Lower 58 Musings: To be or not to be a columnist? Introducing a new feature by The Herald’s Dean Rea

By DEAN REA/The Herald — Write a column?

You’ve gotta be kidding. I’ve done that before. It can be hard work, time-consuming, challenging. I’m over-the-hill, one-foot-in-the grave, tired, hard-of-hearing, can’t see.

Anything you can still do?

Well, yes. I still drive a car.

Okay, then think of the people you could meet, the stories you could share as a columnist.

Well, I’ve been thinking about some of those stories as I travel around the lower Highway 58 as a volunteer reporter for this upstart online newspaper, Highway58Herald.org.

It’s the “org” moniker that puzzles this oldtimer, who graduated from a pencil to a typewriter to pursue a career as a journalist. Now I’m writing on a screen — not on a typewriter — that checks my syntax and corrects my spelling.

After I finish writing a story, I electronically send what I’ve written up Highway 58 to my editor in Oakridge. He then posts it, which means that folks all over the world can — and some do — read what I’ve written in The Herald.

That’s right. This newfangled newspaper never stops updating, which means that an editor keeps posting stuff all day and sometimes at night. In the old days we were lucky to print, i.e. post, an issue of a newspaper once a day.

And The Herald is free. Well, at least to the several thousand folks who have been visiting what is called The Herald website since it got off the ground and into the air the last day of February.

It may be more of a nonprofit corporation than board members would like, but donations continue to dribble in, and staff members work for free. But all of us, including board members, feel that folks along Highway 58 deserve to know what’s going on in their communities.

I’ve been reporting proceedings of school board and city council meetings in Pleasant Hill and Lowell, which we refer to as the Lower 58 here at the Herald. Add Goshen, which is stuck on the east side of Eugene. That’s my territory.

It’s been handy for a guy who lives downtown in the Eugene Hotel to cover these meetings because they are conducted by Zoom. I have COVID-19 to thank for saving me as much as a 40-mile round trip to attend a meeting virtually. That means I’m really here but not really there. I’m drinking Pepsi in my apartment while observing the meeting on a TV screen.

Meanwhile, I know that a lot of stories are waiting to be shared face-to-face in the Lower 58: stories about people, places, things.

I wonder sometimes: What are the Republicans up to in Pleasant Hill? Any homeless folks living in the Lower 58? How did Rattlesnake Road get its name? And whether the Pine Needle Quilters would welcome me during a quilting session?

If I decide to write a column, you may have a story that I could tell or you may know someone who does. You could get in touch with me at an address without a zip code: [email protected].

I probably would rue the day if I decided to write a column, but think of all the stories that we could share if an over-the-hill writer doesn’t become too tired or too old or too lazy to tell them.

Or doesn’t forget how to drive a car.

Longtime Oregon journalist Dean Rea, widely known for his years as a University of Oregon journalism educator and editor at The Register-Guard in Eugene,  serves as a founding board member, correspondent and columnist for The Herald.