The Missouri Miner: Editors-in-Chief: Richard M. Bee

Research Project: 100 years of
The Missouri Miner 1915-2015

Est'd. 1915, Fred Grotts, Founder

Richard M. Bee
EIC 1982

The following questions and responses were taken from a e-mailed questionnaire, returned February 24, 2008. -RB

Burd: From when to when were you Editor-in-Chief of the Missouri Miner? Who proceeded and followed you in that position? Share your memories of these individuals.

Bee: I may not have the order exactly correct but, I believe the EIC two before me was Ed Latimer, and the next EIC was his girlfriend except her name escapes me right now. It is possible that she was the Features editor the same time Ed was EIC, and I am just getting things confused.

Ed Latimer is hard to capture on paper; I can list all of the things he did and you still won't get the Ed-ness of it all. The most notable thing anybody would tell you about Ed was that he was literally a genius, thus he could maintain his 3.98 GPA in Chemical Engineering without much apparent effort. (I understood he had a B in a lab class due to a mishap or perhaps pushing the limits too much. Being a genius has its downside in the academic world as it sometimes annoys professors less mentally endowed.) In addition to being EIC and [studying] Chemical Engineering, he was the Greek Rep for Pi Kappa Theta, held offices on the Greek Council, played rugby, and managed to make large numbers of parties. The person I think of most often in association with Ed is Groucho Marx, although in appearance he was closer to Harpo, with perhaps a Winston Churchill mixed in. Ed was supposed to have gotten out of a DWI in Oklahoma by recalibrating the breathalyzer, essentially a gas chromatograph, while the officer was not looking. Anyhow, Ed was easygoing, smart and he knew it, and not afraid to get into some trouble.

Burd: What other positions did you hold on the Missouri Miner staff. How were elections held? How did you become involved with the newspaper?

Bee: I started out selling Ads, a position I took over from a guy in our house named Steve whose last name I cannot remember. He had terrible eyesight and his favorite movie was "The Flim Flam Man." I did that for a semester mainly for the money.

The next semester I became a photographer, something I believe I also took over from Steve, which is important as the Miner had one 35mm camera which he passed onto me. I had taken some snapshots in the past, nothing much, but as it turns out, photography is a passion for me. Having a decent camera, total control of the process and, a reason to take the camera everywhere was fantastic. I forget the exact limits, but the Miner staff were paid under the work study program which limits you to $500 a quarter and I was exceeding the limit at $3.50 a picture. On big weekends like St. Pat's or Greek Week, I would sometimes take and develop over 30 rolls of film, which was generally over the 36 frames per roll as we bought bulk film and loaded it into canisters ourselves. This was good and bad for me. I tend to be very introverted and this was good as it got me out, got me to lots of events, got me to be able to walk up to a stage in front of a crowd and take pictures. It was also good in that it was something that I loved to do, I would experiment with chemistry, developing, solarization, timed exposures, etc. My first summer I was an engineering intern for the Army at a GS-3 level my sophomore summer, I found out that they had photographic assistant positions at a GS-5 level and so I spent the next 3 summers working in the Army photo lab in St. Louis thus I spent the whole year taking pictures. Being a photographer was also bad for me in several ways as I could spend hours doing it. I was in the lab every week sometimes for the better part of a day, more accurately all night, and I went to lots of events, consequently, I let my grades slip. I eventually got my own camera, a Nikon FM. Despite making more money in the summer, I spent part of it on lenses and film.

The next position I took was photo editor. This was a natural progression as I was doing most of the photography. I may not have been good at it though as I still wanted to take a lot of the pictures but passed them on to the photographers who got paid by the picture, as I was salaried and, I was disappointed by the attitude of some of the photographers as they did not always seem to want the assignments.

After that I was the Features Editor. I wanted to keep on working on the Miner after being Photo Editor and got this position. I spent a lot of time at the Miner, too much time. Being Features Editor was pretty successful as I recall as I let Al Oakes write a filler column called Scooter P.I. It was a take off on Magnum P.I. based on someone we both knew nicknamed Scooter. If I remember correctly, most of the plot lines were fairly immature but it was funny and people liked it.

After being Features Editor I was elected to EIC.

Burd: What were the biggest challenges you faced as Editor-in-Chief of the Missouri Miner?

