By Jay Smith
Bob Kinney was sick and in no shape to write the tribute to the football team that had dazzled us for three seasons. It was to be the final piece in our Jan. 1, 1971, Rose Bowl edition. Seven of us had traveled to Pasadena, California (I was editor-in-chief), to publish for Buckeye fans to root their team to a second national championship in three years.
So, I grabbed my portable typewriter and headed for the bathroom, so as not to disturb my sick roommate. “Rex & Co. End an Era,” read the front-page headline, a reference to Rex Kern, the charismatic red-headed quarterback who led the “Super Sophs” for three seasons with one loss. When the day ended, they had lost two.
On New Year’s Eve we distributed 11,000 copies of The Lantern to a dozen hotels housing the Buckeye faithful. Our predecessors two years earlier had greater luck with their Rose Bowl edition. They beat Southern Cal and O.J. Simpson. We lost to Stanford and Jim Plunkett.
The 12-page edition included an interview with Anne Hayes, wife of the head coach, a report that 4,000 Buckeyes alums lived in Southern California, news from back home and too many tributes to the team.
That wasn’t the only time we made Lantern history at the close of 1970. In December, both Columbus newspapers were shut down for 11 days due to a Teamsters Union strike. As a result, The Lantern became the only newspaper outlet for local advertisers. Demand for advertising space during the Christmas season was so great that on December 11, the last day of the school year, we put out an unprecedented TWO editions in a single day. The thousands of newspapers were available at noon that day, on campus and downtown. We reasoned that we were filling a news void.
On top of that, the additional ad revenue helped finance our Rose Bowl trip.
Every day brought new lessons to those of us who were Lantern staffers. The best lessons were learned in the heat of battle. Our adviser, Bill Rogers, often had to bite his ever-present pipe as we practiced journalism.
I’ve said to each of the last seven Lantern editors I’ve mentored and there is no such thing as a student journalist. We are all journalists, given the jobs we do and the lives we touch.
I revel in how many on that trip went on to great careers in journalism. Lou Heldman, our city editor — my best friend and the person who introduced my wife Susan and me (Susan was also a product of the J-School) — served a distinguished career with Knight Ridder. Roger Mezger, the news editor, worked in Akron and Cleveland for newspapers. The aforementioned Bob Kinney became sports editor at The Toledo Blade. Pam Spaulding, the photographer on the Rose Bowl trip, became an award-winning photographer in Louisville.
There were others, too many to mention, which means some get left out.
To all of them, I say thanks for shaping the journalist I became.
Editor’s Note: Jay Smith (B.A. Journalism, 1971), worked for 38 years for Cox Newspapers, 16 of them as president of the newspaper chain, which included 17 dailies and 25 weeklies. Now retired, but a busy mentor of Lantern editors-in-chief, he lives in Atlanta.
