Huckleberries: Getting canned: It’s all in the attitude

Jim Fisher had a classier newspaper firing than I did. On Wednesday, I told you about getting canned in 1982 as Duane Hagadone’s editor at the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont., which prompted Fisher to e-mail from the Lewiston Tribune, where he edits the opinion page. Jim and I landed at the Trib on the same day, Aug. 22, 1982. Jim reminded me that his trip to the Trib began in 1978 when North Idaho Press owner/mining magnate Harry Magnuson fired the entire staff of his Wallace newspaper: Editor Mike Green, the late Nancy Lee Hansen and Jim. Seems Harry didn’t like the “letter to our readers” that the trio had posted on the front page of the newspaper. All it did was reveal “how the North Idaho Press had treated some election candidates preferentially during the just-passed primary.” Jim mentioned to me how some of the fairness that the trio tried to inject into the election coverage was usually removed in Coeur d’Alene before it was printed by the Coeur d’Alene Press. On the day of their delightful conspiracy, however, Doug Clark, the Coeur d’Alene Press editor at the time and a Spokesman-Review columnist now, failed to see their open letter. Jim believes it was “intentional negligence.” Magnuson blew a gasket when he read the letter, fired his staff, and then successfully blocked the trio from getting unemployment bennies. Jim later edited Gary Corbeill’s Kellogg Evening News. Mike Green was his photographer. Tongue firmly cheeked, ex-Hecla Mining Co. prez Bill Griffith referred to the staff firing as the day Jim got “promoted.”