Little Papers Are Journalism Too

About the Book

There has been a world of change in journalism in the last fifty or so years. This is the story of a small-town reporter and editor’s journey through the changes, as papers switched from Linotype machines to a succession of computerized methods and went from family owned to conglomerate controlled. It’s also a close-up look at a small Virginia town and surrounding counties that had more than their share of murders, community upheavals, scandals, and brushes with the rich and famous, and even the notorious. It’s not only a memoir but also local, state, and national history as seen by someone who struggled to understand it and get it right so that readers would also get it right. Included is some admittedly righteous indignation about current attacks on the profession.

About the Author

Kathleen Hoffman was born in Charlottesville, Va., in 1943, more or less literally in the shadow of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and has discovered as she gets older that nothing is as disturbing to her as threats to the creation of the founding fathers. She considers a free press as essential to the continuance of that vision, and even though she resents that there was no one in a position in 1776 to be a founding mother she thinks women can now make up for that. Outwardly, she is the kind of little old lady that people call “Sweetie” in fast food restaurants and think of their grandmothers when they help her load stuff in the car. She is willing to accept all that because while Sweetie is an issue, she overlooks it because we are all in this together and we have to look after each other and our nation. She and her husband live in Madison County, Va., with a large dog named Hobbes. They have a grown daughter.