John Finnegan: Former Executive Editor and Assistant Publisher of the St.

Paul Pioneer Press This interview was conducted at the Finnegans' home in St. Paul on March 28. Jon Collins: Thank you very much for making time to talk to me today, I appreciate it. You were suggested by the Minnesota Newspaper Association. John Finnegan: I understand Lisa Hills mentioned it. Collins: Why dont we start at the beginning, you can tell me a little bit about where you come from, what your pre-journalism life was like. Finnegan: I was born in Walker, Minnesota in 1924. My parents operated the Chase Hotel up there which had been built by my grandparents on the lake. So I grew up in Walker, actually I spent all of my summers up there and I went to school in Minneapolis with my brother and sister. I went to Central high school, actually St. Stephens Catholic grade school and then Central high school in the winter. And then in the summer time I went up and I worked in the hotel, up until I graduated from high school and then started my first job as a newspaperman at the Robbinsdale Post in 1943. I went over there; I had worked on the high school paper. I was co-editor of the Central High News in high school and we often went out to have our paper printed at the Rochester paper, or at the Robbinsdale paper, and so after I graduated in January of 43, I was hired out there as the editor of the paper. Everyone else had gone of course except one linotype operator and a pressman. So I was the editor and I sold ads and wrote stories and so on. But my first experience as a newspaper person, I put out my first newspaper in the seventh grade, so I was 12 years old, 13 years old when I put out myactually what I did was a Man on the Street for the Hindenburg disaster. That was my first big story I guess. I didnt know much about it except for what I had heard about it on the radio. So that was really my first experience as a journalist. Collins: What appealed to you about journalism? Finnegan: I liked to write. I wanted to write ever since I was young. I wanted to write and I put out an, I wrote a neighborhood newspaper on the typewriter. Had that mimeographed, although it wasnt mimeographed in those days. It was a gelatin covered. Collins: What was that like? Finnegan: Well it was about 11x14 gelatin and you press the, type over and pressed it down on that sheet and then that gave you the impression. Somewhat

like a cold type operation nowadays, but thats how you mimeographed things in those days. Pretty primitive in our time, now. Collins: Do you remember when you were growing up listening to the radio or reading the newspaper, do you remember what the impression of a journalist was? What was your thoughts about what they did? Finnegan: One of my first sort of heroes was Walter Litman, who was a columnist in the Star and Tribune. That appealed to me. My initial thought was I hoped I could become a foreign correspondent. That was the life that I looked at and thought, gee, that would be great to do that. But I think that, the whole idea, Life magazine, I remember Life magazine was playing a very important part in the wars that were going on, and trials and tribulations and the rise of Nazism and so on. So that appealed to me too from a recorder of history. So I got interested in photography at the same time. My brother and I would do some photography as we could using an old Kodak and framing up an enlarger to make prints and making prints in the bathtub and again, I really enjoyed that. It was really exciting for me to be able to that that. So I always have had an interest in journalism in that sense. So I never wanted to be anything else but a journalist. Collins: And the paper that you put out at Central, what sort of stuff did you cover? Finnegan: I covered a little bit of everything. My first story that I got printed, wand I was really excited about seeing my byline, you know, and that was a feature story ion a kid at the school who used to train falcons and so I think the headline on something on Flying to the Fist. That was my first byline feature. And I covered city hall and a sense of what had occurred relate to school and so forth. I remember interviewing Hubert Humphrey when he was mayor at that time. We covered a little bit of everything, of course then when I became an editor I did less reporter and more work on editing. We had a great editor there, an advisor, a guy by the name of John Mulligan who taught English and then was the advisor for the school paper but he was also copyeditor at the Star. So he was excellent. He was, I think he really began to help shape my writing and editing abilities. Collins: Thats a great influence to have at that age. Finnegan: Oh yeah, it really was. He was a great mentor. Collins: When you decided to, you took the job at Robbinsdale right out of high school then. Finnegan: Yeah, and I was only there three months before I was drafted. Collins: You were editor though too. How did that feel going from Central, from the high school and doing your paper there, to moving up to

Finnegan: I was a little nervous, I admit, but I knew the back shop there and I knew the editing process, so the real thing was beginning to get out in the community and beginning to learn the community. I had to push myself a little bit to do that because I hadnt really done much of that. In the familiar school setting it was a little different. But you had to get out and you had to meet the mayor and you meet the council people and businesspeople and that sort of thing. The only unfortunate about it was, well there were two things. One was I didnt have enough time to really get settled in, I was only there about three months before they called me up, but also when I was out there I was working in the back shop so I was doing a lot of printing and one day I had had some dental surgery, a tooth pulled, and so I went into work and they assigned me to do some job printing on one of the flatbed presses. So I was working on that and I was, thats where you have to get the synchronization with putting the paper down, they get printed, and pulling them out between beats, and unfortunately I got a little dizzy because of the heat in the back shop there and the fact hat I had been losing some blood and so on and I suddenly realized that I was about to get my hand caught in the press and I had the presence of mind at least to shove the press off press so that it pinched the hell out of my hand, my right hand, I still have marks on one of the nails. And it really swelled up and was pretty well bruised and battered and I had to go into the doctor and have that taken care of it was all bandaged up. The unfortunate part about all of that was not only the fact that I got injured but that I had a date. A blind date that night and it was to go bowling. And Im right handed and of course that stopped the bowling, so we ended up going to a movie. And tats where I first met my wife. Collins: So maybe it worked out well. Finnegan: It worked out well in the long-term. But that was an exciting time in my life. Collins: And Robinsdale, had most of the people who worked there before been drafted already? Finnegan: Oh yeah, they had been drafted. And we worked in what amounted to a chicken coop out there. It was not much more than that. It was long and narrow and kind of a Quonset hut type building. And when they were printing papers they had terrible time with static, particularly in the wintertime. And as the papers were coming off the press theyd always get stuck or theyd always get jammed up. They always had fans and heaters and fans going on the paper all the time. Nothing but real messes though, paper getting all jammed into the press. And they also had the same trouble with the folder. So you learned a great deal. Collins: Thats a pretty visceral sort of experience. These days, especially we do a lot of our journalism just on line. We dont have physical interaction with that much stuff.