Bee: The biggest challenge I faced as EIC was myself. As I have noted I spent too much time at the Miner. Couple this with a lack of maturity and a tendency to drink and my grades dropped below 2.0, and I was out of the EIC position. Another aspect of this is I believe I lacked the leadership skills needed, I was used to doing work not directing it, and I don't believe I made the transition gracefully.

Burd: What were your greatest accomplishments as Editor-in-Chief of the Missouri Miner? What issues were most important to you?

Bee: I am not sure I had any great accomplishments as EIC as I was only EIC for half a semester. I did start out to improve the journalistic aspect of the paper. I had gone to journalism conferences as part of the editorial staff for two years. At these conferences we got exposed to some pretty serious journalism professionals and journalism majors. Many of the journalism majors that went to these conferences were from much larger schools like Columbia and Purdue. As these schools had a journalism degree the staffs on their papers were building résumés and approached it like a job. The competition to be on Columbia's editorial staff was fierce. Contrast this with the Miner at the time; UMR had no journalism majors at the time, and no journalism degree. Sometimes the editorial positions were uncontested during election. I had in my mind that the Miner would become less of a publicity conduit for press releases and actually start doing more serious journalism. I saw the press as being a very important contributor to public life and thought the Miner should be playing a larger role.

Burd: What "big" stories are most memorable to you and why?

Bee: I covered Henry Kissinger's visit as a photographer for the Miner. Okay, I am not a big Kissinger fan, still there is something exciting about being able to take pictures of a national figure; you can get sucked into events.

I remember seeing one of the first [compact discs] at a press event put on by RCA if I remember correctly. It was the size of an LP and held much less than a mini CD does now, still, none of us had ever seen anything like it.

Otherwise, I am not sure we had a lot of bit events at the time. A lot of changes were underway, we had a series of new chancellors and the events seemed large at the time, but now they are barely memorable. UMR has changed significantly since I was there. UMR had a couple of hazing and drinking deaths that made the news and the UMR leadership began clamping down on the St. Pats, the big drinking parties, and the fraternities.

Burd: What effect did major national events (i.e. wars, assassinations, etc.) have on the Missouri Miner's reporting? How did you handle these events?

Bee: My time at the Miner was during the post Watergate, post Vietnam [era], which may seem a little dramatic, but I think it colored everyone's thinking about journalism and newspapers. Investigative journalism was held in esteem.

As far as actual national events while I was on the Miner, there were few. Jimmy Carter was in the White House and it seemed serious investigative journalism was morphing into the media circus. The media circus may be a result of Watergate. Journalism had become a hot profession for a while and all of the new journalists were trying to distinguish themselves from the herd in the absence of any big stories.

The economy was a big story while I was at UMR, Nixon had price caps, and Ford had Whip Inflation Now which had given away to stagflation, inflation with stagnant or negative growth. Interest rates went through the roof towards the end of Carter's term. I believe he left office with the Prime Rate at 18.75%, the prime rate then hit 21.75% by the end of Reagan's first year. This really hit engineering grads hard as investment and growth were way down. A lot of engineering majors were taking whatever jobs they could get.

The next really big event that occurred was the Iranian Hostage Crisis; however, this was after I was EIC, and I was not working on the paper anymore.

I am not sure it qualifies as a national event but "Animal House" came out while I was attending UMR, perhaps [my] freshman year. It affected the UMR campus, perhaps quite a few others as well. Excessive drinking, toga parties, etc. was fashionable for a bit or so it seemed. Another movie that came out while I was at Rolla was "Apocalypse Now." When I attended Rolla there were still a few Vietnam Veterans attending on the GI bill. One of them was in our house and went with us to see it. He got up and left halfway through; later on at the bar he made a point of saying the movie was BS, perhaps for the drama of it all. At any rate it is a movie and probably 99.99% BS like most of them, still I thought it was a good movie. I still like "The End" by the Doors.

Burd: How significant a role do you feel you and the Missouri Miner played in campus life during your tenure as Editor-in-Chief?

Bee: Strictly during my time as EIC, I do not think the Miner played a large role; it was a short time period.

Overall, while I was with the Miner, I think the Miner was valuable to campus life. It was read, we didn't have circulation problems. A lot of the Miner's contribution was entertainment. As I stated above, I believe the Miner had a very different feel from the papers at other universities, it was put together and edited by people who were pursuing careers other than journalism. You did get paid for your contribution, but not enough to put you through school. The main point here is that the Miner was the product of people who were mainly interested in being involved in UMR. UMR is a unique experience and we were involved with capturing and conveying that experience. I cannot say that it was journalism, it was more community involvement. I do think that the Miner captured and conveyed campus attitudes at the time.

