Upper House continues the series of conversations with local leaders whose faith plays an important role in their lives, today featuring John Smalley, the Editor of the Wisconsin State Journal (WSJ). John is also currently chairman of the elder board at Blackhawk Church, one of the largest congregations in the city.
“I think there are a lot of parallels between religious faith and journalism although they are not always apparent,” Smalley told interviewer Phil Haslanger. “What we do as journalists is not the opposite of faith, such as giving a voice to the voiceless.”
Haslanger has also straddled the worlds of faith and journalism. After retiring as Managing Editor of the Capital Times, he served as pastor of Memorial UCC Church in Fitchburg until recently retiring. Thus, his questions sharply probed the challenges and opportunities that come from a person of faith plying the trade of journalism.
Haslanger noted, for instance, the WSJ’s recent “amazing series” on homelessness. Smalley authorized devoting the resources for the series. At the same time his desire to have the WSJ do a better job covering the religion stories in the community is hampered by tighter budgets and staff cutbacks.
“The toughest part of my career as editor has been decisions on staff cuts,” he said, noting that the month after he started his WSJ job in December 2008 he had to authorize large scale lay-offs. “I got my dream job at the worst possible time but I try to treat people as I would like to be treated in those situations.”
Critics who send him nasty emails are likely to get the same treatment. Resisting the temptation to respond in kind, he’ll often call them on the phone instead. “It usually ends up being a positive call,” he said.
Smalley admitted that there were several issues that that were newsworthy at Blackhawk Church that might deserve WSJ news coverage but said it was hard to advocate for something he was involved in. He also admitted that he didn’t like having to make decisions that cause harm to people, such as an elderly woman who asked him to take her name off of the police blotter because she had been arrested for shoplifting, or people who don’t want their photo in the newspaper.
“What we do affects people,” he said, telling a story he wrote early in his career about the struggles of a high school sports team manager. Several months later he received a moving letter from the boy’s mother telling about the positive impact that the story had.
Smalley was raised in a nominally Catholic family in Evansville and in college, he said, he “began to understand what it is to become a Christ follower,” in part through the influence of friends involved with the Campus Crusade ministry. He stumbled into journalism as a UW-LaCrosse sophomore when he was hired to work part-time on the sports desk of the LaCrosse Tribune.
He met his wife on a blind date during his first fulltime reporting job in Mason City, Iowa, and they discovered they were going to the same church. He moved back and forth between Mason City and LaCrosse several times as his journalism career moved from sports into editing. He also served on the elder board of several other churches. He joined the elder board of Blackhawk Church four years ago and said he enjoys the fellowship of a “wonderful group of men. I don’t think there’s anything better.”
Three years ago he had a heart attack. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, words that he had recently memorized from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans came to him, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer…Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another.” The worlds of faith and journalism are not that far apart.