Finnegan: Well in those days it was all hands-on. Collins: And messy. Finnegan: Oh sure, oh sure. Always at night Id be covered in ink on my hands that I hadnt been able to get off. But that was an exciting time. It just stimulated my interest in the whole business. Collins: Do you think the fact that we were on the, during this time, brink of World War Two, there were all these giant international issues happening. Do you think that that made it more appealing and exotic as a profession to you? Finnegan: Oh yeah, in a sense. As I indicated earlier one of my first interests was being a foreign correspondent. And of course with all this activity going on overseas, it just stimulated my interest further in journalism as a whole. So I got to be interested in the radio reporting that was going on. This is from London. Edward R. Murrow, the rest of them. Collins: When you were drafted, what were your thoughts about your career? Finnegan: At that point when I was drafted, my concern was what branch of service would I end up in? I went into the army, obviously. Then of course its, where in the army are you going to go? They sent me down to basic training and after the basic training, which was down in Fort Robinson in Arkansas. Then they decided that I should go into the medical corps. So I was going to be assigned to the medical corps and that was ok, but then a program called the ASTP, which was the Army Specialized Training Program. And that was designed to put you into engineering. They needed engineers. And so I signed up for that and I ended up going up to Rhode Island State College for ASTP training in engineering. And of course the interesting thing to me was that mathematics was not my strong suit. I had not a great deal of interest in it. But there, you were thrust into calculus and advanced algebra and of course everything was accelerated, all the courses were accelerated. So youd have calculus in about four weeks of calculus. Youd bend over to tie your shoe and you missed a whole quarter. But I managed to survive that. And I also decided that well; as long as Im here at the college Im going to put out a newspaper. So I put out a newspaper. We published a newspaper there. For the time I spent there and covered activities at the college and what the ASTP program was doing. So again, just sort of stimulated my interest in the whole thing. Collins: Sure, how did you pay for the newspaper? Finnegan: Well, the college did that. I didnt worry about that. They took care of financing. So I didnt have any problems with that one.

Collins: So you covered the program, and the school, and your colleagues. Finnegan: We also had a great English professor there. He was a great English professor who had been at Yale, but I guess he was bounced from Yale because he was a drunk. But he was still a good English professor. And I learned a lot from him. And again on writing and a need for clarity. They ended that program, and they decided that everybody in that program was going to go into the infantry. So ended up at the 78th infantry division, where they trained me to be a radio operator. And when we were assigned to overseas, I had to learn this radio training not only the use of handheld radios and so on but also in Morse code. And when I got overseas they put me in as a wireman for the battalion headquarters. I never saw a radio after that. I saw a switchboard. But I never saw a radio. Collins: And after that, were you involved in journalism at all, more during the war? Finnegan: After the =fighting stopped and Germany had surrendered, we went into a holding position of course and so I started a battalion newspaper. And I put out about five or six issues and finally the regimental commander called me into the office and he said, Finnegan why are you putting out a battalion newspaper? Weve got a regimental newspaper. I said, yes I know you have. He said, well why arent you writing for them? And I said, the editor and the editor and I dont agree on things, and I think hes an idiot. So he said, well I see. But he had decided he wanted to have a regimental history done for the regiment and said would you like to do that, how about you doing that and stop publishing the battalion paper. I said, well yeah. I said if I can select my own staff people. So he said all right then. Thats what I did, select the people I needed. And we commandeered a house in Fulda, Germany. And proceeded to collect information on the regiment and its history in Europe during the battling. From the Battle of the Bulge and Remagen Bridgehead and all the rest of it. And I had selected an artist, so we had some artwork done in it, photography. And we published a regimental history. Collins: That was pretty extensive it sounds like. Finnegan: Oh yeah it was. Talking about whos going to pay for it, well the army paid for it of course. I also was responsible for getting the paper to print on. That was not easy. So I had hired one of the guys who was a well-known scrounger. And he went all over Germany looking for Germany and trading paper for gasoline and that sort of thing. We managed to get a really really good product. And it was a cloth-bound regimental history. Gold embossed cover. But they finally towards the end, just before I was sent home. Actually, before the final printing was done they sent a major down to oversee the project so about that point I lost my control to a degree. And it wasnt long since my father had died

just before I had been sent overseas. Running the hotel and my mother and my grandmother were the only two running it. So I had applied for a discharge on that grounds that I was needed at home and so it came through before the book was published. But they managed to get it out without me, finally, and I came home. Collins: Most of the sources that you used for the book, were they your colleagues? Finnegan: Oh yeah. We sent them all the way out back to where they started when we first came over from Warnmouth, England on the boat. Then we covered the Bivouac in Belgium and then on the way to the Hrtgen Forest and I sent people back all that way to get the information and then talk with various elements of the division that we were associated with. All the way through and the various battles that we had various casualties and so on. It was quite an extensive project. Collins: Then when you came home then did you work at the hotel? Finnegan: I came back, yeah, and I worked at the hotel. I got out in 45. Late 45, November 45. And I worked at the hotel until we sold it in middle of 46. Because neither my brother whose an attorney or myself wanted to be in the hotel business. He wanted to stay in law and of course I wanted to be a journalist. And my mother and grandmother couldnt handle the hotel anymore so we sold that property and moved down to Minneapolis where my mother bought a house and I stayed there until I went to the University to get my degree. Collins: On the GI bill? Finnegan: On the GI bill, yeah. Collins: And did they have a journalism department at that time. Finnegan: Oh yes, oh sure yeah, sure. Ralph Casey was the head of the school of journalism and they had a good, a great staff over there and a very good reputation nationally for journalism education. And I really had a good exposure there. And I went because I had been at the Rhode Island State; I managed to exchange a lot of credits. When I went in I went in as a freshman, and in two, three months I was a sophomore and by the summer I was a junior. So I got out in two years. Out of school. In two years. Going summer, taking a pretty heavy load. And that was where I first got my real exposure to First Amendment and freedom of information issues. J. Edgar Gerald was a prof there at the U and he taught those subjects. Constitutional law and so on. And I really got enthusiastic about that and about journalistic ethics. And I think that kind of framed, began to pull my idea of what I wanted to do in journalism together.

Collins: Youd been doing journalism in different ways for a number of years before that. How did the official training, the official classes change what you thought you should do? Finnegan: Well first of all I think it showed me the need to develop research. And to collect information very carefully and to present it in a balanced way. Those are the things that I had a basic sense of earlier, but that really really kind of channeled my information ability and so I think that really was probably one of the greatest benefits that I got out of the college education. In addition to learning more about that world. Not only about the profession but about the world. And how rhetorically you can express yourself and how you can be meaningful to the reader. In those days most of us were interested readers, not broadcasters or listeners. And so it focused my attention much more clearly on being clarity and writing, using the right word at the right time, that sort of thing. That was a great benefit. Collins: Was the Minnesota Daily around at that time? Finnegan: Oh yeah, I worked at the Daily briefly. But since I had such a heavy workload, I was only at the Daily I think for about oh, four or five or six months. Something like that. I had so much else going on at that time that I didnt spend an awful lot of time there. But that was an interesting experience. And they were in a real tough little corner of the basement in Murphy Hall at the time. They didnt have much room. So you couldnt camp out there very much. Collins: And when you finished school, where did you go? Finnegan: Well I went down to, my first job was the Rochester Post Bulletin. I started that work there in oh, 48. In the fall of 48. And started out as a basic general assignment reporter. Collins: And how did you get that job? Finnegan: Well, through the journalism school. They had a placement. And so I went through that operation and Rochester was open and I liked the fact it was in Minnesota. And it was at the clinic, Mayo Clinic. I had known about the clinic for a long time. So I was very happy to go down there. 50 bucks a week. Collins: Were you married at this time? Finnegan: No, we didnt get married until I got the job. Until I got out of school. Norma and I had decided, actually she was insistent that we not get married before I went overseas. Then I came back and there was so much going on and decided I was not going to try to get married until after I got out of school and sort of settled down somewhere. So after I went down to Rochester, and we got

