have changed through marriage): Bill Gaither, Aaron Frey, Ariel Cheung, Elyse Russo, Robyn Gautschy, Matt Koester, Samuel Lisec, Jane Carlson.

Janet Klockenga, Ken Exum, Joe Ward, Marty Hobe, Eric Timmons, Chris Etheridge, Joanie Stiers, Jennifer Wheeler, Todd Rudolf, Justin Conn, Mike Homco, Larry Haynes, Kelly Hertlein, Antwon Martin, Gary Tomlin, Rebecca Susmarski, Ben Botkin, Jackson White, Ben Zigterman, Cigi Ross, Rebecca O'Halleran, Zack Creglow, Bill Ford, Allison Goodrich, Mike Landis, Tom Nelson, Tammy Bould, Jeff Holt, Susan Kaufman, David Hotle, Nathan Nick Ostdick, Lindquist, Lauren Rees, Roberto Hodge, Andy Bell-Baltaci and Kerry Patrick.

Thanks to all the above for putting themselves into their work on behalf of The Register-Mail. Sidenote: Two couples, now married, met in our newsroom: Todd Rudolf with Jennifer Wheeler and Joe Ward with Ariel Cheung.

And I still need to mention contributions from the community. When I asked Tom Wilson to try his hand at writing some history columns, I had no idea the impact he would have in telling the history of Galesburg. Tom was a great guy, who'd never take a dime for his work. Stringer Talbot Fisher followed in his footsteps with columns of Galesburg from yesteryear. Carol Moore Painter kept us in recipes. I’d like to thank all the writers on the Community Roundtable and the volunteer monthly columnists: Harry Bulkeley, Judy Johnson Simkins, Naomi Law and Stuart Allison, and Bruce Weik’s team of Many Paths columnists.

The Register-Mail has an incredible history, and my time here was but a blip. I tip my hat to all the editors who came before me — Robert Harrison and Jeff Rogers, in particular — who helped reveal and record the stories that now make up our city's history.

Thank you.

Tom Martin, Editor

tmartin@register-mail.com

This article originally appeared on Galesburg Register-Mail: Editor Tom Martin says goodbye to The Register-Mail, Galesburg IL