Jim PathFinder Ewing has written six books, published in English, French, German, Russian and Japanese. His latest is “Conscious Food: Sustainable Growing, Spiritual Eating” (Findhorn Press, 2012). His next book — about which he is mysteriously silent — is scheduled to be released in Spring, 2015. Find him on Facebook, join him on Twitter @EdiblePrayers, or see his website,www.blueskywaters.com
Looking at the photo of The Clarion-Ledger building, there’s no clue that once it had a feisty rival called the Jackson Daily News, housed in a adjacent portion of that same building. I tell people I worked for the C-L for 32 years; but in fact, the first 10 years were with the JDN, until the papers merged in 1989. Jimmy Ward hired me. Both papers were then owned by the Hederman family. JDN folk bitterly fought to scoop the C-L. We felt like stepchildren, as we were paid less, and had a smaller staff.
We were in the old YMCA building, which is now a C-L parking lot. Gannett tore down the building. The Hedermans apparently didn’t like or trust the JDN building either. The C-L was built on a heavy concrete structure — I’m told, thinking that one day they might build upwards, as a skyscraper. The JDN building was wooden and the floors creaked when anybody walked on them. The Hedermans must have thought it was a firetrap because there were only two doors linking the second floor and both had automatic shields designed to slam shut and seal the C-L building in case of fire. The JDN portion of the building was left to its own fate.
I used to stare at those steel doors while the JDN newsroom puffed on cigarettes, reporters carelessly flipping lit butts in the direction of waste baskets overflowing with wadded up rolls of paper from the AP machine chattering nearby. Sometimes, those rolls did smolder a bit. Nobody had heard of secondhand smoke. When I started working as an editor on the JDN city desk, they gave me a key to the newsroom. When the last Jackson Daily News rolled off the press, there were only three of us editors left.
I still have that key – to a door that no longer exists.
Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com.
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