married in November 48. Just after Id started at the paper. So thats where we began our lives together. Collins: And Rochester, what was it like there in the newsroom? Finnegan: Oh, it was an interesting group of people down there. The publisher of the paper, the owner of the paper was an older guy who didnt know much about journalism in the sense that he wasnt brought up in that area at all, but he was a businessman. And I think the most important stuff he did for the paper was to write the weather every day. But he had a good managing editor at the paper and a good assistant managing editor. And then he had a lot of young people, many of whom Id gone to school with that were there and some others. One very, very brilliant guy was probably one of the smartest people that Id ever met. Who was on the staff and a fellow that I had worked with at the U. And he ended up as a PR guy with General Motors Cadillac division, down the line. A fellow by the name of Ozzy St. George, who was an author and who had published a couple books, actually a humorist. And a gal who Id known at J school and who I ended up at Pine River as a reporter up there. And shes still up in that area. So it was a very eclectic group of people and we got along well. They had one sports editor there was a fellow who liked his liquor probably a little too much, and he was the sports editor. And one day he came in and he was really hung over, terribly, and so one of the guys said Stu, he was kind of interesting, his name was Stu, said how can you write in your condition? And he looked down at the typewriter and he says, well, every time the son of a bitch comes around I hit the keys. He obviously was in heavy pain. But it was good. It taught me some things too. I was assigned to the, what amounted to the outstate beat there. Which meant the farm communities. And one time I was writing a story about a harvest and I had written that they were, what did I say again? I said that they were threshing corn. And the copyeditor came out from the back shop and he said, Finnegan, you dont thresh corn, you thresh wheat. It was that sort of, beginning to learn the real world out there again. I never forgot that. Also one of my major mistakes, I misidentified somebody in the story who had been a speaker at the Rotary club and I misidentified him and I gotten the information wrong, obviously. So that was my first major introduction to complaints about my accuracy. Collins: What did that feel like at the time? Finnegan: Oh, I was devastated that I had done that, and I told myself I will never do that again. My next major mistake was up at the Pioneer Press when I came up here. I was covering a panty raid over at the U campus, and I had identified the university official that got up on top of the car trying to bring order and called him the Director of the school of journalism when it wasnt the director of the school of journalism, it was the Dean of Students. And where I had gotten the information from was an AP reporter or photographer who had been on the scene. I had had to go back in and make my deadline so I depended on him for the information. He was the one that told me over the phone that it was the

director of the school of journalism. That taught me that you never use unverified information from a second source. Always get the information yourself or, failing that, have it verified if you get it from another source. And that was a good lesson. Very good lesson. I never made that mistake again either. Collins: In Rochester, its relatively big paper. How did the community kind of perceive you, or how did they, what was their relationship with the paper? Finnegan: The relationship with the paper was interesting because the Mayo Clinic always had, they had this policy of trying to keep patients who came to the clinic, keep them anonymous. Which was very difficult to do, because they would get movie stars. For example the Maharajah Baroda. And theyd take over the whole floor of the Kahler Hotel down there. And so it was very difficult but you had to keep pushing them to give you the information. And so I was assigned to the clinic finally. After my stint out in the hinterlands. And our relationship developed pretty well. I had a couple of good sources over there, developed a couple good sources. We developed a system with them, which I always called the Doomed Tot system. They were always getting children, particularly, sent to them as the last resort. Somebody who had had a brain tumor out east and they couldnt handle it or it was inoperable, or they thought it was, and theyd send them to the clinic as the last chance. The clinic then developed a system where they would run that student or that child through the whole process very quickly. They would get him in and out as fast as they could. Of course they didnt want publicity for it. But unfortunately for them people back home were using the publicity to get them to the clinic and the clinic was in a position where it couldnt refuse them because they were getting national publicity, this child was going to be sent to the clinic. And so they wanted to get them in and out as fast as possible. So I developed a relationship with them how to cover that stuff. And it worked out pretty well. And then of course I think I was fairly well respected in the community overall. The doctors Hench and Kendell who were the first Nobel Prize winners in Minnesota, for the development of cortisone. I covered that not quite exclusively, but almost because the clinics relationship with the paper was that the paper would get the information first. And at the time Vic Cohen who was the medical reporter for the Tribune thought he was the only person in Minnesota who should get the first treatment on any story out of the Mayo Clinic. The lady in effect said no, the local paper will get first crack and so forth. So Vic and I competed quite often on stories that came out of the clinic. Collins: Was it hard having the very influential presence of the clinic there? You know if they dont want something reported. Finnegan: It was pretty difficult. Once you could get to the right source, as you know, you can get a lot of information. And then if you got up to the official and then said, look I know this, this and this, what I really want to be is sure I get the full story. So you can get an in that way and they say well, ok. They relax their policies a little bit. I had begun to have trouble with the local police and city hall

people who were very reluctant to give out information. And that was my first real brush with the idea we had to get some kind of policies done on release of government information. Because people were sitting on stuff. The chief of police would sit on crime stories and so I began to figure out, gee, maybe what we need to do is get some state laws changed in this area because the law as it is now is not really encouraging public agencies to release information. Its actually kind of vague and its discouraging people. So thats where I first got really my basic interest in the whole First Amendment and freedom of information issues. Collins: And this was before the Data Practice Act. Finnegan: Oh yeah, much earlier. Collins: This was the early 50s then? Finnegan: Yeah. Well then I came up to the Pioneer Press in 1951. I spent three years in Rochester and I had applied for both the Strib and the Pioneer and Pioneer called me up first and I was two weeks on the city desk at the Pioneer when the Tribune called me and wanted me to come over and I said, well Im sorry Ive taken a job here. Maybe call me later. Collins: Were there any stories that really stand out to you from your time in Rochester? I know it was only three years. Finnegan: Well, the cortisone story was of primary importance. I did cover one story of a woman who managed to save her three kids in a flood down there by holding onto a fencepost. And actually got a Page One award for that. And then the other stuff incidental to that too, some of those things. But it really reflected the personalities that came to Rochester. Bernard Baruch, who was an internationally known financier, came. And I interviewed him. And I shot photos of him on the park bench with the Mayo Clinic in the background. That photograph went all around the country, all around the world, actually. And the Maharaja Baroda. I interviewed him and his Marani. And a few other people like that. So it was an exciting time in that regard, cause you had a lot of exposure to a lot of people, celebrities and so on. Collins: I heard a story about Rochester that probably wasnt when you were there. That Ernest Hemingway had shown up there at the Mayo Clinic one time. Do you remember that? Finnegan: Well I remember that he was there and they were trying to keep him under wraps. And it was shortly after that he left and he went west and then he shot himself. I didnt cover that, but I remember.

