Opinion : A column a day...

From March of 2003, until November of 2008, I wrote a newspaper column almost every day.

I do not know this for a fact, but I believe I was the only person in Iowa doing that at the time.

Some people liked it.

Others did not.

“Your column is self-serving,” said one boss.

“We don’t think Dean has time to write those,” said another.

“People read your columns because you write them. If you wrote stories, they would read those too,” said a journalism teacher I respect.

But the number of comments I received from readers gave me the inspiration to keep on writing.

So I wrote. I did get an award for my columns. Sure it was a third place – the lowest they give at the Iowa Newspaper Association. But at least I got an award.

The best reward, however, was hearing people say they read and appreciated my columns. Sometimes I wrote about silly stuff. When they built the new high school and there was a discussion (a very brief one) about possibly changing the V-S school district name, I made a suggestion: Baja Brandon. I trust that you also understand – if you read it—that the parasailing/Sarah Palin column was only an attempt at humor, and not my perception of any factual events.

Sometimes I wrote about serious stuff – wars, elections, government, and shared my opinions.

Sometimes I did both. In one of my first columns here in Vinton, I wrote that our policy toward Iraq should be something I saw on a closed captioning: Total Dale Earnhardt.

I wrote those articles with enough faith in you, the reader, that you would understand when I was serious and when I was being silly. Occasionally some people misunderstood. But we live in a society that doesn’t do satire anymore.

I knew when I went from a daily paper to a weekly one, that my daily duty and opportunity was no longer there. Then when we started Vinton Today, I decided to wait a while before writing a lot of columns. I wanted to make sure Vinton Today is about Vinton, not about me.

But now I think it’s time to start writing again. Maybe it’s because I spent the weekend reading my Mike Royko books. Many of the people – Royko and Paul Harvey among others – who used to come to us every day with words that tried to make sense of the news are long gone. And, it seems, there is nobody doing what they did – or at least not nearly as well.

So, I will try writing something of a personal column nature every day. At least now, I can ignore the bosses if they don’t like it.