Dave Healy: Former Editor Park Bugle This interview was conducted at Healy's St.

Paul home on May 20, 2011. Jon Collins: Ok, well I just want to thank you very much for talking to me. The place where I normally start out is at the beginning. Can you tell me a little bit about where youre from, what sort of background you have? Dave Healy: Sure. I grew up in St. Paul, went to public schools through high school in St. Paul and went to what was then called Bethel College; its now Bethel University. And so Im a lifelong resident of St. Paul. Ive lived in this neighborhood for 21 years and lived in the Midway neighborhood of St. Paul for 12 years. Grew up in a house near the state fairgrounds. I am married and have two adult sons who live in New York City. And I live here with my wife. Collins: What was your first experience with journalism? Healy: The Simpson Street News. When I was a kid, I had three siblings and during the summer if we started getting in my moms hair too much she became desperate to think of activities for us. One year she organized the whole neighborhood, got all the kids together and put on an operetta. We actually did that two or three years. But another of her brainstorms was to have a neighborhood newspaper. We lived on Simpson Street in St. Paul so we published the Simpson Street News. So I was the titular editor of the Simpson Street News. My brothers and I went out and gathered news and my mom helped us write it up and then she typed it onto ditto, mimeograph sheets and we took it over to Bethel where my dad worked and they ran off copies of it for us and we went around and delivered it to the other people on the block. Collins: What sort of stuff was inside the paper? Healy: Who visited whom. Who was on vacation. We had a feature story about all the dogs on Simpson Street. And we had jokes. We had a neighborhood track meet one summer, was another one of my moms ideas to keep us busy, so we wrote up the results of that. That was my first foray into journalism was the Simpson Street News. Collins: And when you went to school did you study journalism or communications at the time? Healy: I did not at all in high school. We had a school newspaper. I wasnt involved in that at all. I was involved in what we called an underground newspaper in high school. When I was a senior, three friends of mine and I put out a broadsheet that we call the Senior Satirist and it was in retrospect a rather juvenile effort. It was satirical in nature, so we wrote about teachers and administrators in the school and one rather regrettable diatribe against the

cheerleaders, which I now regret. So the Senior Satirist came out roughly once a month and we ran it off at Instiprints and we kept our identities a secret so we would hang around outside of school until everybody was gone but the doors were still open and then wed come back in and avoid the janitors. And go around and stuff, fold the paper up and stuff it into the lockers cause the lockers had little slots in them. And wed leave piles of it in the lunchroom and other places like that. As I said we kept our identities a secret until the last issue and we had a cryptic statement at the end of the last issue which we were hoping some people would figure out and they did. So then people knew had been doing the Senior Satirist all year. Collins: Did you get a lot of flak for that then? Healy: Not a lot. One nice thing happened to us. We had a German teacher in high school. Herr Helsing. Who was very old-school. Very German. Had only been in this country for a few years before he started teaching at our school. And we were all, the three of us were students of his and we were all nervous about how he in particular would respond to this cause it didnt seem like his sort of thing. But he had invited us over to his house for tea during the last week of school to commend us for our journalistic efforts. So that was quite nice. That was my only really experience with journalism in high school. In college I took a couple of journalism classes and ended up getting a minor in journalism. And did a little writing for the school paper, some news and feature writing my first couple years. And then I was on the six year plan in college so I cant remember exactly what year it was, but at some point during four or five, somewhere in there I wrote a column for the school paper. It was called, the name of the paper was the Bethel Clarion and I wrote a column Of Shoes and Ships and Ceiling Wax which is based on a line from a poem called the Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll from Alice in Wonderland. Yeah. So those were my two schoolrelated experiences with journalism. Collins: Did you have any expectation when you had the minor that you would be going into the field? Healy: No. None. I was an English major, I had a minor in journalism, and I decided to go to graduate school. I didnt get into graduate school right away so I got married and worked for a year, then started graduate school a year after graduation. Got a masters degree in English and then applied for and got into a PhD program, this was at the University of Minnesota, got into a PhD program in American Studies, which is an interdisciplinary field. And ended up getting a degree in American Studies. And then got a job, an academic job at the university. I had been teaching part time at Bethel where my BA was from while I was in grad school. And then got this job at the U. And did that for ten years. So for all the time I was in grad school and then working at the U, I was not connected with journalism other than being an avid consumer of it. But we moved to this neighborhood in St. Anthony Park in 1990. And I became aware that there