Collins: Were there ever times when you had to get information through nontraditional routes? Especially at Mayo Clinic, you would have to navigate around the people who would normally talk to you to get it? Finnegan: Well, Im trying to think of the, I did one interview, which was not really authorized, but it was with Doctor Spock. And he was the pediatrician who wrote the first books on child upbringing and so on. And I went to a Mayo Clinic celebration, an event, a dance. And I met him there. And I got my story that way. Not through official sources at all. Collins: Do you think that directly following World War Two, that there was hunger for more serious reporting to some degree? Because people had been in these, obviously big life and death international issues. Finnegan: I think there was an interest in it but I still think there was a constant interest in lighter things too. So you kind of had to balance your coverage with both kinds of news. For example, one time when Adlai Stevenson came through in the election and I heard he was going to make a stop. There was a kid in town, this is during the polio problem, and there was a kid in town who was in the Iron Lung. And he decided he was going to stop over there. And I found about that partly because I used to play bridge with this kid in the Iron Lung. Thats a kind of experience. So I was there when he came by to visit the fellow. It was that kind of stuff that was both serious on the one hand but also a little bit lighter. Collins: Sounds like a good story actually. Finnegan: Oh yeah, it was a good story. Collins: So when you were offered a job at the Pioneer Press, were you ready to leave Rochester and move on? Or did you want to come back here? Finnegan: Well, I always wanted to go to a bigger paper. And I preferred the Twin Cities; I was interested in the Twin Cities. And I guess I took the St. Paul offer because it was there. It was about the time I was interested in moving, and I just married and I just had a son and so I needed a little bit more cash to work with. And the offer came at a good time. And then of course, say when I got up here it wasnt long after the Tribune came after me. But I was interested in staying with the one that I first chose. I didnt think it was fair for me to suddenly pick up after two or three weeks and move across the river. Collins: You were making 50 bucks a week at the Rochester paper; do you remember what your starting wage was? Finnegan: I think I made a hundred and a quarter when I came in, so it was quite a raise.

Collins: Yeah, thats a pretty good raise. Finnegan: Yeah, its more than double. Collins: So you covered the city desk, you covered the city first. Finnegan: Yeah. Collins: What was that experience like and how was it different than Rochester? Finnegan: Well it was exciting because it was much more activity going on. And I was on the night desk so you were getting overnight news. You were getting the first shot at the news the next day. It was really good and we had a very active city desk there. And we had good breaking stories almost immediately. I remember within the first week we had a plane crash out at Minnehaha Parkway. A plane had crashed, a Northwest Airlines plane had crashed into a house up there and all kinds of people killed and so on. And then there was a, little bit later on; there was an explosion out at Minnesota Mining. 3M had a big explosion out there. So it was really that kind of activity in addition to the usual fatal accidents and Collins: What was the culture in the newsroom like? How did the newsroom at the Pioneer Press different from your experiences in Rochester? Finnegan: Oh it was much more, to use the phrase, metropolitan in a sense. There was a lot more activity, lot more people, and phones ringing all the time and typewriters clacking all the time and the teletypes going on in the front of the room. And then of course down below you had the printers working in the print shop. So it was just constant activity all the time. And you had to learn how to shut up the noise when you were writing. And you were writing for deadlines. Down in Rochester, we were an afternoon paper. You had all day to get ready for tomorrows paper. So the pressure wasnt on, so the deadline became really significant. So you had to speed up your activity. So if you were running it on a really good, thorough piece, you had to really concentrate on it, with all this going on. Collins: Were there older colleagues that kind of took you under their wing? Finnegan: Oh sure. Yeah, the city editor and the assistant city editor were older people. And a number of the reporters were older people, too. It essentially all men. I think there was one woman as a reporter when I came there on the general assignment desk. And then the copy desk was right there, so you had about six, eight people, and those were mostly older people. Collins: How did their style differ from you younger folks who came back from the war?

Finnegan: Well, several of these guys had bottles in the library and some of them would start out the evening sober and get steadily more drunk as the, not all of them, but one or two of them you know. But they were good. Drunk or sober, they were good. And the activity, there was a great deal of camaraderie. And a lot of smoking. You dont see that much anymore. The room was kind of blue half the time. And theyd crush out the cigarettes on the floor. It was a messy place, actually. It was interesting to me that people could really get things done in that interest. And what also struck me was the availability of the library and the amount of information and background material they had in that library. Although sometimes it wasnt all that accessible as you might hope. But it was the availability of research materials that we didnt have down in Rochester to any degree. Collins: So how would you use the library? If you were looking for a story or fact or something? Finnegan: Well if you had a story about a specific subject, and you knew there was some background so you could go back in the library and pull the clips on the event. Or the subject. And they had an extensive library of clippings in there readily accessible. But the access really depended upon the librarian. And I discovered on several occasions that he had his own method of setting out material. I was assigned for example to do a story that involved the old Highway 12 east of town. And when they made it into a freeway. So I went back there and I said, Id like to get some background information on Highway 12. And I said I couldnt find it in the files anywhere. Where would it be? And he said, well whos the contractor on the new highway. I said, well I really dont know offhand. Well thats where it was filed. And if you didnt know that, you wouldnt be able to find it. Another classic example of how things were filed in those days by this guy, was, lets see now, what was the infamous story I was going to do? One problem I have these days is forgetting incidents that happened a long time ago. Its a classic one too, so I gotta relate it. Oh. Yeah. Oh maybe itll come to me. Well come back to that. Collins: Are there any stories that stand out to you from the Pioneer Press? From your early years there? Finnegan: Well, I did a series of stories, a major series of stories on the development under the hospital act that was passed in the early 50s. And I went around the state, places like northern Minnesota, who had never built a hospital before then and was able to build hospitals. So I did a whole series on this and what the costs were and so on. And that was a major, major piece for me. And I think I got that assignment basically because I had been down in Rochester and had heard about the act and had some background in that regard. And so that was a major piece that I had done there. And then I was assigned to cover the legislature, which was fascinating and so in 53, 55, 57 I was one of the