Things like Scooter P.I. did capture the Campus Imagination for a bit.

Burd: How did your time as Editor-in-Chief of the Missouri Miner help prepare you for life after college? What lessons did you learn?

Bee: I am not sure that I can point to any one big momentous lesson I learned while EIC or even on the Miner that I would characterize as a life lesson. A lot of the experiences did fall into place later on as I learned things.

Having to give up the EIC position after not making grades was quite a disappointment for me. It was not a good time for me for that and other reasons and I had to do some reevaluation. As you may have figured out from my spotty memory, I do not spend a lot of time reminiscing. Among other things I realized I was not moving forward so I began to study more seriously with the intent of graduating.

I also realized that I was probably trying to be somebody I was not. A lot of the lessons I would say were not so much about life as they were about me and they were not necessarily complete at the time. One of the things I have learned since is that I am a very private person I found being EIC to be very draining.

If I had spent more time as EIC I believe it would have become apparent that I am not really the right type of person for a broad leadership position. This is a positive really. I do take on leadership positions for specific projects at work, I conduct teams and meetings, I have briefed Admirals and Generals but I have learned to approach these roles within very defined boundaries. I find I work best as part of a leadership team and not as the sole leader.

Part of what propelled me to EIC was the manner in which I focus. I can become very focused on specific activities sometimes to the exclusion of other important items. As you may have heard before, a weakness is a strength overused. As I noted I spent a lot of time on the Miner, photography, layout, etcetera, and neglected other things.

Burd: What was your staff like at the Miner? What memories do you have of specific staff members at the newspaper?

Bee: [My staff was composed of] friends mostly. The one notable exception, oddly enough, was my photo editor.

Burd: Who was the Missouri Miner's faculty advisor? What kind of faculty support/advice/instruction did you receive from professors at the university?

Bee: Curt was the faculty advisor, once again the last name escapes me. I doubt you met Curt, he called some years after I graduated because he was being investigated by the University partly in conjunction with the Miner's finances. Personally, I liked Curt; he also liked photography and was part of the reason that the Miner had such a well equipped darkroom. That I also believe was part of the reason he was being investigated by the University. I personally never knew him to be dishonest and said as much when the University called me. Curt was an Economics professor and got me into the Econ department after I did not make grades. I brought my grades back up and went back to engineering. Curt was the spitting image of Robert Loggia.

As I mentioned Curt was an Economics professor and this was by design. The editorial staff got to vote on who would be the advisor and we always voted unanimously for Curt because all of the other choices were English professors which we figured would be the ruin of the paper. As an example the campus had two radio stations KMNR and KUMR. KMNR was filled with deadheads and various other misfits; KUMR had a respectable advisor and staff and most people did not know it existed. I refer to KMNR's staff as misfits somewhat respectfully. I was not on KMNR's staff but knew quite a few of them and would occasionally go up and run a late night show. I also wrote a couple of skits for the KCUF show before it got shut down.

Burd: Where was the Missouri Miner's office? What equipment did you use to produce the newspaper every week? If you published at the Rolla Daily News (the local city paper), what was your relationship with Ed/Steve Sowers? If not, where did you publish the paper?

Bee: Initially the Miner's offices were in a temporary building from WW2 located behind the power plant. When I was EIC the Miner had moved to the 3rd floor of the Rolla Building. We published at the RDN. Layout was on Wednesday afternoon until we got done. I always enjoyed layout. I did not have a close relationship with either Ed or Steve Sowers. Most of the people I dealt with were layout staff at the RDN.

Burd: How would you describe your management style?

Bee: I generally try to lead by consensus. Once again a strength in some situations a weakness in others. As far as management, delegation is a challenge and once something is delegated I often fail to do interim progress checks as I trust the person to do what they said they would do. In some situations, I can be a bit dictatorial.

Burd: Describe your relationship with the administration at MSM/UMR.

Bee: Mildly antagonistic, probably mostly on our part. As I noted earlier, I believe that the University of Missouri wanted to bring the UMR campus more in line with the other campuses. UMR had been pretty much an engineering campus and an anachronism. I believe there were only a handful of non-engineering majors when I started; I seem to remember the number of English majors as being six. At any rate we were destined to receive a string of chancellors from outside of UMR that seemed intent changing the campus. We saw it as destroying the unique UMR character and said as much. As EIC, I got to attend a couple of the Chancellor's brunches along with some other student leaders. I do not recall any specifics on discussions.