was a community newspaper here. There had been a community newspaper in our previous neighborhood, the Midway neighborhood in St. Paul, a paper called the Midway Monitor, and I read that but didnt ever contribute to it. We moved here and I started reading our paper, which is the Park Bugle. And wrote a couple letters to the editor. And then had an experience getting hit by a car while walking across an intersection, right over here at Raymond and Energy Park Drive. And I was crossing with the light and a guy was turning left and he basically ran me down. And I was fortunate that I was not seriously inured but anyway in the aftermath of that and talking with the police department and the insurance company I came to some, what for me were rather disturbing conclusions about the rights of pedestrians. So I wanted to write about that and I did and I sent that essay to the Bugle and they published it. And so that led then to a more regular gig with the Bugle, writing what they call commentaries. Which were essentially essays. And I would do one of those every two or three issues. And then that led to one of the previous editors of the paper asking me if I was interested in doing some other news or feature writing for the paper. So I started doing that. And by the way, thats common for the Bugle and for I think many other community newspapers, at least in the metro area. Is that they tend to draw on people that live in the neighborhood. So I had some journalism background, but many of the people who write for the Bugle and other community newspapers in the Cities dont have any formal training. Collins: When you went and reported those first features, what was your reaction to the actual act of reporting? Healy: It was mixed. I dont know if you ever listen to, there used to be a show on Minnesota Public Radio called Morning Show. Dale Connelly and a guy named Tom Keith whose radio name was Jim Ed Poole. Jim Ed Poole also did sound effects for Garrisons Keillors show for a number of years. Anyway, Dale Connelly was an employee of Minnesota Public Radio. He was hired by them to be a reporter. And he, I heard him talking about this on his show once and he said, I realized fairly quickly that being a reporter meant calling up people you didnt know and trying to get them to talk to you. And I said I was manifestly ill suited for that. So he gravitated into this radio show, which was a variety show. Its a show that Garrison Keillor actually started. And then Dale Connelly took over for him. So there was a little bit of that feeling for me in doing news writing. That Im introverted. I dont find it easy to talk with people I dont know. I talk slowly and Im very bad on the phone. So I was a little nervous about that. And I still think there are some aspects of interviewing that Im not all that good at. But I met some interesting people. One of the first feature stories I did for the Bugle was a guy who lived in the neighborhood at the time who was a ping-pong nut and managed to, he wasnt good enough to play for the U.S. Olympic team but he got affiliate with the U.S. Olympic ping-pong team. And went to the Olympics in some kind of ancillary capacity. I interviewed him and wrote about ping-pong and that was very interesting. So I got to meet some interesting people and find out some interesting things about my neighborhood. And I found that being a

writer for the paper in the neighborhood where you live was a great way, maybe the best way, to get to know people and to get to know the neighborhood. So I started going to community council meetings in my capacity as a writer for the Bugle. And through that and that experience I met the movers and the shakers in the neighborhood. So I got to feel much more a part of the neighborhood because of my involvement with the local paper. And even though Im not at the Bugle now, those benefits continue to accrue for me. Collins: How did people react when you told them you were from the Bugle, when you told them you were reporting for them? Healy: People were responsive. Ill jump ahead a little bit here, because eventually I became editor of the Bugle. The editorship came open, well, after ten years I decided to leave the University of Minnesota. Im going to get back to your question, ok? I felt like Id been in college my whole life. My dad was a college teacher, he taught at Bethel. I grew up at Bethel College, I went to Bethel College, I went to graduate school, I got a job at the University of Minnesota. I felt like Id been in and around a college or university my entire life. I had been. And I became curios about whether there was life outside the academy. And so I left the university of my own volition in 1997 to pursue a career as a freelance writer and editor. I had edited an academic journal my last