legislative reporters every year. And that led of course to my getting involved in what I mentioned earlier, that I had wanted to take a look at laws relating to access to government information. And so working with Jack McKay who was the AP bureau chief at the time and working with Sigma Delta Chi, which was a journalism fraternity, to which I belonged, we decided to go and get an open meeting law passed. And we did. And we lobbied for it. Jack was very good in that regard. And then in 57 we put more teeth in it and then we start thinking about a reporter shield law. So I broke in early on all of that stuff to begin working on the whole idea of open access. Collins: How did legislators approach the Data Practice Act? Finnegan: Data Practice Act didnt come until 74. Well you had to argue quite a bit for it. There was a reluctance I think to open up government information because people were concerned about the privacy issues and things of that kind. But I mean to allow access to information on criminal justice information and that sort of stuff, it seemed to be obvious, that information should be out. Because even the suspect in those cases. If hes going to be jailed, people ought to know hes in jail. It should not be a secret incarcements for that sort of reason. So anyhow, it was a fight, but it wasnt too bad at that point. Back when we got to 74 and got to working on the Data Practices Act, that was an entirely different story. That was very difficult because computers were just coming into access and its kind of interesting on how I got involved in that. I had heard the government, the Department of Administration was looking at the exchange of information within government unites so that the tax department could exchange information with the health department and all the rest of that sort of thing. And so they had been assigned to develop a commission to study this issue, come up with a recommendation. So I called some people at the state and I said, you know, I think there ought to be a public member on that commission because it involves public information. And they said well, yeah, I guess thats right, I guess we should have. And so they appointed me, cause I raised the issue. So I was appointed with Don Gemberling who was the guy who was working with the department administration on those issues. And we sat down and we met and met and met and finally came up with the first Data Practice, actually it was called the Data Privacy Act at the time because it related to information exchange, not only between agencies, but with the public. Collins: Did you see the impact of these freedom of information initiatives in the newsroom after they were passed? Finnegan: Well, yeah I did, because your government reporters at city and county levels, and the state levels were suddenly able, without having to fight or to try to go around, sneak around, to get information. They had to loosen up. It wasnt always easy because, as you know, the act is vague enough in some areas so that government officials, if they are uncertain whether or not its public information youre asking for, will say no. And then if you are going to challenge

that you have to challenge that and then maybe go through the courts. Which is an expense that newspapers dont always want to accept. And thats still true today. Perhaps not as bad as it was initially, but it still is true, that theres a penalty for the government official not giving you information, but its also a bigger penalty if they give it wrongly. And so their choice is usually to stall and maybe to go to their attorneys and say do I have to do this or not do it. So it may take you more time to get some information that you should. But before you couldnt get any of it. Collins: Why were you so interested in these issues of information? Finnegan: Well, because I was a reporter and I wanted to have access and I figured if it was public information, if it was given to the public or for the public it ought to be available to the public. With some exceptions. I mean, I never did suggest that we go after income tax records, or that we go for health records of individuals, but I certainly thought that criminal justice information ought to be out in public. Activities of the government agency. In order to tell the public whether or not these people are actually performing their jobs properly. And thats essential. Somebody has to hold them accountable. Collins: Were there any public officials at this time who thought it was just intended to be able to get their private information? Finnegan: Oh sure. Some of them would never say that. It was obvious that that was one of their reasons. They didnt want you to have that information. The problem was that they were afraid that it would embarrass them if it came out that they had done x and y. so they didnt always want to happen. And those are the kinds of issues that prompted me and prompted a lot of reporters and newspapers around the state to say yeah; weve got to do something on this in order to get this access. Collins: After you covered the legislature, what did you cover? Finnegan: Well after I covered the legislature I ended up, they put me on the editorial board. I was an editorial writer. Actually what happened is, we had a strike at the St. Paul paper. And I was the president of the Newspaper Guild when we, and I took them out, I guess. And we went on strike. We had a sixweek, eight-week strike. And after that there was some shifting around of people. And they made me the editorial page. So I became an editorial writer. A job I held for about seven years. Collins: What inspired you to take that role in the Guild? Finnegan: Oh well, because Id started Guild activity down in Rochester. So I got interested in well being of our fellow reporters and editors. And so when I came up here they had a very strong Guild unit up here and so I joined the Guild, St.

Paul unit. And I worked on a couple of contracts with the Guild. And was on their bargaining committee and then I got pretty active in the Twin Cities Guild activity because I knew the executive director pretty well. And he and I got along pretty well and I guess we thought pretty much in the same way. We needed better salaries and we needed better security, pensions and time off and so forth. And then the executive director died. And so the Guild was left without any head. So they named two of us, one from St. Paul, one from Minneapolis to jointly operate the Guild until we could find a new director. And so we did and we hired a new director and then I ran for president. Collins: What led up to the strike and when was the strike? Finnegan: In 57, 58. Collins: What sort of issues led up to the strike? Finnegan: What happened was the mailers went out. They went on a strike. And we were still negotiating a contract. We didnt have a contract set. And so the Guild decided that, or the management decided that we had to worry about what the Guild did, the Guild will come along with us. We decided that no, we hadnt got our contract in yet and so well honor the picket lines of the mailers until the strike is settled. And then of course the management wouldnt settle our contract so then we struck. In sympathy and for our own uses. And at that point we put out a newspaper called the St. Paul Sentinel. We sold advertising and classified ads and we published that and by the time we were done we were in the black with that paper. We did a good job with it, it was a tabloid. Some people wanted us to continue it, as a matter of fact. I had heard, although I dont know this to be exactly a fact that Stan Hubbard had wanted to get involved in keeping the paper going. But I dont know if that is true or not. But anyway, we folded as part of our contract agreement, and I finally negotiated our contract agreement over in the St. Paul Hotel bar with a guy they brought in from up north. He was up, Gus Nordine, had been the business manager up on the Duluth Herald News Tribune. They brought him down and he and I ended up settling the contract. And afterwards I happened to meet with the publisher who is Dan Ridder at the time and he and I were talking and I said, Dan, I said, I always had the feeling I could have gotten another ten grand out of you. He said, you never know will you? I said, thats true, Ill never know. Shortly after he was removed as the publisher and Bernie Ridder Jr. took over as publisher of the Pioneer Press and Dispatch, and Dan went out to Long Beach. Collins: A lot of newspapers these days dont even have guild representation anymore. How do you think it changed, at least in your experience, newspapers and the career of journalism to have this guild representation at a lot of the big papers anyway?