Burd: Describe your relationship with Student Council at MSM/UMR.

Bee: UMR had a student council? Okay, just kidding I was on the entertainment committee which mainly brought concerts to the school for the four big party weekends. I often ran the spotlights at the concerts if I wasn't taking pictures for the Miner. They would have the concerts in the Multi-Purpose building which was box shaped and had matching acoustics. The only thing worse than the acoustics in the building were the radio headsets that connected us to the mixing board for directions. Most people wouldn't run spots more than once because the combination of bad headsets and irate sound technicians would get to them. There were two spots, and I actually had one of the other guys quit in the middle of a concert. It never really bothered me because I figured I could make do with what we had, and I knew that the sound technician was irate because he knew where the spot was supposed to be; the audience didn't and liked it anyway.

As far as there being a formal relationship between the Student Council and the Miner, I do not recall one other than us publishing their announcements and seeing the officers at the Chancellor's brunch.

Burd: Did any group (Fraternity, Administration, Student Council, etc.) have what you felt to be undue influence over decisions affecting the newspaper? If so, which groups had this influence and what decisions did they affect?

Bee: When I started, Phi Kappa Theta had a majority of the editorial positions on the paper. I am not sure this constituted undue influence. It was a cyclic matter as Phi Kaps tended to find out about positions because there were already Phi Kaps on the paper. The paper was open to all as far as we were concerned.

Burd: Summarize your thoughts and feelings about your time as Editor-in-Chief of the Missouri Miner.

Bee: I really enjoyed working on the Miner. My time as EIC was unfortunately short because of my actions. Most of my time was spent working on the paper in other positions, and it was a positive experience.

Burd: Recent events on college campuses across the United States have led to a journalism student being tasered by police and a college newspaper editor facing possible termination for use of profanity in an editorial--all in the name of freedom of speech. The Missouri Miner staff has had several conflicts with administrators and the student government over what is printed in the paper and its overall quality, the latest of which may yet lead to a lawsuit. Where do you draw the line between exercising freedom of the press and being a responsible journalist? Have your views on 1st Amendment issues changed since being EIC of the Missouri Miner, and if so how and why?

Bee: This is a great question. I would like to answer it in more detail however, as it would at least double the size of this document and decrease the probability that you will get it in a decent amount of time, I am going to attempt a short answer.

I come down firmly on the freedom of the press, freedom of speech side of the issue. I am very liberal in my views and if my views on 1st amendment issues have changed any since being EIC it is in the direction of fewer restrictions.

This is not to say that I am ignoring responsibility of the press issues. This is something I was concerned about even before becoming EIC. I wrote a paper for my ethics class on journalism ethics and noted the need for some form of review or regulation within the world of journalism. I noted that given the potential harm that poor or unethical journalism could cause exceeds the harm that poor or unethical legal or medical practices can do yet, both of these professions have organizations responsible for regulating ethics, journalism has none. My suggestion was self regulation in the form of a journalistic Bar Association. The idea I proposed was that the association would be able to review and certify that journalists had met the minimum requirements of journalism with regard to sourcing, editorial review, etc. but would be unable to pronounce judgments on the content of articles. In addition, I proposed that the certification would be loose similar to a MCSE certification, e.g. having a MSCE cert makes you more valuable as a Systems Engineer but not having one does not prevent you from practicing. I tried to set my answer up to be non-regulatory but even the restrictions I proposed have the potential to become dangerous. I am not certain that I had a good proposal.

The basic question you have to answer if you propose restricting freedom of the press or freedom of speech is who becomes the regulator and how do you prevent abuses of power. I have yet to see a form of government or regulatory scheme that is immune to abuses of power. Obviously, dictatorships, monarchies, oligarchies are subject to abuse and attract those who would abuse them. Democracy, by diffusing total power provides some barrier yet we have seen these barriers overcome with rigged elections, collusion and, secrecy. Even popular opinion would be too dangerous a guideline; tyranny of the masses can be more oppressive and terrifying than tyranny by the government. Masses of fearful people can be more idiotic than their leaders. There is great danger in providing anyone but the recipient the power to restrict the flow of information. If there is one certainty other than death, it is not only that power will be abused but that it also attracts those most likely to abuse it.

