As you can see from the article and photos above, I recently had the honor of meeting a man whose contribution to the world of newspapers and journalism is widely recognized not only in his home state of Tennessee but far beyond. Walter’s story is, thankfully, well-documented—a quick internet search will return several nice articles about him (for example, here)—so I won’t take up space re-writing it. I just wanted to share this article here as I think it’s a great image of our newspaper future learning from our newspaper past, and vice versa. I loved listening to Walter’s stories about his reporting assignments during World War II (he interviewed Tito in Yugoslavia!), his time at the Washington Post, and his ownership of the Harriman Record. The visit also gave me a chance to tell Walter a little about the newspaper digitization project.
Thanks to Greg Sherrill (TPA Executive Director and TNDP Advisory Board member) for arranging this visit.