Finnegan: I think what it did is encouraged more people to come into journalism because the salaries were better, increasing. At one point our goal in the guild was to have maybe $200 a week as the top salary. Well, heck its now 700 and something minimum. And then theres merit pay on top of that. So we fought for all those things so I think we improved the conditions and from the newspapers point of view, I think we improved the quality of the staff. Because when I became editor of the paper I could hire all kinds of good people from around the country because our salaries were comparable or better than most places. And they were. So we could really build a good staff, much better staff, over time because of the salary issues. Collins: Did the Sentinel have a different approach or tone when you were publishing than the Pioneer Press did? Finnegan: The St. Paul Sentinel? Well no I dont think so, I think we were pretty much the same. We had the same people with the exception of the top management. We had the president of the, I was president of the guild, but the publisher of the paper was Fred Newmeyer, who is a capitol reporter. And so our policies were pretty much static, the same. As a matter of fact we didnt have the total access that we would have had if we didnt have access to the automobiles and the photographs and so forth. We had to scrounge around and get our own stuff that way because we couldnt use the companies. But I dont think there were any major differences. Except we were sympathetic to the guild. Collins: Was the Pioneer Press publishing at the time or did they close up? Finnegan: No, they didnt publish. Collins: They didnt publish. So there was a lot of advertising around. Finnegan: Oh sure, thats why we could manage to do it. Collins: Were any of, that stand out to you, were there any of your colleagues that didnt want to be a part of it at all? Finnegan: Well there were a number that didnt want to walk the picket lines. They thought that was beneath them. No, I dont think there was anybody of any major consequence that refused to participate in any way. If they were going to get any salary at all, they had to work either on a picket line or on the paper. And the salary wasnt much, I think maybe 50 bucks a week or something like that which was maybe, tide you over for cigarettes and booze if you wanted. Most of them, I cant think of anybody who really didnt. Oh there were maybe one or two who left the paper, who went somewhere else who wanted to get another job while they were working.

Collins: A good time to leave maybe if thats what theyre thinking. So the editorial board, who did you like that and how was it different from your reporting jobs before that? Finnegan: Well, in that regard you didnt have as much time to spend on an editorial, as I would have liked in terms of spending time on research and so forth for the news story. Because we had the editor of the editorial page, we had three people, plus that, so we had only four people. And we had to write editorials for both the Dispatcher and the Pioneer Press. And usually we had three or maybe four editorials depending on the size a day for both papers. So that meant that you had to do maybe two or three editorials a day in order to keep up with whats going on. So you had to keep an eye on state government, you had to keep an eye on city and county government; you had to keep an eye on national issues. We had it broken up. Oh on the editorial page we also had an agricultural specialist who also wrote, but he was often doing maybe one or two a week on agricultural issue. But the rest of us had to turn out quite a bit of copy. And sometimes I always used to say I was sucking the thing out of my thumb in order to, you know. Maybe those were very light pieces that you had to do. Occasionally you could get some time to do a real major piece on university funding or something like that. I concentrated on medical and university and to a lesser extent on overseas issues. I did some stuff on the Vietnam War and things like that. But I never felt I had as much time as I really wanted to because of the demands on the production. Collins: I should have asked this before, but what sort of hours have you worked throughout your career, as far as how many hours a day? Finnegan: I always worked at least eight, I never worked less than that. Often ten or twelve. When I was on the Pioneer Press desk I worked from, lets see, two to midnight. Five days a week. And on the editorial page it was pretty much nine to five. Although there were times when youd end up, my wife always thought I was working ten, twelve hours all the time I guess. Cause there were times sometimes when you had a major development like the Kennedy assassination and things like that where you spent maybe 10, 12, 14 hours on it. But that wasnt regular. That wasnt regular. I never worked less than eight. Collins: Did you miss reporting and doing more straightforward news stories when you were on the editorial board? Finnegan: Oh well yeah. But I will say that the reporting and the fact that I had developed contacts over the years was really beneficial because I could then call on a contact in a specific area if I needed more information and so on. So I was really doing the same kind of thing, reporting, but putting the spin on it editorially. And I liked that. I enjoyed that, editorial. I thought that was one of the best jobs on the paper, was editorial writing.

Collins: Do you remember reactions that you got from people that stood out? Finnegan: Oh yeah, I always had some complaints from the railroad people because I was opposing some of their stuff in the legislature. I would get, when the university was planning on developing the West Bank, in addition to the East Bank with the bridge in between, I always called that the dumbbell campus because you had the two major functions. And they didnt like that. They didnt like that at all. It probably wasnt justified, but I though it was a nice catch phrase. But they didnt appreciate that. But we dropped that after a while. But youd get comments like that. One time I had written a piece about something was going on down in Dakota County and I got this gift from a guy down in Dakota County which was a complete Irish linen set, table setting. Really very expensive. And I sent it back to him and I said, I dont take gifts from sources. And he was thunderstruck. He couldnt believe it. I said, well no, I dont do that. I have ethical standards and I will not accept that sort of thing. Collins: Did you earlier in your career see things like that happening? Were relationships to sources kind of close sometimes? Especially at the smaller papers? Finnegan: Well of course thats part of the problem of good journalism too, is being too close to your sources. And I always had the sense that some of our government reporters were too close to their sources. And as a result when I got to be editor I changed a couple beats to try to get them to develop new sources and not be quite as close because I didnt have any evidence that that was the case, that they were not covering stuff that they should cover. But I had that feeling that some stuff wasnt being covered that ought to have been covered. And so in some cases I just made a shift of staff to see if I can overcome any of that problem. Collins: Do you think ethical standards are about the same that theyve always been? Especially in recent times it seems that theres pretty high standards that you can accept, that sort of thing. Has it always been that way or have ethical standards changed over time? Finnegan: Well, no I think that ethical standards have improved over time. The idea that you dont cover something because youre friends with a guy or a government issue is like not doing anything about Roosevelt and the fact that he was crippled and nobody ever said anything about that and yet everybody reporting on it knew about it and never mentioned it or anything. You dont see that anymore. Theres not that cover anymore. And the same thing I think with the reputations of people. Theres more transparency. And thats good. On the other hand I think now with the development of blogs and things like that, you dont have the ethical standards by people there. Theyre giving out information as though its valid information and it may not be and so you had this flow of lot of information but a lot of the information is not verified or verifiable. And it probably

shouldnt be out there. I dont know how we deal with that because its so easy to get stuff on the Internet. And get it out there. There isnt any real gatekeeper in many cases now. Now organizations like yours I think there are gatekeepers but the blogger, I can put a blog up and say anything I want to and it may or may not be true. And that has eroded form the journalistic point of view has eroded the information production. Collins: Is more professionalism the counter to that? Finnegan: Oh well yeah. Im not sure that the people are getting it. Im not sure that people who are going into journalism are really being trained in ethical standards. And Im not sure that theyre interested in accuracy, balance kind of issues. And those are two important basic journalistic standards that I think are not being adopted by a lot of these people, unfortunately. Collins: And you talked about the pressure to put a whole bunch of pieces through when you were on the editorial board. Did that degrade the quality of what you were able to put out? Finnegan: I thought if I did three editorials a day, I always thought one of them is pretty thin. The other two I hope were my standards, but the third one I was never quite happy with. And some of them got printed and some didnt, fortunately. Some of them didnt get, I either could pull them or somebody else pulled them. You got to have some time. You got to feel confident that youre touching the right bases. There were some of those that were pretty light anyway; they werent really dealing with major policy issues or anything like that. I always had the feeling, thats not my best. Collins: The pressure for content has sort of changed over time too. When you a reporter, did you do one piece or two pieces a day, or one piece every few days? Finnegan: Well, I usually would do one or two pieces a day. Depending on the subject matter. If it was a spot news piece then I might not do anything else but that. Because youre working on deadline. But you always had a feature idea or you had another piece in your mind that you could work on on a day thats slow on the spot news side. So you usually had two or three things in your mind or in your desk that you could work on. So I would guess that I would average maybe two pieces at the most every day. Collins: When you were on the editorial board, so when you left the editorial board, did you go to the editing position then? Finnegan: Well what happened was the executive editor of the paper decided he was going to retire in a couple years so they were looking around for someone to take his job. Well there were two managing editors on the paper. I thought one of the other ones would bet that job. I was really hoping to get the editorial page

