One man’s opinion
“The best journalism job
in Maine”
Adjunct faculty member Bill Nemitz is a regular
columnist for the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram.
A past president of the Maine Press Association, he’s been teaching at Saint Joseph’s
since 1993.
While his peers stop short of opinion, that’s where
Bill Nemitz begins. Adjunct faculty member and columnist for Maine’s
largest newspaper, he recently incited more than
200 online comments when he accused readers who spew anonymous nasty
comments of not having the guts to sign
their names.
“That captured my role, which is to be provocative, get people talking
and reacting,” he says. “You don’t write a
column hoping everyone will agree with you,” he adds.
As online journalism explodes, he readily hears from people who
have opinions about his opinion. Readers used to write him letters
(he kept them all), then they switched to e-mails, and now they
post reader comments.
Considering that his
first newspaper job in 1977 issued scissors, a glue stick and a manual
Underwood typewriter, the era of citizen journalism, blogs and new
media constitutes a major transition for him. “Part of me wants
to keep up with
it and part of me wants to crawl in a hole,” he admits.
The
whole concept of journalist is rapidly changing, according to Nemitz,
as reporters must consider how recorded sound and visuals enhance
stories published on the Web. The Press Herald recently hired its
first full-time online reporter, who will carry a reporter’s
notebook and a video camera.
“I’m absolutely stunned by
the changes in the last 10 years,” he
says.
In the meantime, writing a column three times a week for the
Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram hasn’t changed
dramatically. Still, he’s come a long
way from that first job at the Waterville Morning Sentinel, where
he was a reporter for six years before moving to the Portland Evening
Express for two years. After that, he spent 10 years as city editor
and then sports editor at the Press Herald. When he started as a
columnist, he feared his writing muse might somehow seize up on deadline,
but now, “something always comes out.”
Even after all
these years, he claims writing is an unpredictable process. Sometimes
it takes 45 minutes to compose his column, but other times much,
much longer. Before he begins to write even one word, he gathers
the facts. Roughly two-thirds of the time spent on each column is
story development and reporting; just one-third is writing and editing.
He
describes a love/hate relationship with story ideas. “Sometimes
they jump out at you and other times I can be at my wit’s end,” he
says.
Looking back, he realizes the memorable ones come from
a “state of controlled panic.” Last July, as he searched
for a column idea, he saw a photo of President Bush getting off of
the plane for a visit to Kennebunkport, Maine. “He looked awful,
he looked stressed ... it was in the middle of all the
Gonzalez stuff … and the idea came that I should write a
letter to him suggesting that he quit.”
The story generated a huge reaction (again those reader comments).
His
ideas often come from the news landscape, where his
thirst for stories in weeklies, dailies and blogs is insatiable. “I
look for a certain angle that hasn’t been developed, or I notice
if I’m
having a strong reaction to the story.” When he is relaxed, doing something
mindless like mowing the lawn, ideas tend to surface more easily. Questions,
or something someone said, flow to the top, and he’s got his story hook.
He writes it down on a scrap of paper and throws it into his worn briefcase.
“When
I started I had a whiteboard filled with story ideas that I would
cross out as I did them,” he says laughing. “Now I’m
not that organized.”
Readers send in ideas, as well. When several
suggested he write about an extra-friendly flagman at a highway project,
that did lead to an actual column. Though he can’t
respond to all reader suggestions, he replies to most because it’s
worth it. Even if their current idea won’t work, they might
mention something else that peaks his interest.
Nemitz loves talking
to people. In fact, it is the most enjoyable part of what he does.
After
12 years and 1,500 columns, it’s not uncommon that the
subject of his column has a niece or uncle or sister that he wrote
about earlier. “Maine
is a small state… Maine is a community,” he says.
A graduate of Catholic schools, Nemitz grew up in Needham, Mass.,
and graduated from the University of Massachusetts, where he had
a “seas-parting experience” after
wandering into a journalism class. “All of a sudden I was completely
engaged. I always liked to write and when I wrote to my grandmother
to thank her for the birthday money, I always included details of
my life and wrote four pages. ‘This
one’s going to be a writer,’ she would say.”
Nemitz
is more than a columnist. In fact, his most profound experience as
a journalist has been reporting from Iraq. While he was there in
2004, a dining hall where he had just eaten lunch was blown up. Two
Maine soldiers and 20 others were killed. “You
don’t walk away from that unchanged,” says Nemitz, who
has gone to Iraq three times. In 2004, he and photographer Gregory
Rec, were named Co-Journalists of the Year by the Maine Press Association
for their work there. This fall, he received a Distinguished Service
Award from the New England Press Association.
He sought out the Iraq
assignment because he didn’t want the experience
of Maine soldiers to disappear for 12 months. “Had we, as Maine’s
largest news-gathering organization, not gone over to tell their
story, it would have gone untold,” he states. The trips also
allowed him to serve as a direct connection between the soldiers
and their families, friends and communities back in Maine.
Nemitz
also went to New York City after Sept. 11, New Orleans after Hurricane
Katrina and Ireland after the Good Friday accords. Only the Ireland
trip was the newspaper’s idea; the other assignments he proposed
himself.
In his role as columnist, he says, “I enjoy what I
do the most when I can find a good, old-fashioned narrative.” After
that, he wrestles with how to maintain the thread of the story – and
keep the tension or drama – without
going over 600 words. Where to start and what to leave out are often
key decisions.
Although he used to “soak up a story like a
sponge and then squeeze it out,” he’s learned to be ruthless
with side topics. “In storytelling,
you digress at your own risk,” he says.
One reason Nemitz loves
to teach writing at Saint Joseph’s
is that it’s
so different from what he does on a daily basis. “The columnist
leads a lonely life,” he says. “The class is so collaborative … you
get to talk about writing, and it’s fun to watch them evolve.” He
says it’s also a great feeling when he runs across one of his
former students in a professional context.
Nemitz says he will always
have the desire to get close to big stories, like Iraq, and won’t
rule out going back there. He also thinks about writing a book in
the future. But, for now, he’ll concentrate on writing his
column. “I
wouldn’t trade this for anything,” he says. “I
get to go see the world unfold .…
I feel blessed.”
• www.pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/nemitz
