The end of an era

By Roberta Forsell Stauffer Standard Opinion Editor - 01/07/2008

Gibson

For the past 34 years, Jeff Gibson’s award-winning “Monday Matters” column has anchored this spot on The Standard’s Monday editorial page. That’s 1,768 weekly columns — an amazing run, especially in this day and age of routine job hopping. Who says the only constant is change?

Gibson actually started as The Standard’s editorial page editor 37 years ago, back in 1971, but he didn’t start writing the Monday column until roughly three years into the job.

It started as a collection of mini-editorials with no byline — “I could start a good little editorial, but I couldn’t finish it,” Gibson recalled over a recent lunch visit. Then it gradually evolved into the personal column readers have come to expect with their Monday morning coffee.

Gibson actually retired from the opinion editor post four years ago, but he graciously agreed to keep on with “Monday Matters.” Now at age 65, he’s finally free of all deadlines for the first time in his adult life. But rest assured, he’s got a standing invitation to check in with a guest column whenever he pleases. After nearly 40 years in this newsroom, he’s got lifetime rights to the ink.

“I can’t tell you how many times readers have called or stopped me to compliment us on one of Jeff’s columns,” said Montana Standard Editor Gerry O’Brien. “He always struck a chord with the reader, voicing a commentary most folks were thinking, but couldn’t quite put into words.” Gibson said the Monday column came to be his favorite part of the job because of the freedom it allowed. While editors and publishers occasionally changed his editorials, not once did they “stick a thumb in the typewriter” on “Monday Matters.” And especially since retirement, Gibson’s weekly goal has been to keep it light, to write something “with no redeeming social value at all.” “It gave me a break from thinking too hard about things,” he quipped in characteristic Gibson style.

But try as he might, “Monday Matters” always offered up something worth pondering, from the latest political shenanigans to the age-old debates such as whether toy guns warp young minds.

And though journalists are trained to prize truth above all, Gibson confessed to enjoying the increased “poetic license” he took with the column over the years. In the interest of full disclosure, he admitted during our interview that he didn’t really shoot his gold-panning pardner when a recent expedition went south. (He had said he’d had no choice in a recent column.) Gibson started his professional career at The Billings Gazette right out of college back in 1964, although he likes to say he got his start delivering papers in Livingston at age 10. There might have been “more prestige” to being an editor as compared to a paper boy, “but the pay never quite measured up,” he joked.

Gibson grew up in Livingston (says he loves the wind) and originally planned to attend the University of Montana in Missoula to become a teacher. When the education classes failed to impress, he decided to give journalism a try and never looked back.

He spent his first few years as a reporter, covering general assignments and the cops and courts beat. But then he started having difficulty hearing, even though he was only in his mid-20s, so he moved over to the copy desk and remained an editor ever since.

He claimed the privilege of having worked at The Gazette under a “super crank copy editor” who was a stickler for grammar and so on, and it’s been a gift to Standard readers all these decades that Gibson himself went on to become an equally hard-nosed English taskmaster.

Butte was “ugly” and “took some getting used to” when he first settled here in 1971, but Gibson said it has greatly improved since then and he gladly still calls it home. He’s grateful to have been able to remain in Montana throughout his career and can still vividly recall the tough times when the mines and the smelter shut down.

“I wondered if it (the ripple effect) would reach The Montana Standard, but it never did,” he said.

Gibson worked under five different editors and eight different publishers, but the changing technology of print journalism was the toughest boss of all.

“After Gutenberg, things didn’t change for 500 years,” Gibson said, but then in the early 1980s, computers entered the page creation process, leaving him “a bitter hater of computers ever since.” On Gibson’s last official day four years ago, O’Brien set him up in the back parking lot with an oversized surplus monitor and a selection of big hammers. The whole newsroom staff cheered him on as he pounded and cracked that machine to smithereens.

“That was one of the most therapeutic days of my life,” Gibson said, this time in all seriousness.

Now he doesn’t even have to type in a weekly column and save it to a floppy disk, but we hope he’ll take the trouble at least once in a while. We still want to read tales from the annual backpacking trip and we’ll be curious to know what Gibson thinks about the Wall Street Journal after more time under new ownership.

But on most weeks, my new column called “Monday Musings” will anchor this spot. And if this first one is any indication, the column will be a lot of fun. I welcome topic suggestions to muse about, and I hope you’ll join me in wishing Gibson all the best in this “for real” retirement.

Thanks, Jeff, for all those years of thoughtful commentary. You served your readers well and helped them start their weeks off with a smile.

— Roberta Stauffer may be reached at 496-5514 or at roberta.stauffer@mtstandard.

com.