In this, my final week at the E-T, it was good to hear from a faithful reader with whom I’ve communicated before. Rufus Gray, an Indianola native incarcerated in California who professes his innocence, wrote to say the San Diego District Attorney’s Office had agreed to take a second look at his case.
I was happy for the man known to many here as “Winky-G.” I’ve written about his case before (“Weighing evidence against Winky-G,” April 24, 2014), and it was good to hear about a positive development before I leave.
Those sorts of connections, developed over the years of reporting the news, are one of the things I’ll miss about Indianola and the Delta.
I’ve been given another opportunity within Emmerich Newspapers to be editor and publisher of The Columbian-Progress, a twice-weekly paper in Columbia. I’ve been working back and forth between here and there over the past month and am looking forward to getting settled in one place.
But it will be bittersweet to leave Indianola. I’ll always carry a deep affection for this community. Both my daughters were born here, and so many people have gone out of their way to welcome us.
Particularly, it’s always been amazing to me how the banking industry — especially Cindy Baird, Susan Wilson and staff at Community Bank and Randy Randall, Jimmy Clayton and crew at Planters Bank — go to lengths to help newcomers. I realize that’s part of their business, but it goes beyond that. They truly love Indianola and want to share that with others.
I’m also grateful to the E-T staff — Reporter Recardo Thomas, Bookkeeper Debbie Bethel, Advertising Manager Mary Howard Gary and Graphic Designer Feryn Atkinson, as well as the delivery staff, Cliff Watson and Howard Green — who have been model employees and have especially saved my life over the past couple of weeks as I’ve been out of town much of the time.
It’s difficult to leave a job you’ve poured your heart into for five years (I started here in September 2012). I’ve tried to make sure this community has a newspaper it can be proud of, that promotes the good its people are doing and shines a light on the bad so that we can learn how to do better. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, of course, but I hope my intent of helping the community be a better place has shone through.
What the public sees is what the editor does: the news we report. What’s not so obvious is the publisher’s role, which is, simply stated, to make money. It’s the same as the manager of any business: Don’t do that and you’ll find yourself in the unemployment line. In that regard, I’m grateful to our advertisers and readers for their strong support, which allows us to continue reporting the important things going on in this community. Indianola is fortunate to have so many strong, locally owned businesses, which I think are lacking more and more in Mississippi towns as corporate ownership of everything increases.
For those who have inquired, I am laying down the sword as the official poet of The Enterprise-Tocsin through my weekly crime haiku. Of course, if anyone else on the staff wishes to pick it up, I’d welcome that.
I don’t plan to write one immediately in Columbia either. That’s both because the police incident reports we publish there only include the dry particulars of the arrest, not the rich details like here in Indianola, and because I don’t want everyone in town to think right off the bat that the new publisher is some sort of weirdo poet. Let them come to that conclusion naturally on their own.
I wish the best of luck to my successor, Bryan Davis, and the Indianola community.
