One Last Rant

LAST RODEO

I was definitely going to retire this year. No one should be surprised by that because I said after this year’s rodeo that, ‘it wasn’t my first rodeo, but by God it was going to be my last'.”

Robin Delaney, 30 year Managing Editor, Daily Democrat

READER HABITS

The people who still want a paper in their hands will be gone within 10 years and local news will be completely online, but until then the industry will follow reader habits, which isn’t reading the paper after dinner.”

FORT MADISON – She’s been the main thread in the fabric of local news for more than four decades.
Friday that fabric becomes a throw around the shoulders of Robin Delaney, the Daily Democrat’s one and only female editor. Delaney has been the editor since 1995 with the last two as managing editor of Community Media Group’s southeast Iowa cluster which includes The Hawk-Eye in Burlington, the Daily Democrat, and the Keokuk Daily Gate City.
Delaney announced her retirement to the company last month and to the public last week.
The community will say good-bye to Delaney with a reception at the Daily Democrat on Thursday from 1 to 4 p.m., with an ‘after-party’ hosted by Robin and her husband Mike at the Elks in downtown Fort Madison beginning at 5 p.m.
Delaney’s locally-known charm and wit is showcased in her straightforward approach to not just the news of Fort Madison, but also the local conversations around the news. In that same personality, when asked why she’s leaving after 40 years of covering news in Lee County, she simply deadpanned.
“Well… because I can.”
She said the recent acquisition of The Hawk-Eye has made the job more demanding, but she’s just ready to step away.
“It’s been a real difference the last two years and three months of doing the two papers. It’s like being on a hamster wheel and you have a jackhammer going behind you… all the time,” she said.
“I was definitely going to retire this year. No one should be surprised by that because I said after this year’s rodeo that, ‘it wasn’t my first rodeo, but by God it was going to be my last'.”
She credits Mike with helping her finally step off the stage. More of a push, actually.
“My husband gets the credit. He saw after my usual vacation between Christmas and New Years this time, I just didn’t really want to go back. It took everything I had. That’s usually the shot in the arm I need, then I’m ready. This time it wasn’t there, so he got all the (retirement) documents together and New Years Day I met him at the Elks after I got done at work,” she said.
“He said you’re either gonna be really pissed at me, or really happy with me, because I signed you up and pushed send. And I just felt like this weight came off of me. I wasn’t mad at all. He knew I was just done.”
The industry has changed and, more importantly, readers have changed in that they want snippets and they want it fast. Readers have the attention span of a gnat. And they won’t read 80 inches of anything, Delaney said.
“People don’t read the paper as carefully as they used to either, except the inmates. They read every word three times. And you used to be call up people. You didn’t have the Internet and people had land lines.
Delaney said she believes more and more news will end up online.
“The people who still want a paper in their hands will be gone within 10 years and local news will be completely online, but until then the industry will follow reader habits, which isn’t reading the paper after dinner."
The respect for newspaper reporters and editors has also waned, she said.
“There was just more respect in the 70s. Sixty-two people answered the same ad I did for a reporter's job in 1982 and they interviewed five. Everyone wanted to be a reporter. It was right after Watergate. They were God,” she said.
“Now I’m lucky if I get two applicants, and nobody wants to be us.”
Delaney graduated from Iowa State in July of 1982 and answered a help wanted ad in the Des Moines Register for a feature writer/staff writer in Fort Madison. Dave Lewis was the publisher at the time. She got the job out of the 62 candidates and was a staff reporter until 1986 when she and Mike opened Shamrock Toys that “failed miserably”.
Following that, she opened an in-home day care and was writing a regular column “Looking in the Mirror” for the Democrat -  a first-person look at a twenty-something just starting a family and a career.
In 1992, a writer at the Democrat abruptly quit and then-publisher Wayne Hemstreet approached Delaney about rejoining the paper. A year later in 1993 she became the city editor and then, in February of 1995, she was named the company’s first and only female managing editor.
Originally, Delaney had her sights set on magazine writing, but was sucked into journalism when working for the Oskaloosa Herald and the city started experiencing large lumber yard fires. While the town was distracted putting out the fires, another group was ransacking business. She said DCI investigators were all over the place and the adrenaline kicked in, fueling her fire for breaking news.
But she didn’t lose all the nuances of creativity and dabbled with several commentaries, including the Danger Zone and Robin’s Rants.
One column in particular was around the concept of a volunteer fire department.
“I had a lot of people tell me they liked my piece, but they hoped my house didn’t catch on fire,” she said.
The heyday of newspapers is over Delaney believes, but she’s been proud of the work she’s done giving Fort Madison its news one day at a time. And she was proud of the acquisition and movement of the past couple years with the acquisition of The Hawk-Eye, which was at one point one of the premiere papers in the state.
“We’ve doubled the circulation, however, it was pretty crappy when we got it, so there really was only one way to go,” she said.
“That’s the thing when you retire - you’ve got nothing to lose and you can say whatever you want, and what you’ve always wanted to.”
In her eyes, news has become stratified and consumed individually based on value systems and that’s frightening when it comes to reliability of source.
“People are getting confused about what news is. What someone says on Facebook is not news. But they take it somehow with the same credibility that you or I wrote it,” she said.
“I’m waiting for the law to catch up with social media. If I can’t say it in print, you can’t say it online without losing your house,” Delaney said.
She also spoke about the bias in news.
“Just me selecting what I find interesting or newsworthy as an editor is a bias. And there’s no getting around that. And when I put an opinion page together, I go to great lengths to put a Michael Reagan and Dick Pullman side by side, but by God people don’t see that. They only zero in on what pisses them off.”
Local news has to remain a mainstay in communities across the country because those people can get national news wherever your allegiances lie, she said.
“I feel strongly about local news. You can get the other stuff anywhere. The same places I do,” she said.
“I love going down to the Elks. They always have Fox on there, you just need to know how to stir the pot and then sit there and watch. It’s gotten pretty good.”
She said one of her husband’s pet peeves is her interactions outside the newsroom.
“His biggest peeve is when someone comes up when we're out and says, ‘I didn’t want to bother you at work, but you really need to write a story on…’,” she said.
“You didn’t want to bother me at work, so you bother me here about work?”
She said national cable news, aside from CBS, NBC, or ABC, are not news, but commentary with anchors relaying talking points set up by the ownership. And she said that happens on both sides of the political spectrum. Local news isn’t controlled behind the scenes as much as cable news is.
Delaney has been honored with multiple awards from the Iowa Press Association over the years for news coverage, columns, and sports. But her biggest source of pride is the First Amendment Award she and current Hawk-Eye staffer Tracey Lamm won for uncovering some local open meeting violations.
“That one got me a call from Bill (Brehm), Sr.,” she said. Brehm was the owner of the newspaper group at that time.
Delaney said the stories that stand out over the years are the Bentler murder story, the Larry Lane Morgan murder trial, and then her interviews with Mike Wallace of 60 minutes and her Joe Biden interview for the 2020 general election.
She said she has no trepidations about leaving the industry or the company.
“I can just wave good-bye, I think I left them in pretty good hands.”