If Webb readers needed any confirmation that this particular writer is a true reading nerd, here it is: One highlight of my recent Southern vacation was the chance to peruse no less than seven different Florida newspapers.

These included dailies and weeklies from such places as Naples, Fort Myers and the Peace River region, along with the venerable Orlando Sentinel and an out-of-town staple to which I am shamelessly addicted—The New York Post.

(Yes, that and other Northeastern papers are readily available even at rural gas stations in the Sunshine State—perhaps reflecting a senior population that still likes to get its news the old-fashioned way; and I will add that if you want a Post in Central PA, you have to drive to Duncannon to find one—I’m not kidding.)

All of which is my way of confessing a lifelong fascination with newspapers. And I come by that honestly:

My father, Doug Smith, was a well-known Buffalo-area personality both in print and on TV; he boasted a journalistic career spanning nearly 70 years. And thus his son, finding an ineluctable glamor in deadlines, newsprint and clattering keyboards, always hoped to follow in his footsteps. Indeed, I majored in newspaper at Syracuse University—but even as far back as my 1982 graduation, jobs in that field were already perilously hard to find.

Based in Upstate New York, I interviewed at several Northeastern papers–including such PA mainstays as the Bloomsburg Press-Enterprise and the now-defunct Bethlehem Globe-Times.

But … no soap.

Instead, I worked briefly in publishing and then built a career teaching public school (more on this later). Not until 1997 did I finally fulfill my lifelong dream: On a whim, I phoned the Sun-Gazette’s estimable Lifestyles editor, Robin Van Auken, and offered her a film review—which she accepted sight unseen.

I then spent the next 25 years as S-G correspondent (or what my dad could have called a “stringer”) before that daily institution had to cut back to only onboard staff for all their pieces.

And then in 2022, Webb editor Steph Noviello changed my life by agreeing to run pretty much any reviews I sent in. A short time later, she changed it again by acceding to a weekly column on oddball vocab–the so-called “Weird Words,” which today reaches its 125th installment.

And then several weeks ago, she changed my life AGAIN by asking if I would serve as editor for one issue while she took a long-overdue (and much-deserved) vacation to support her husband in his aptly named “Infinitus” race. (I’m afraid to cite the actual length of this event, because trust me—it will look like a typo.)

Now this editor-for-a-week gig is not exactly what I’d aimed for during those heady twenty-something years in the 1980s. I don’t do layout (at least not since the cut-and-paste days of my high school newspaper); and I don’t pick and choose what runs & what doesn’t. It’s just a matter of proofing for grammar and such, plus copy editing for smoothness—and a little formatting before sending it on to more capable hands to lay out.

Yet somehow, my long intervening careers have prepared me pretty well for this task:

Having worked at the copy-editing desk for Syracuse University’s Daily Orange, I thereafter landed a similar full-time job at Simon & Schuster in New York City. At the end of that five-year stint, I hammered out a master’s in literature from NYU and then moved on to 30-plus years teaching high school English. During those hard-working decades in New Jersey and then Central PA, I read—and marked up—something like 30,000 student essays.

I also developed a fondness for dictionaries—of which I now own nearly 100—and became a nonstop reader, notching around 100 books a year. I’ve taken classes at six colleges and written roughly 2000 articles for internet and newspaper.

For me, layout and assignments might be a challenge; but editing for good English … that I can do.
 And I did it—though the pieces I worked on didn’t need much fixing. We have a great bunch of writers here at Webb.

Still, for all the fun this was, I might not be ready for the big time just yet. As it happened, I wound up launching my brief gig with a bone-headed clerical and emailing error—strictly my own!—that confused several recipients. Though we got it worked out, this was not exactly an auspicious start for Editor Joe.

Let’s hope it doesn’t discourage Steph from more vacations in the future.

Every fledgling wants a second shot.