'Posties' made paper home
The Cincinnati Post is where I grew up. Literally.
The Post hired me straight out of college. It was 1983 and I had just graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind. Luckily, other DePauw graduates had paved the way so Bill Burleigh and Carole Philipps were willing to take a chance on me and my limited resume. I hope it was one of the best chances they ever took.
When I think back upon my 15 years at the Post, it isn't a single event or even a series of events that I remember. It is the people. I know, that is a phrase you hear over and over from former "Posties." But it is the true. It is the people that made The Post a great place to hone our craft. Even the editors you abhorred and their lame stories eventually become the stuff of lore and laughter.
So my memories of The Post are all about people - the ones I worked with and the ones I covered. When I was first hired I was told I would be covering east side suburbs. So I moved to the east side. In fact, my first assignment was covering the west side - from Green Township to Harrison.
Back then, there were veteran politicians on the west side. Dusty Rhodes knew everybody. If there were a story to be had, he'd tell you about it. Colerain Township administrator Dave Gully started in about the same time I did. He knew how government worked and was willing to teach this neophyte. I loved being the one to tell residents for the first time that their township officials were considering eliminating their police force.
Still today I tell people about that story. That is what newspaper should be all about - relaying what is going on in the world and how it will affect people.
After cutting my teeth there, editors decided to have me cover Hamilton County government. There, people like Mike Maloney, Cary Self, Norm Murdock, Bob Taft and Joseph M. DeCourcy taught me all about the importance of relationships. In Hamilton County, everybody was related to somebody else and it stood you in good stead to know all those details.
One of my favorite stories there was about employees making calls to 1-800 numbers on the county phones. It wasn't the biggest story, but it was fun and funny and fulfilled the newspaper's watchdog role.
After a brief stint covering federal courts and agencies, city editor Kerry Duke forced me into City Hall in 1990. He swore it would be a one-year assignment. I didn't get out until I left town in 1999.
There, though, I learned better than I could anywhere else how to cultivate long-term sources, how to track and organize, how to take the heat after writing a critical story, how to stand up to politicians and activists who thought they could bully the press and how to consistently beat the competition. Those are lessons still helpful today.
The Post owed many front-page stories to Scott Johnson, Mike Bierman, Dave Rager, Frank Dawson and Bill Langevin and politicians like Ken Blackwell, Dwight Tillery, Bobbie Sterne, Roxanne Qualls and others whose names you never saw or will see in print who pointed me in the right direction, told me the truth and answered my endless questions.
Really, though, my time at The Post was marked by the group of young people - mostly single - whom we dubbed the Post Toasties.
There were whitewater rafting trips to West Virginia, weekend trips to Pittsburgh, and cabin camping trips to southern Ohio. Paul Clark, Michael Clark, Ken Wilson, Nick Miller and slew of others spent evenings at Corry's with Big Alice. Janet Graham, Jennifer Kent and I spent hours on the golf course. And I have former business reporter Gary Rhodes to thank for introducing me to my husband whose job took me out of town and away from The Post.
Sure, working at The Post or any newspaper was and always will be about getting the big story and getting it first. But for me, my memories of The Post are all about the people and the lessons.
Sarah Sturmon Dale resides in suburban Minneapolis with her husband and two children. She is a freelance writer, working for Time magazine and other Midwest publications
Publication date: 12-31-2007