three years at the U and very much enjoyed that and so I thought, I want to do more of this. So I did that. I left the U and I hung up my shingle as a freelance editor and did a lot of academic editing. A couple years into that the editorship of the Bugle came open, and I had been doing this freelance writing for them and so I knew that the current editor was leaving. And one of the other employees at the paper asked if I would have lunch with her and asked if I was going to apply. And I hadnt decided I was and she said, well I think you should. So she talked me into it and I applied and I became editor of the Park Bugle in 2000. One of the things, and now Im getting back to your question which was how people responded when they were approached by me in my capacity as a writer and eventually of editor of the paper. One interesting thing to me was that there was, ok, in this neighborhood, I forget exactly what year this started, but sometime in the late 1990s, the local community council started a listserv for neighborhood residents. So its an email discussion group. And its a place, a lot of it is, I just moved to the neighborhood, does anybody know good babysitters. Or Ive got some leftover lawn edging, does anybody need it? Whos a good chiropractor, a lot of that stuff. But theres also some discussion of issues that emerge in the neighborhood. And when I became editor of the paper from time to time thered be a post to this listserv that deserved a wider audience. There were at the time maybe 5 or 600 people who subscribed to the listserv and the Park Bugle was being delivered to 10,000 people and so there were several times when I emailed somebody cause your email, your personal email shows up when you post to the listserv. And there were several occasions where somebody had what I thought was an interesting post that deserved a wider audience, and I emailed them and said, I read your post about such and such, Im Dave Healy, editor of the paper. Would

you consider submitting that or some form of that as a letter to the editor to the paper? And they said no, I dont want to. I still dont know quite what to make of that because this listserv was a somewhat public forum. You had to be a subscriber, but anybody could subscribe, you didnt have to prove that you were a resident of the neighborhood to subscribe. But theres something apparently for these people, theres something about being in the paper that was different. And this didnt happen a lot, but it happened several times, where somebody had willingly posted to an email discussion group and then was invited to submit that same sentiment to the local rag, and they wouldnt do it. And that surprised me. I dont know quite what to make of that, but theres apparently a newspaper is perceived to be a more public enterprise, a more public forum or venue for people. Or some people anyway. So that was a surprise to me. Collins: Did you get tips from people? Just that you would see at the grocery store? Healy: Oh sure, yeah. Yeah in fact the previous editor, the person I replaced had not been a resident of this neighborhood. He lived in Minneapolis and he edited this paper. The Bugle was distributed in St. Anthony Park, which is this neighborhood where I live and where we are right now and also in the Como Park neighborhood, which is to the east of us. And then two other municipalities. Falcon Heights and then Lauderdale, which are just north of here. So this previous editor didnt live in any of those neighborhoods. He lived in Minneapolis and at the time he had an office and he would come over here and work. The paper flourished I think under his leadership so it wasnt a requirement, but I couldnt, having been the editor, and living here, I couldnt imagine not living here. Because so much of what showed up in the paper for me was a result of just what youre question implied, is you run into somebody at the post office, or just walking and biking and being in the neighborhood you see stuff. And thats what gets in the paper. Collins: How was the transition from doing reporting for them to being the editor? Healy: One of the first things I did when I took over as editor is I met with all of the writers. There as a group of maybe eight or ten people who regularly contributed to the paper. And I had been one of those people. And we didnt have staff meetings and there as a physical office at that time but the writers didnt hang out there. The editor, what was called a production manager, who was the person who did the layout of the paper. Those were the only paid employees of the paper. So they would be at the office, but even then not all of the time, its just a monthly paper. There wasnt an office; there wasnt a place where everybody hung out. So you didnt necessarily get to know the other writers all that well and I didnt know many of them. But I identified with them cause I was a writer too. So when I became editor, they knew me at least through the stuff that I published in the paper and I knew them that well. So I was a little apprehensive about now being kicked upstairs. I think this happens in many different job

