My decision to be the publisher of this paper came 37 years ago

It was 37 years ago this week when I accepted the job as publisher of this newspaper. At the time I was the advertising manager of the Sentinel-Echo in London.

Don Estep is publisher of the News Journal.

I talked with Terry Forcht, the owner of the Whitley Republican, about the job and we decided to start a companion newspaper in Corbin after he agreed to purchase the new MacPlus computers which we would need to publish two newspapers.

Those little computers, which had far less memory than your telephone, was the new way to publish newspapers. They were expensive, costing about $2,500 each. The printer cost $5,000.

I gave my two week notice to the Sentinel and planned a vacation before I started the job at the Whitley Republican in June. It took a couple of months to plan the start of Corbin! This Week.

Terry gave me a book called “The Making of McPaper”, the inside story of USA Today. I took it with me on vacation and came back with a head full of ideas.

I was crazy about USA Today, the national publication that had started just two years prior. With the new computers I felt we could publish a newspaper that would look similar to it. Thus, I wanted to call it Corbin! This Week, a play on USA Today’s name.

The first time we used the computers to makeup the newspaper was a nightmare. I was there for my first publication of the Whitley Republican. It was about 3 a.m. and we couldn’t get the printer to work.

I was about to panic because the deadline for printing was just a few hours away.

We called Jerry Gibson, the fellow who arranged for the purchase of the computers at that hour of the morning and asked him, “How do you get these things to print?”

At the time the staff was talking to him I was in the front office on South Second Street in Williamsburg looking up at the night sky and asking myself, “At age 48 what have I done?”

Things got better of course but getting everything going was brutal. We have printed this newspaper in London, Manchester, Danville, Georgetown, Cynthiana, Middlesboro, Lexington and Harlan.

We were printing in London at the time but Ewell Balltrip, publisher of the Harlan Daily News, offered us a better deal. I told him it was a long way to Harlan and mountainous. He said he would flatten those mountains if we would print there.

I accepted the offer.

We would take our page negatives which Arnold Stark would prepare for us in our darkroom to Harlan. Then Ewell would truck the papers back to us in Williamsburg and we would prepare them for delivery.

I would start driving to Harlan about 4:30 a.m. with the negatives. After being up 24 hours I would have to park along the roadside on the way back because I could not hold my eyes open.

I knew that couldn’t go on much longer and with  our new publication slated for an August printing I had to make some changes.

Next week I’ll write about the changes.