What makes news, and what shouldn't

The world is changing all the time, thank goodness. In American society the last half-century has produced countless gains for the better, like accepting the fact that women are equal to their male counterparts, even to the point that women in the military can serve in combat roles.

Personally, I would be reluctant to ask a woman to put her life on the line while wearing 70 pounds of gear and carrying a rifle. But some women want to do this, for their country, for their family, for their comrades in arms. And for me. And you.

Despite our acceptance over the years of situations and conditions we once thought were inappropriate or taboo, there are still glimmers of the past poking through the tangle of modern-day journalism.

Take, for example, the reporting of Gov. Eric Greitens' inauguration on Monday.

The stories I'm referring to were produced by the Associated Press, the world's largest newsgathering organization and a source of information that has been amply and deservedly rewarded for its excellence in both words and photos.

With the advent of the Internet, news organizations have had to adapt. Static websites are a bane, and so the AP as well as many others have started covering events that last a long time with the use of running blogs.

At 12:15 a.m. Monday morning, The AP began its running blog on Greitens' inauguration schedule, simply reporting the fact that the ceremonial hoopla was to take place later in the day and that an inaugural ball would feature, of course, the first dance to the tune of "The Missouri Waltz."

And this: Greitens is the first Jewish governor of Missouri.

I'm a pretty careful consumer of news, seeing as how I've been in the business for more than half a century, yet I was surprised to be told that our new governor is Jewish. I was surprised for two reasons.

First, I was being told of his religious value system the day of the inauguration, not having recalled being told this before.

Second, I couldn't understand why the AP considered this information newsworthy.

We weren't told, by any newsgatherer I'm aware of, the religious leanings of the lieutenant governor or secretary of state. Goodness knows how many Baptists have held statewide office. We haven't been told.

Here's what I'm getting at. We have, since the 1960s, evolved in our national identity to the point that being the first anything -- woman, black, Jew, LGBT -- shouldn't make a whit of difference, thereby rendering such a fact totally un-newsworthy.

I remember in the 1970s, while editor of the newspaper in Nevada, Missouri, that the city hired, for the first time, a woman to be a firefighter. Hirings by the fire department were seldom major news events, but this was played on the front page. I remember, too, thinking that women's lib, all the rage at the time, would have fully accomplished its advance toward gender equality when the hiring of the first woman for anything, including rocket scientist, would not be news at all.

In the 1980s I hired a woman, a recent journalism graduate of Drake University, to be a reporter for the newspaper in Maryville, Missouri. Laura was black. As far as I know, she was the first black reporter ever hired by that newspaper. Maryville was, except for some students at Northwest Missouri State University, nearly lily white. I could count the entire population of townspeople of color on one finger.

Maryville once had a thriving black community with churches, civic organizations and schools. That ended in 1931 when a white schoolteacher was murdered, and a black man -- he would have been called feebleminded at the time -- was grabbed by a mob and chained to the roof of the schoolhouse, which was set ablaze.

Within weeks the entire black population of Maryville left. And that's the way the racial mix stayed until the university admitted its first black, a football player, several decades later.

Which was big, big, big news.

After hiring Laura, the black reporter, I was besieged by other editors and journalism organizations. They all wanted to know what it was like to have a black reporter in such a white environment.

I told them all the same thing: Laura was hired because of her training and credentials, not because she was black. They didn't listen.

Laura and I were invited to be on a panel for a newspaper seminar. The purpose of the seminar was to encourage minority hiring. When it was my turn to speak, I pointed out that Laura was unique in the annals of Maryville's newspaper history. I told the seminar attendees that she was, as far as I could tell, the first Episcopalian ever hired to be a reporter. I knew this fact because Laura sat in the pew behind my family at St. Paul's, and she was thoroughly enough familiar with the Book of Common Prayer liturgy that she didn't even open the prayer book.

You know what? Being the first Episcopalian apparently isn't as noteworthy as being the first black. Or woman. Or Jew. Or LGBT.

In the print version of the AP's story about Greitens' inauguration, the fact that he is Jewish was mentioned in the fourth paragraph. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which published a 34-paragraph Page 1 story by one of its own reporters, didn't mention Greitens' religious affiliation. Nor that of any other Missouri officeholders.

We've come a long way in half a century. We still have a ways to go.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.