settings, where somebody gets promoted from within and where previously you were a colleague, now youre a boss or supervisor or manager, what are they going to think of me and how am I going to relate to them. So I had a little apprehension about that and thats why I wanted to meet with all of them personally and introduce myself and get a sense for what they liked and didnt like about the paper and their involvement with it. And Im really glad I did that. Those meetings went well and I think it was important. I think that was a good decision on my part to do that. So for me that helped make the transition go pretty well. Collins: And being on the other side of the wall, so to speak, did you learn things or experience things that you hadnt anticipated? Healy: Yeah, a lot of things. The Bugle was incorporated. The Bugle is published by Park Press Incorporated, which is a non-profit corporatoin. The paper was started in 1974 and Park Press Inc. was incorporated in 1975. So the paper had a 25-year history when I became editor. And it had had half a dozen or so editors during that time. As a non-profit, the Bugle has to have, Park Press Incorporated, by Minnesota law, a board of directors. And those are people who are volunteers recruited from the four geographical areas that the Bugle Serves. Como Park, St. Anthony Park, Falcon Heights, and Lauderdale and so there was a board. 15 or so people on the board. I had been on a non-profit board previously, just in my capacity as a neighborhood resident, in both this neighborhood and the previous neighborhood I had lived in. So I knew a little bit about non-profits and about boards. But I didnt anticipate that dimension of the job. Youre going to be an editor of the newspaper; I knew what being an editor was. Id edited a journal, Id contributed to papers, I felt like I had a pretty good idea what the job would entail. Well I didnt know that my employer, my boss essentially, would be the board of directors, that Id be going to board meetings and committee meetings. So I wasnt ready for that. The Bugle was also going through a difficult time. The previous editor left rather suddenly and it turned out that he, during the last months he was there, he hadnt been happy and he hadnt really been doing much. In fact I was supposed to job shadow him for one month. I was hired in July of 2000 and I was supposed to job shadow him during July for the August issue, which would come out around August 1st. And then I would take over and my first issue would be the September issue. Well at the meeting where we were supposed to get together for the first go around to talk about the August issue, we were supposed to meet at 9 o clock at the office. At 10 to 9, the other woman who was going to be there, the woman who had recruited me to be the editor, called and said, come at 9:15. I came at 9:15. She was visibly upset, on the verge of tears. The previous editor had, theyd had a spat. She said you dont have enough stuff for the issue, what have you been doing? He stormed out and we never saw him again. So that was my entre to the editorship and we didnt have enough stuff. The Bugle, the average size of the paper at that time was 20 pages. We didnt have nearly enough stuff for a 20-page issue, so the first issue under my editorship was a 12-page issue. And it was thin. It was a thin 12 pages.

Cause he hadnt assigned any stories. So that was pretty traumatic. And it turned out that nobody had been filing stuff in the office. The office as a mess. So I spent hours and hours the first few weeks on the job just trying to straighten things out. So anyway, there were a lot of things that I found myself doing as editor that had nothing to do with what I anticipated being. I though, oh Ill be assigning stories and then when I come in Ill be editing them and Ill be working with the layout person to find out where theyre going to go in the paper. and Ill be proofreading and editing, thats what editors do. But I was going through files and trying to figure out where stuff should go and I was going to board meetings and committee meetings and so I wasnt ready for that. Collins: It was a lot more adminstrative tasks? Healy: Yeah. Collins: How did you like editing as opposed to actually reporting stories? Did you like working with your writers for instance? Healy: I liked that. As I said I had been the editor of an academic journal when I worked at the university. And I really liked and continue to like editing. I live in an old house. This house will turn 100 years old in August. And in fact were going to have a party to celebrate it. Weve lived here for 21 years and previously we lived in another not quite this old house in St. Paul for 12 years. Ive done a lot of work on this house. A lot of remodeling. Im not a skilled craftsman but Ive learned how to do stuff. And Ive thought a lot about the comparison between remodeling and editing. That in both cases youre working with something that somebody else made. So theres a givenness to what youre handed and there are constraints. I suppose I could tear out walls in this house or gut it and essentially start over, but I havent done that. Ive tried to work with whats where and try to make changes in the house that I think are consistent with the fact that this is an old house. To honor the spirit of the house in some way. And thats the job of an editor as well. To