I do recognize some basic responsibility on the part of those who pass information. I agree with Holmes that falsely shouting, Fire! in a crowded theater would be wrong, I do not agree with him that it was on the same order as publishing anti-war material. We do have anti-libel and anti-slander laws that can and should be enforced. A key feature of these laws that is important though is that they are enforced post-publishing as a response to a realized wrong and that the burden of proof lies with the accuser.

I believe 1st amendment issues have become more important since I was EIC because of the internet. The ability to self publish to a wide audience is a great equalizer and a great freedom. I believe that the biggest freedom of the press, freedom of expression issue we currently face is net neutrality although it cannot be characterized as entirely 1st amendment issue. I spend a fair amount of time blogging now (dKos, Crooks and Liars, etc.) and I find the interchange of ideas and the community to be valuable.

Relative to the internet, more specifically the World Wide Web, a number of years ago, I got to meet Sir Tim Berners-Lee and here him speak on the semantic web. I think his ideas concerning the trusted networking and trust tokens are a better solution to regulation of publishing than the one I had proposed in my paper on journalistic ethics. It has many of the same features however, because the regulation is distributed and non-restrictive it is less subject to abuse. I am very impressed with the Web's open standards process.

Okay, this is my short answer and I have already failed to keep it under a page. I would like to expand upon each of these bullets, but won't at this time, and I still haven't discussed a couple of related issues on privacy and surveillance. I have been trying to work up an article on Privacy as I am unhappy with the approaches I have read so far. I do believe that we have a right to privacy and it can be built from the 4th through 8th amendments. I do not see it as the right to be left alone as much as I see it as the right to be free from judgment in the absence of a crime. I also see surveillance as a press issue. The internet gives the government and other agencies, some private, the ability to not only monitor and interfere with journalists but also the ability to monitor the journalist's readers.

Part of the life of a journalist is going to be conflicts with those who want to suppress information. There is always going to be a risk of being tasered, beaten, arrested etc. Journalism isn't a risk free profession. I am not suggesting that police tasering a student journalist is acceptable, it is also not unexpected.

Bart Bennett and I were sitting on the front porch one evening drinking and watching the local police stop students leaving a Kappa Sig party, mostly harassment, possibly some tickets for public drunkenness, part of a campus crackdown on drinking. Bart wrote for the paper occasionally and I was a photographer. Bart would also get really worked up about what he saw as injustices and cops harassing students leaving a party bothered him. Bart figured that this would make a good story and also would annoy the cops so he went and got a tablet and suggested I get my camera from in the house which he didn't have to suggest twice. We walked up the street and Bart starts asking the two cops questions which didn't seem to have much of an effect on them. When I started taking pictures though, they got irate and came after me, had me up against the car promising to arrest me for interfering with police business or something. Right or wrong, I wasn't getting into it with the cops and I wasn't in a position to outrun them so I was doing my best to avoid escalating the situation. Bart was more vociferous in my defense and in the defense of the press which wasn't really helping matters. Eventually things calmed down and we weren't charged with anything. I also do not recall publishing anything about it. Bart also called the cops once after he saw one of the Iranian students across the street with a handgun, this is after the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The cops came, the student had a gun and also a permit for the gun. After the cops left Bart went across the street and talked to the guy and found out that many of the Iranian students lived in fear of Iranian death squads. Because they were living in America, they felt targeted, they could not return to Iran because of fear of retribution.

There are also going be conflicts with those who want privileged information, sources etc. I do not think that the Judith Miller case is a particularly good example because of her pro-Whitehouse involvement, but you can go to prison protecting sources. There is a lot of judgment required to sort out what is protecting sources and what is protecting criminal behavior.

I do not think that obscenity should be prohibited in the press. Obscenity is a form of expression and sometimes it is required. Sometimes the things that need to be said are not pretty and can only get the attention they deserve when stated baldly. Obscenity is a subjective standard, one person's protest is another person's obscenity. Some people say that flag burning is obscene and they would rather destroy the Constitution that the flag represents than permit its expression, it doesn't make much sense to me. I find it odd that we live in a society that allows excessive explicit violence on the TV and in the movies and then finds naked people to be obscene. Personally, I rarely use obscenities, I do not find them effective generally, still I do not believe they should be prohibited.