Date posted: 11-28-01

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Bill Shaw: A life in newspapers

By Ryan Ator
DeKalb News Service

Dixon, Ill. - When Bill Shaw sat down recently to talk about his life in newspapers, his fingers were still ink-stained from helping in the pressroom the night before.

That says a lot about a publisher who's spent the past 15 years trying to produce what he calls, "A newspaper that is good enough that people are proud enough to call it their hometown newspaper."

In 1986, Shaw became the fifth-generation publisher of the Dixon Telegraph, the oldest family-owned newspaper in Illinois. Since then, no two days have been alike. Because he publishes a seven-day newspaper, the week never starts or ends.

"So it's a continual flow, and that's what news is," he said. "News in the community just continually flows."

Jim Nelson, general manager of Sauk Valley Newspapers (Telegraph and Sterling Daily Gazette), who has known Shaw for nearly 19 years and worked with him for about 12 years, said Shaw's personality has helped him succeed.

"Bill has always been very outgoing and loves to surround himself with his associates," Nelson said. "He travels extensively for the newspaper and is an avid golfer which allows him to meet and spend time with many influential people. … Bill is an honest man who truly cares for his family, employees, community and newspaper. The staff loves him and he's very proud of that."

Shaw is responsible for organizing the 140 employees of Sauk Valley Newspapers.

"Of course, they do the work," he said. "I just have to take the responsibility, especially when something goes wrong, or when things go right, too. I get credit when I don't deserve it."

Shaw took responsibility this particular week, working until 1:30 a.m, because the press at the Shaw-owned Kane County Chronicle had broken down and the Dixon press was needed.

"I was pulling papers off the press last night, helping our press crew do an emergency job. You can still see ink on my fingers, even though I scrubbed 'em up pretty good."

Shaw has been successful despite having no formal training in journalism. He went to Duke University, which didn't offer journalism classes at the time.

"I didn't even check it out when I went down there," Shaw said. "I don't know that I'd (have) done that well in journalism anyway."

Shaw did work in the business office of the school newspaper, the Duke Chronicle, but didn't do any writing. He finally began writing when he came back to Dixon and worked at the Telegraph.
"I worked in the newsroom and I was taught the profession by the people in the newsroom here," Shaw said.

Shaw has done a lot of writing since, and is proud of the fact that in 1997, Northern Illinois University named him Illinois Journalist of the Year.

After earning a business degree at Duke, Shaw had the option of working for a chemical business on his mother's side of the family. But the newspaper appealed to him.

"There's something about a newspaper," Shaw said. "Every newspaper is different. A newspaper has a soul to it, and it makes it a terrifically interesting challenge to work for a newspaper and I think that's what attracted me as opposed to working for some other type of business."

A newspaper has a soul?

"I think every newspaper has its own personality, and really its own soul in the way it relates to the people who read it, the people in the community that it serves," Shaw said. "I also have another feeling that I've given a lot of speeches on. Our family has owned this newspaper for 150 years. But, if you really think about it, I don't think we really own the newspaper. This newspaper belongs to the community."

Shaw has had many memorable experiences in journalism, some good and some bad. One of the more negative experiences came early in his career.

"I was assigned to cover this man who had been a newspaper carrier probably 60 years earlier," Shaw said. "He was an older man and the assignment was to do a story on what it was like delivering the paper 60 years ago. I went over to his house, had a real nice interview with him, learned a lot of things and had a nice chat, got some good quotes for a story. And then I decided to take his picture, which was a natural thing to do, get some artwork with the story."

"Now," Shaw said chuckling, "he had a bunch of old newspapers and picked one of 'em up and said, 'Why don't we have me reading this old newspaper.?' I said fine, hold it up. I took his picture. Well, in those days our photography was just improving to the point where the images were pretty sharp. It was still black and white, but you could read what was on that newspaper. And that particular old newspaper had reported about a horrible suicide that had happened in our town about 50 years ago."

"Well," Shaw said, "I didn't even notice that. I was just looking at the guy, taking his picture. Come to find out, a couple of the descendants of that guy who had committed suicide lived in town, and they were so upset and irate with us. And the church that they went to, the preacher at the church even called me up and said what a horrible person I was to force these people to relive their terrible tragedy."

"I guess what I learned from that is, no matter how nice you try to be, there's a chance that you could get in trouble," Shaw chuckled. "And the things that you don't even realize can really get you in trouble. …And here's a preacher of the biggest church in town basically screaming at me in a very uncivilized and unreligious way. I felt really bad about that. It's those days that maybe you feel you're cut out to do something else, but you keep on going."

Despite that negative, Shaw said he's had many wonderful, positive experiences in journalism, such as his interview with Ronald Reagan.

"I've still got the tape," Shaw said. "It's probably in my office. I wrote a book, and he finished a chapter in my book about Russia and the Cold War. But we started talking about Dixon, and he just wouldn't stop talking about it. He wanted to share with me all his memories of growing up in Dixon. It was just a really special opportunity, and I've had many wonderful opportunities like that throughout my career."

Shaw said his most memorable experience was learning of and traveling to a town in northern Siberia called Dickson during the Cold War.

"The news people there, because they heard that Dixon, Ill., was Reagan's home town, they sent an invitation to our town to be a sister city," Shaw said. "And when the Russian mayor came over here, he invited me and my wife to be the first Americans to go up to Dickson, Siberia. …So here my wife and I were there, the first Americans that had ever been allowed up there to see that magnificent place."

Shaw originally had thrown his invitation in the garbage -- inadvertently. The letter was addressed to Shaw's uncle, Benjamin T. Shaw, a former publisher of the Telegraph who had died a year earlier. He was a member of the John Birch Society, an anti-Communist group.

"The letter was addressed to him with some mention of the Soviet Union on the envelope," Shaw said. "I assumed that it was one of the anti-Communist letters, so I threw it out."

Shaw later saw the letter from the trash and noticed the return address was from the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., so he decided to open it … and soon a sister-city relationship was forged.

Shaw wrote a book about his trip to Russia called "From Fear to Friendship." It was published both in English and in Russian.

Referring to all of the experiences in his career, Shaw said, "I could write a huge book about it. Every day, there's something incredible that happens, sometimes just little things that involve just one person, and then other times it's really big things that involve lots of people. But we're always very, very much involved in other people in this business, and we have the opportunity to see a lot and do a lot."

Primary source: Bill Shaw - 815-625-3600, ext. 230