take something that somebody else made and alter it, improve it. But without doing violence to the spirit and the essence of the original. And I really like doing that. I also like writing. I like creating something from scratch. But for me theres something very deeply satisfying about working with the given and doing what I can to make that better. Collins: What was your group of writers like? What drew them to contribute? D: They were a varied lot but on the whole, during the ten years I edited the Bugle I felt extremely fortunate to have as skilled a group of writers as I did. For the most part they are people that live in this neighborhood, theyre not trained journalists, theyre smart, theyre good writers. A couple really good writers. There are a couple people who write, wrote and continue to write for the Bugle who could write for anybody. They could write for the Strib, they could write for the Pioneer Press, theyre just really really good. I was very fortunate to have a

number of very strong writers. And enthusiastic writers, who, youd email them and say, I was thinking of a story maybe a story about such and such. And theyd say yeah! Id love to do that! Collins: What motivated them to write? Healy: I think in part a sense of community service, that because they lived in the neighborhood, and because they recognized the importance of a community newspaper to the health and the vitality of a neighborhood, they saw what they were doing as a form of community service. We paid them a modest amount, but not much. Not enough to make it worthwhile from a financial standpoint. So they were doing it because they believed in the value of a community newspaper. And because it gave them an outlet for something that they enjoy doing. It gave them an audience. A circulation of 10,000 isnt enormous, but its substantial. So you knew that your words were going to be read by a fair number of people. Most writers have enough egotism to drive them to want to be read, to want to have an audience and a newspaper gives you a guaranteed audience. So I think that is another thing that motivated them. Collins: Do you remember any stories that upset people? Healy: Not much. My philosophy of community journalism is that it essentially, ok I look at the mission and the purpose of a paper like the Park Bugle as being different in some important ways from a paper like the Star Tribune or the Pioneer Press or any other major metropolitan daily. I think all journalism, all newspapers have a responsibility to inform. I also believe that newspapers have a community building purpose, function. And thats especially true for what we call community newspapers. The Bugle is a neighborhood newspaper. Its actually four neighborhoods that it serves. But thats a well-defined geographical area. And people, I believe, read the Bugle for different reasons than they read the Star Tribune or the Pioneer Press. Theyre looking for local news. They want to read about their neighbors. They want to read about local businesses. So theres that more local focus. But I also believe that a paper like the Bugle can strengthen and build up a neighborhood and there are many forces in American society today, I believe that pull people apart. That threaten a sense of community and neighborliness. Our kids, on this block, when our kids were growing up. They now are adults and dont live here. But when they were kids here going to school, their experience was very different from mine. I grew up in St. Paul. I wane to Chelsea Heights Elementary. All the kids on my block either went to Chelsea Heights Elementary or Holy Childhood. If they were Catholic they went to Holy Childhood. If they were not Catholic they went to Chelsea. You went to your neighborhood school. You went to school with the kids on your block. And all the kids in Como Park, which was the name of that neighborhood, went to Chelsea. But that was not the case here, when we moved into this house. There is a local house that is only a block and a half from where were sitting now. St. Anthony Park Elementary School. My kids didnt go there. One of

my kids finished his elementary school at the school in the neighborhood where we previously lived. The other one went to Capitol Hill, which is a magnet school. So the kids went to magnet school. They got on buses and they went hither and thither. Thats just one of I think many ways in which neighborhoods are threatened. Neighborhood solidarity is threatened. Kids dont go to school, people go to different churches. So a neighborhood newspaper can be a force for unification, I believe. And that conviction, that philosophy, affected the kind of stories that we published in the paper. If I thought that there was a story that was going to be really divisive, I would tend not to do it. So we still printed things that people disagreed with. But there wasnt anything really terribly controversial during the ten years that I was at the paper. And the criticisms that we got tended to be is somebody thought we got something wrong. And we did get some things wrong from time to time. Collins: What was your relationship with the board like? Healy: It evolved. I discovered that the previous editor, he and the board had grown increasingly at odds, and