editors job. That was kind of my thought. So finally one day there was some conflict between the two managing editors. They were both expecting to get the job and they was some kind of infighting going on. And I was friends with both of them and they would come in to me and they would tell stories about the other guy and so forth. Then the next guyd come in and tell me. So I figured, you know, one of those guys would get it. Well one day the executive editor came in, Fred Aberel and he said they want you in the front office; they want to talk to you. I said well, ok. So I went to the front office and we sat down there and he said now Fred explained to me that Fred was going to retire in a couple years and would I like to take his job? Well I had never been a major editor. It wasnt anything I had really thought about before. And I said, well gee, let me think about that. Yes! I thought about it for about two seconds. And so what it amounted to was about a two year in training program. So I became assistant to the executive editor starting in late 67. And so in 69, the end of 69, I was named the executive editor. But I had by that time I had picked up a lot of the stuff he was doing, learned the ropes. So I suddenly became executive editor. Collins: Was that training a good way to kind of step into the job slowly? Finnegan: Oh yeah. It was perfect. It was just absolutely the best thing that could have happen from my perspective. And from the papers perspective, because by the time that Fred left, and he didnt really leave, he became the editor of the Knight Ridder news service. Or actually the Ridder news service, it wasnt Knight Ridder yet. The Ridder News service and they were doing, because we had 37 papers around the country at the time, Fred was picking up stories from all of them and putting them on the wire so that the other papers would be able to pick up stories that they wanted to from other communities. I got training and dealing with people, hiring and firing and selection of syndicated materials and all that stuff. And keeping the copy flowing and hiring people and all that sort of stuff. So it was a good two years training. If I hadnt had that Id have gone up there and sort of floundered for a while. Collins: Now when you first entered the position in 1969 you said. Finnegan: 8 Collins: There was a lot of stuff going on in the country. How do you feel the Pioneer Press coverage was of, obviously there was civil rights stuff going on? How was the coverage of these big issues? Finnegan: Well I think we were coving them very well. I had to send people over to the U of M because of the problems over there at the time. We had to get riot gear up for them; we had to take the markings off our police cars, or off our photo cars. Because both the police and the rioters were fingering reporters and photographers because they didnt want the coverage. So we had to be able to protect them as much as possible. Matter of fact I still have a helmet and plastic

shield in the garage I think that we sent them out with. I think our coverage was pretty good at that time. It was turbulent time as you may remember. It was not the easiest stuff in the world to cover and get it right. But we assigned quite a few people to it and we didnt get anybody hurt. Thank goodness. Collins: And at the time in the newsroom, was it mainly men still, the reporters? Finnegan: Well by that time I think we had, lets see, Jacquie, Katherine, I think we had the four women reporters. I had added a couple to the staff on both papers because we still were publishing both papers at the time. And one of the things that I had managed to do as a member of the Guild and as executive editor was to get equal pay for the women. So they werent being paid less. When I first got to the St. Paul the women were getting significantly less money. Most of them were on the womens page. Actually called the society section, then became the womens page, then became the, lets say what did they name it after? So we began to build a female reporting staff. Collins: Was the reporting staff all white still? Finnegan: Back in 70, I started a program of hiring minorities. I think we hired our first minority in 70 just after I was made executive editor. And then we hired another, that was a woman, and then we hired another guy who is now the editor of Insight. And so we began a program that year also on the Urban Journalism Workshop to increase minority activity in the journalism profession because there werent just any of them going into journalism school and training at all. So we started with the university the Urban Journalism Workshop. That was the first year. Its still going but its under another name now. That was the first year, 70, that was the first year of the workshop and we ended up getting one or two people out of that eventually. Terry Monsour was in the first one and the gal who is over on the Strib editorial page was also in that first class. Collins: How did you like the position of executive editor? Finnegan: Well, it was good, I enjoyed it. It was kind of hard to get adjusted to because I had been associated with all the staff people and I had been one of them if you will. So going into a job where you are the boss and dealing with these guys, gals, its a little tough to get used to that frame of mind. But they were all very good and helpful. And so I overcame that problem in my own mind I overcame it pretty quickly. Because of their cooperation and so on. I did lose one managing editors, one of the guys who was acting for the job, or hoping for the jobs. He left and he went over to TWA Magazine as their editor. And the other one stayed on as my ME and eventually we made friends I think. Collins: We havent talked about this yet, but what was the competition like with the Star Tribune?

Finnegan: Oh that was constant and Im glad for it because I think that just made us better people, better newspaper. I was always conscious of them and checked out their coverage and what they were doing. And I could never imagine them and the size of the staff. They were always at least two to one over us, right from the get go. I was able to increase our staff, increase our expertise and build our circulation. Always, because the competition was over there I always had this in the back of my mind. I always had it as a club to use against the publisher and saying well you know, gee, if you dont do this, why the Strib. And the Strib helped by trying to come over here. And they began to try to move east and they hadnt in the past but they started to really come in and move in here. They set up a St. Paul bureau and so they were being very aggressive. And in a sense that helped me because I could then say, hey, we need to fight this. And we cant do it without having people in these various jobs. And that was helpful. The other problem was they kept stealing my people and finally I managed to turn that around and started stealing a few of theirs. And once we got the financial backing that we needed and so I can build a good staff and ultimately, that staff won us two Pulitzers. Collins: Can you talk about that? Were those the stories that were emblematic of good journalism? Finnegan: Oh yeah, absolutely. But the other thing is it points up the fact that if youre going to do things like that and do them right, youre going to have to spend some money. Youre going to have to assign reporters and photographers to do a job over a given long period of time. To be able to touch all the bases and get everything in order and pull it all together into one good package. And thats what wins Pulitzer. Thats what signifies good journalism. Its thoroughness, its on the mark, its a timely subject, its an important policy issue nationally or internationally. And both of those pieces signified that. Collins: What were those pieces? Finnegan: Well one was on the farm problems and the other one was on homosexuality and AIDS. Collins: Was it in the 80s? Finnegan: Yeah. Both timely subjects. Collins: How long were you in the position of executive editor? Finnegan: Well I was there from essentially 70 to 85. But I was actually then the next three years I was the senior executive editor and assistant publisher. Collins: What was that change like? What did that mean exactly?

