Don’t worry so much, I tell myself.  What they don’t know they won’t miss.

Still, I struggle with something I know that the kids I teach in English class don’t know.  Literary and grammar pursuits notwithstanding, there are days when I am frustrated with the plight of thoughtful journalism.  Translation:  I miss the paper.  I miss the  newspaper I once knew.

Over the weekend I was ruminating over the state of many forms of media in 2023.  There are some I just don’t recognize all that well anymore.  Listening to some of the bombastic comments on ESPN’s Gameday before the noon kickoffs of college football, I began wondering if Keith Jackson would have a seat at the table if he were alive today.  Unfortunately, I doubt it.  Sure doesn’t feel like it.

For me, though, it all goes back to the paper.  I have written about this before and it is still the greatest example of ‘what was’ for me.  In 1979, a sportswriter by the name of Jim Plump was covering the Holiday Bowl between Indiana and BYU.  This was no early kickoff in the eastern time zone.  My mother was working a 3 PM to 11 PM shift as an RN at Floyd Memorial Hospital in New Albany and then drove 23 miles home.  When she made it home that night, the Hoosiers were still playing.  Indiana won the game 38-37.  Plump was covering the game for The Columbus Republic.  His account of the game made it into the next morning’s paper front and center with a photo.

Today The Columbus Republic only prints on a bi-weekly schedule.  And they sure as heck would not fly a sportswriter to San Diego to cover a college football bowl game.

At the heart of my angst is knowing kids at North Harrison and their grandparents don’t get to see their names in stories and in box scores like the ones that used to run in Louisville’s Courier-Journal for every game played in Southern Indiana.

Your old Uncle Dan can remember two of those being printed.  The Courier-Journal was the morning paper and The Louisville Times was the afternoon paper.  I have articles from both with my name in both in old scrapbooks.

My thoughts about all this soon drifted to a great high school sportswriter I had the pleasure to sit next to in a few press boxes as he was writing about the football game and I was talking about it.  He was Dave Koerner, writing for the Courier-Journal.  I was calling the North Harrison football games on WKLO with my partner Gus Stephenson.  Each time I met up with Dave Koerner it was a pleasant experience.  We always had a chat.

Dave Koerner was a nice guy.  His writing was firm and flowing.  He took his craft serious.  Maybe there was one unpleasant experience between us.  Maybe, nothing.  There was and it was all my fault.  After a game in Corydon, when we had finished up the coach’s post-game interview and sign-off, I was playing kick the field goal with a empty plastic pop bottle and a trash can.  I did this as Dave was writing up his story.  He’d had enough of my noise.  “Would you please stop that?!”  It sounded more like a command than a question.  I begged forgiveness.

Before a Perry Central-North Harrison game in Ramsey, I made a comment that went something like.. “to the west there is a peach colored sky”.  He said he liked that.  He asked if he could borrow it.  He may have used it, had that sky not quickly turned into a thunderstorm delaying the game’s start and then a deluge of rain until the 4th quarter.  That was August 26, 2005.

More than a year earlier, at my behest, Dave was delighted to write a story about the Medora Lady Hornets Basketball Team winning their first-ever sectional game.  That was fun.  Dave told me he enjoyed that story.  For a guy who did more writing than talking, I was delighted that the Medora story meant something to him.  My dear friend Brad McCammon, the girls’ coach, appreciated Dave’s treatment too. I love the headline.

The ending is sad.  After more than 30 years of writing for the Courier-Journal, taking a buy-out of course, Dave Koerner settled down in Blue Ridge, Georgia and wrote locally there for The News Observer.  A little more than a year after I was sharing a press box with him, Dave Koerner died in that paper’s newsroom sitting at his desk.  He had a massive heart attack.  He was 57.  And just like the paper, Dave Koerner is missed.

Speaking the Rights.

Danny Johnson