that was part of the reason he left. And he quit going to meetings. So they were pretty much fed up with the guy. And so I think, in one respect thats a good time to come in. When you replace someone who nobody liked, that makes you look good. So I felt appreciated and supported by the board. During the last couple of years of my editorship that, my involvement with the board got to be increasingly demanding. And I think this happens in other non-profit organizations. So you have a board of directors and typically those are set up so theres guaranteed turnover. So your typical non-profit board term I would guess would be three years, probably, thats what the Bugles was. And you try to set it up so you dont have everybody going off at the same time. So there's planned renewal in a board of directors for most non-profits. So the board is changing. And the staff potentially is more stable. So I ended up being the Bugle editor for ten years. Thats twice as long as any previous editor. And it think its probably fairly unusual for community newspapers. Maybe not so much for rural newspapers, small town newspapers I think youre more likely to see somebody hang around there for a long time. At any rate, because of the way that the Bugle functioned as a non profit and the importance of the relationship between the editor and the board, you have people going off the board as the editor stays on. So in time the institutional memory of the organization increasingly comes to be centered in the person of the editor because hes been around the longest. And so now anytime anybody has a meeting, committee meeting, well we should really have Dave there. So now its not just a monthly meeting, its a t least a weekly meeting. And then during my last year at the Bugle, I was going to at least two meetings a week every week plus some special stuff going on on the weekend. So that became, frankly, burdensome. And difficult. But for most of the time I was there it wasnt like that. I had a good relationship with the board. I felt appreciated and supported, but I also did not feel micromanaged. From time to time youd get somebody on the board who thought that by virtue of the fact that she was a board member that should give

her the inside track on grinding her particular axe on the paper. Why dont you have more stories about the school because I got three kids at the school, that kind of thing. So there was a little of that, but it wasnt burdensome. Collins: Sounds like a lot of independence actually. Healy: A lot of indenpendence. I was basically given a free hand. And I enjoyed that. I appreciated that. But people were there if I needed to bounce ideas or get feedback. And people gave me suggestions and tips. Collins: It was a time when community newspapers were kind of getting hit hard, financially. Can you talk about that a little bit? What was the financial situation when you got there? Healy: When I got there, things were tenuous. In fact before I started as editor, when I was still a writer. There were a couple times when I took my meagerly check over to the local bank to cash it and was told, well theres no money in that account. That made me a little nervous about agreeing to be the editor. So things were a little shaky financially when I took over, but they improved. And for the majority of the years that I was there, the paper was fairly healthy. Our average issue was when I started, had been 16 or 20 pages. Papers like the Bugle are pulished in increments of four pages, so the average was 16 or 20 and then it became 20 and became 24 with occasional 28 page papers during our heyday. And then the crunch hit and we dropped back to 20 and then to 16 so there were a couple of years where we published just 16 page papers. So the number of pages is a function of the number of ad inches that are sold, so thats kind of a proxy for the health for a paper like the Bugle is how many pages is it? But then the last two or three years things were tighter. The Bugle as a non-profit paper, can solicit contributions, tax deductible. I mean anybody can solicit contributions, but as a non-profit you can tell people that their contributions were tax deductible. So the Bugle had a fund drive every year. So built into the budget was the expectation that the fund drive, when I started, we were assuming that the fund drive contributions to the paper would cost about ten percent of the budget. And then that went up to 15 percent, gradually went up to 15 percent. But then the contributions really leveled off. So we were getting the same amount every year, but expenses were going up as they do everywhere. And our ad inches were falling and so the paper had to shrink. But we stayed alive. There are several papers nearby here that ceased publication. There was a community newspaper in the Merriam Park neighborhood that folded. There was a paper that was delivered in the Prospect Park Neighborhood in Minneapolis just over the border that folded. And there was talk for a period of time at the Bugle about whether we ould survive. But we did and now from what I gather just in talking to people who are still at the paper, things are looking pretty good. Collins: How you think you managed to survive and so many other papers disappeared?