Finnegan: Well it meant that I was overseeing all the newsroom generally. But not in direct daily contact with the publication of the paper. But setting policy alongside of the publisher who was John Henry at the time. At that point we made the transition to one paper and so on. It was major policy issues. We were refining the cold type and computer operations, which we started back in 78. Collins: When you combined to one newspaper, what was peoples reaction? Finnegan: On the staff or the public? Collins: Both of them. Finnegan: I think the staff was ok with it in general because nobody lost their jobs. And what we did we managed to be able to concentrate more coverage in given areas. From the publics standpoint I think they were acceptable of it because the afternoon paper had been declining in circulation anyway. And now they were getting a good morning paper and it was bigger. And it was better. And our circulation went up. So it all seemed to work out pretty well at the time. Collins: And the papers in the 80s they were pretty thick. Finnegan: Oh sure, they were. I now call the Monday Pioneer Press the newsletter. I mean its so thin and Im sorry for them over there. Its a fact of economic life nowadays. Those ads are now gone. Collins: Did you retire after 88 then? Finnegan: 89 I retired. Collins: 89. What was that like leaving, or not leaving actually cause it sounds like youre been pretty busy since then. But how did you feel finishing that aspect of it? Finnegan: First of all I was happy to get out because the business was changing. Changing rapidly. Under Knight Ridder the corporate influence was growing strong. You werent really quite the local newspaper control that you used to have. Your budget was under control of corporate. And you just didnt have quite the, I think the freedom that I enjoyed and the paper enjoyed when it was being run by the Ridder family. Even in the early days of the Knight Ridder combination. Gradually corporate control took over and the bottom line became much more important. When you go from a ten percent margin in profit up to being thought of as having to have 25 percent return on your money, which is what happened, thats tough. Thats real tough. What it means is you cant do all the things that you wanted to do and thought you need to do to maintain your circulation and your credibility, which is the most important part. So I was happy to take the buyout and retire. That was a plus. I did miss the fact that I didnt

know all that was going on behind the scenes and that youre the daily contact with news sources. But I decided that the best thing for me to do would be to take on other jobs. So I became an adjunct professor at the J school. A job I held there for about 18 years, 17 years. Collins: What did you teach? Finnegan: Well at first I started out teaching management. That was the main program. And then later I decided to, with the agreement of the director of the school to restart their community journalism program. So I did that too. And so I was doing both for a while and so I got the community journalism program going again and thats still going now. And so is the management program. So it worked out well and I really enjoyed that. I enjoyed getting back to the school. And of course then I started getting involved in fundraising for the school and so on. And I did a major publication for them while I was there too. Collins: Did that academic experience give you perspective on your career in journalism? Finnegan: Well actually my career in journalism helped me in that respect because I was using both talents I guess in the school. Both in the management area and in the community journalism area. And I will say this: my experience in the various organizations I became involved with over time. Because I was Associated Press managing editors association, I was on their board of directors, and I was on the American Society of Newspaper Editor board of directors. I was on the state Sigma Delta Chi board for a number of years. I was the president of the Minnesota Newspaper Association at one point. So I had this association with the community newspapers through that. And the fact that started out on the Robbinsdale Post. I understood some of their problems and issues. So I used that experience to help me in the classes I was teaching. I think they were very beneficial. Collins: And the culture is a little bit different than newspapers and academia. Finnegan: Oh yeah, it is extremely so. Of course I wasnt the boss except running the class. But I got along. I think I got along well with the other academics over there. Collins: So while you were teaching at the U, there were all these things going on within the industry of journalism. What was your perspective of what was happening to newspapers throughout that time? Finnegan: Im glad Im not there. I saw a lot of this coming with the development of the Internet. It was clear that the computers were going to be much more important in the future. And not only for production of newspapers, but just for getting information out and around. And thats certainly proven true. In a real

sense I was very happy to be on the sidelines looking out. I couldnt give any great advice on how to deal with this. I dont know how to deal with it. I wasnt trained in that area. For example, when I was chair of the News Council, the Minnesota News Council. As the News Council was gradually declining in use by the public, we were taking a look at how can we be of importance in handling the Web? And blogs? And is there any way we can improve their journalistic ethics and skills and so on? Is there any way we can monitor them? We couldnt figure out any way to do it and still get funding for it. Ive been trying to deal with these issues but I just dont have any answers to it at the moment. Except I guess get involved with it as much as you can. Collins: Does it make you concerned about journalism as a separate entity from newspapers? The possibility that we dont have the same standards all the time? Finnegan: Well yeah it does. I am concerned about that and I dont know how much, I should look into it I guess, how much the journalism school people, for example. I know they have a new journalism new media courses and I dont know exactly how theyre trying to deal with this, the problems that are raised. I dont know that a lot of the people who are using the Internet as an information distributor are interested in any training in journalism per se. If theyre just running by the seat of their pants and thats dangerous. That is for the, I think for the community and for the dissemination of information. Thats what bothers me the most. And its hard for me to figure out how we can deal with that. Unless we can somehow train people right from kindergarten on up on being ethical and being factual. And being sure that what they turn out as information is correct. And Im not sure the schools are equipped for that either. Collins: Have you seen your students move on throughout the industry? Finnegan: Oh yeah, sure. I saw one guy took over management of a television station. Things of that kind. Periodically I get a note from somebody; Im doing such and so. And thats nice. Not as much anymore though because Ive lost touch. Ive been out of that for about here years or so. Collins: What made you decide to kind of leave the, to retire again? Finnegan: Well I guess it was because I was getting older and there were some things I wanted to do and finish. I wanted to finish the book on the Ridders. Which I have done. And I had another writing project which was kind of family oriented. I figured I had done enough and I better just get to some of these things that I would kind of like to do. And I have. Collins: Well thank you so much for talking to me. Are there any impressions or memories over all your time in your career and this industry that you want to share? Or that I havent asked about that you think are important?

Finnegan: No I think I covered most of them, most of the issues. I have really enjoyed being involved at time when newspapers were important. Were important for the public and were important for me. And Ive been really, extremely gratified that the opportunities Ive had over the years to be in this business. And I must say Ive been well rewarded for it. And the fact that Ive made ant the contacts Ive made added to my whole life in many, many ways. I wouldnt have done anything different. I have enjoyed it. Gosh, I look back and say, how come you were so lucky that you picked the right job and the right career and you were successful in it? Ill always be gratified about that. Collins: Thank you very much again. Finnegan: Youre welcome. Glad to be here.