Healy: I think the fact that we were a non-profit and that we had a loyal contributor base so most community newspapers are delivered free. It just shows up on your doorstep once a month or twice a month or once a week. And if its a for profit paper its solely dependent on advertising revenue. If its a non-profit paper it can also supplement its advertising revenue with contributions. And that kept the Bugle alive, I think. As I said, contributions stabilized. They didnt go up but they really didnt go down either. Without question the paper would have folded without that. Collins: Whats the history of the paper? When did it start and who were the people who started it? Healy: It started in 1974. It was started by five people from the neighborhood who thought itd be a good idea to have a neighborhood newspaper. They recruited somebody to be the editor. I dont think they paid her. It was in some respects a sister publication of an existing community newspaper called the Grand Gazette which was in the Grand Avenue neighborhood in St. Paul. And so they, the Grand Gazette took the Bugle on. And they used their office, some of their equipment. But it was called the Park Bugle for St. Anthony Park and it was just, at that time just delivered in St. Anthony Park. So it was a smaller paper and it was almost exclusively volunteer labor. So it was started by these five people and eventually they incorporated. But the first half a dozen issues of the Bugle or so were done under the auspices of the Grand Gazette. And then the Park Press Incorporated as a non-profit. That was in 1975. Collins: What was the content? Was it similar to what youd find today? Or was there a kind of counterculture element to it at the time? Healy: No, I think it was fairly similar. It was more localized because it was just St. Anthony Park so it didnt have as wide a readership, it didnt have to cover as wide an area. But the philosophy and focus were similar to what it is now. The Bugle showcases the people who live here, stories about your neighbors, stories about, if you have stories about businesses, its the places you walk to, its the library that you walk to. I think thats been pretty consistent from the beginning. Collins: St. Paul had a lot of immigration in the 90s and the 2000s. How did your paper cover issues around that? Healy: It didnt affect us too much. It continued to be a fairly homogenous neighborhood, racially. Were located very close to the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota, and theres a fairly large housing entity owned by the University called Commonewealth Terrace, which is located at the coroner of Como and Raymond Avenue. And that housing is exclusively, I believe, for families of international students. But their presence in the neighborhood flavors things a little bit, but theyre students, so theyre temporary. But the racial and

ethnic composition of the neighborhoods that the Bugle serves is still predominantly white. So the kinds of changes that have gone on in Minneapolis and St. Paul especially east side of St. Paul, didnt really affect us very much. Collins: Over the years are there any stories that you can think back on very quickly and see that they had some sort of impact or see that they met the purpose of what you think community journalism should be doing? D: Yeah I think so. A couple years ago, theres a Burlington Northern railroad track that runs just south of my house, a half a block. Burlington Northern rebuilt the bridge that goes over Raymond Avenue. And they did it in a very perverse counterintuitive way that involved blocking off Raymond for a whole summer so that they could build this bridge in the middle of the street and then eventually when it was done lift it up into place. No one adequately explained why they did it that way. They got the necessary permits form the city. It caused enormous disruptions in the neighborhood. They were also doing work; MnDot was doing work on Highway 280 that summer. There was also work going on on Como Avenue that summer. Logistically it was a horrendous summer. And we did a number of stories on those projects that I think helped explain things to people and helped, also gave people just the, there were some letters to the editor in the paper growing out of that. So people got to vent a little bit. It didnt make it any easier to get around the neighborhood but I felt that we performed a valuable service by explaining what was going on to people. Another story that sticks out, not so much because of its news value but it was a feature story that one of, during the first year that I was editor, I decided to do a story about fences. It struck me in driving, biking, walking around the neighborhood that some people had some interesting and unusual fences. So I wrote one of the stories and I assigned three other people. First of all I just drove around and picked out four fences that I wanted to write about. And then I found people who were interested in doing these stories, and we would just go up and knock on the door and say, couldnt help but notice your fence. Tell me about it. So we wrote a collection of feature stories about fences in the neighborhood and then I wrote an editorial in that issue about fences. And it enabled me anyway, I hope readers also, to reflect on the Psychodynamics, the sociodynamics of fences and how do fences work in neighborhoods, what messages do they send? There was one guy who built, these were all fences that people built themselves and designed themselves and were very thoughtful, deliberate, planful about. And one guy built a fence that had slats. It was a wooden fence but it had a 2x6 that ran the length of the fence, flat. And he said, I built my fence at a height and width, a 2x6 running the length of it so it was ideal to lean on and to set a coffee cup on. So he said, I know that a fence is a barrier and it walls people out. He lived on a corner lot and he felt like he wanted a fence, but he didnt want to shut people out. And so he made his fence so that you could lean on it and talk over it and put a coffee cup on it. So that story became more than just a story about fences, that collection of stories and the editorial that I wrote about it became a way I think, I hope for people to

reflect on what it means to be a neighbor. How do you live next to somebody? So anyway, thats another story that sticks out. Collins: I always think that those houses where you got one fence on one side and another piece of old fence on another side and you can almost see the history of the people moving in and putting those up. Healy: I loved all these stories but one of the stories was about a house in Lauderdale, which I had noticed going by there. Its a very old looking fence. And it turned out it was a hundred years old. It was a fence that was constructed on a farm in Wisconsin and then at one point dismantled and transported here and reassembled. So it was a fence with a sense of history. So yeah, theres a lot of interesting things that happen with fences. You see sometimes in the suburbs a housing development goes up, theres no fences. One place puts in a fence so then the neighbor puts in a fence and then that neighbor puts in a fence, and pretty soon everybodys got a fence. Collins: What led you to kind of take the leave of the Bugle, after ten years? Healy: Couple things. The non-editing part of the job had gotten to be a bit burdensome. I felt a bit burned out going to meetings. And I also really believed that the paper would benefit from a fresh perspective. I think Im glad I stayed there for ten years. I think that paper benefited from that continuity and stability. But I also think papers and institutions of all kind benefit from infusions of new blood and different perspectives. And I felt like I was ready for the Bugle to have that. Its somebody elses turn. Somebody who does thing differently, who looks at things differently, has different ideas. Collins: Whats it like to read it now? Healy: Its hard for me to read anything without my editor or proofreader hat. I remember one time years ago talking with a minister. And he said I sometimes envy my parishioners because they can open the bible and just read it. And he said I try to do that, but I cant. I cant read the bible without thinking about how would I preach about this text? And I feel that way all the time as a reader. Im an avid reader; Im a former teacher of literature. So Im an avid reader of all kinds of stuff, fiction, non-fiction, and journalism. Its hard for me; its impossible for me to turn off, to blind the editors eye. And I chafe at that with a lot of things I read. So there was some of that intensified with the Bugle. So it was hard not to be nitpicky. To notice stuff. Well I would have never let that get by. I try not to do that. But I couldnt help it. Collins: Do you ever get the itch to write a story for them again? Healy: Not really. The current editor is somebody that I knew. She had written for me as current editor. So like me, she was promoted from within. So I know her,

like her, respect her. And shes invited me to write and Ive said, well, maybe someday but She invited, she took over last August. It had been exactly ten years since I took older. So her first issue she job shadowed me like I was supposed to ten years previously for the August issue, and then she took over for the September issue. So her first issue she invited people to write in with State Fair memories. And she didnt get much of a response I fear. And I anticipated that she might not because I hadnt had a lot of luck with similar invitations. So I thought Im going to write something for Crystal so shell at least have one thing. So I did I wrote a state fair memory and she posted it. So it was fun to do that, it was fun to just be a neighborhood guy responding to an invitation from the paper. But thats all Ive done and probably wont do anything else for at least a wile. My wifes father was a minister. And after he resigned from the pulpit ministry and he became a Chaplin. He worked at a retirement home, but for the first year and half or so after he left that church as minister he stayed on. He lived in the same town. Eventually they moved but he lived in that town for about a year and a half or so and they kept going to that church. So now theyve got a new pastor. The old pastors sitting there in the first row. I dont think that was a good idea. I do not think that was a good idea. And I dont want to do that. I want to be out of the picture for the most part, at least for a while. Collins: Well I want to thank you so much for talking to me. Healy: Well thanks for letting me rattle on. Collins: Is there anything else that you want to share? Healy: I dont think so. I got to say, I didnt anticipate a lot of what I was going to say, but I got to say I think what I would have wanted to say. I really do believe in community newspapers and their value and I was proud and privileged to be part of one for ten years. Collins: Well thank you very much again.