Interview with Carol Sutton, July 21, 1982

BOBO: This is Mary Bobo of the University of Louisville Oral History Center. This is one in a series of interviews on the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times newspapers. Today, July 21st 1982 I'm talking with Carol Sutton. Her date of birth is June 29, 1933. Her place of birth is St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents, Marie and Dallas Sutton. Ms. Sutton, we're going to begin today talking about your training in journalism, beginning in Missouri and how you felt that you ever wanted to go into newspaper work to begin with, and anything about your early childhood that may have had a bearing on this, your parents' work perhaps. Could you tell me something about...   

SUTTON: Well, neither of my parents was in journalism. My father had a great interest in writing and in literature, and I spent my childhood in books. Very early, I think I was in elementary school, 1:00when I dreamed up and put out our school newspaper, which was my own production, which I called "Rumors are Flying." I was just kind of headed for journalism, always. In high school, I was editor of the high school paper, and then went to Missouri, to journalism school, which certainly, you know, one of the famous ones.    

BOBO: Was anyone discouraging to you at this point? We have already talked about, informally, the fact that women had not been involved in journalism maybe to the extent that they are coming into it today. Did you father say, "Carol, why don't you get a job where you can make a living?" or...   

SUTTON: No, nobody was ever discouraging to me in any way. Kind of, it was my choice - I think. I think it was my own choice. Certainly, at Missouri, 2:00in the early '50s, there weren’t very many women who were headed toward professional journalism. In all of that school, which was one of the larger ones at that time, there were only seven women who were in the news editorial sequence at the time. There were a lot in advertising and other aspects of journalism, but in news editorial there were only seven of us as I recall. Now, I'm sure that figure is vastly different. The school, there was never anything in the school that was discouraging. Never anyone who questioned the fact that a woman would be serious and headed for journalism. They weren't overtly supportive, but they were certainly never discouraging. It was just assumed that if you were there, you meant it.    

BOBO: Did you know about the Courier, 3:00even in these years? I mean, I guess you'd heard the name of it, but professionally?   

SUTTON: Sure, we had exchange papers in the library at the university, in the journalism school, and I would, when I would have a few extra moments, go to the library and read the newspapers that came in from around the country. I picked out the Courier-Journal as the one that I thought suited me best, the one that I really wanted to go to. I had grown up with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and certainly respected that newspaper, but I wanted, as most students do, to go live somewhere else. In looking over the newspapers, I thought the Courier-Journal was the one for me.    

BOBO: You came to the Courier-Journal in a little bit different route, though, did you not? What were the circumstances behind you taking this position as secretary to Jimmy Pope, Sr.?   

SUTTON: Well, I had written to Barry Bingham, 4:00Sr. and I suppose maybe took the attitude, "Look, lucky you, I’m getting out of school and I want to work for your newspaper." Well, I got a very polite note back from Mr. Bingham, and said he didn't have any positions. What happened, he sent my letter on to Jimmy Pope. Mr. Pope, Sr. was about to lose his secretary at that time, and he spotted on my application that I took shorthand and was a good typist, so instead of getting in touch with me, he got in touch with the dean of the journalism school, Earl English, who called me in and said, "I understand you've written to the Courier-Journal." And I said, "Yes." And he said, "They would like to interview you for a job as secretary to the executive editor." And I said, "Oh no, no way. I want to be a foreign correspondent, I can't do it that way." He said, "Well, let me 5:00urge you to take a look at it, if that's the paper you want to go to. It's a foot in the door. Look at it that way." So, I did, and I came in for an interview. I think Mr. Pope hired me for all the wrong reasons, not for my fantastic clips and excellent academic record, but the fact that I could take shorthand. And as he said to me at the time, "Well, you looked damned good." Which I just thought was beside the point. Anyway, I took the job. As it turned out, it was really an excellent place to start, because I had a chance to learn the city, I had a chance to learn how the newspapers worked, who was whom, and just really learn my way around. He wanted someone with news interests, also, because as a kind of a pinch hitter in various departments, when people were on vacation. So I got to work 6:00all over the place and do a lot of freelance work for the Magazine. Of course for the whole year I was nagging him to let me out and let me go to the city desk. So after a year, I did.    

BOBO: Well, he undoubtedly had this in the back of his mind, or I don't think he would have called the journalism school about you, do you think? That you would eventually move on into news --   

SUTTON: Well, I expect so. We did things a lot more casually [laughs] in those days, everybody did. After I got here, there was an opening on the copy desk, and his first thing was, "Well, if you want to move out of here, how about the copy desk?" And I said, "No, that's not really what I want to do, I want to go into reporting." Maybe had that in mind. It was not a bad idea, though, to get someone into that job who did have 7:00some news interest, because you [were] much more valuable in many ways, and it was fun for me, I really enjoyed it.    

BOBO: Describe your first impressions of the Courier and its news operation when you came. I mean, even though you were not actually on the floor at that point --   

SUTTON: Well, I was on the same floor, and the news operation was run out of Jimmy Pope's office, so...   

BOBO: I mean, working from the desk with the news, I meant, what were you seeing, what were you thinking as you...   

SUTTON: Oh, my. I guess I was thinking mostly, "How do I get out there with the reporters?" I don't know, I don't think I was ever intimidated by it. I was certainly interested. I used that time as a real learning time, I read the paper so carefully, and made lists of names of people 8:00who appeared and their correct titles and the spellings until I had memorized all of that. I really knew what I was doing. When I started to report, I really had a grand background to...   

BOBO: Who are some of the people that made the most impression on you?   

SUTTON: Well, there were -- it was an interesting bunch at that time. Well, there was Marian Porter. And she was one of the grand characters and talents of my time on the paper. She was then up in years, but was just a magnificent writer, a real original. Marian had been a true pioneer in women in newspapering, and greatly respected by her colleagues. Just a true original. And then Jean Howerton was on the paper 9:00at that time. They were the only two women on, anywhere other than the women's department.    

BOBO: Did you and Jean room together at one point?     

SUTTON: Yes, uh-huh. Not for very long. Well, I think about a year. Then Jean was covering education at that time and certainly very well. Mildred Lansing was the women's editor. Earl Ruby was sports editor. There were some wonderful people on the copy desk at that time: Phil Foisie, who went on to be head of the Washington Post’s entire foreign operation, he was on the desk. Jim Ausenbaugh later was city editor, state editor of the Courier-Journal and now on the faculty at Western. Elmer Hall, 10:00who was later magnificent city editor of the Courier-Journal.    

BOBO: Did anyone take you under wing at this point? So many people who served as reporters had someone that really either chewed them out to begin with, or began to teach them techniques of writing here, for this paper. Did you have any one personality that --   

SUTTON: Well, I suppose that no, I can't say that, who really kind of took me on as a project. There were two people I learned a lot from. One was John Herchenroeder, who was the city editor and had a kind of oblique way of teaching, I would say, but teaching nonetheless. Thornton Connell, who was then on the paper, and had been political reporter for many years, taught me a lot. he sat in as an assistant city editor. But I think the best 11:00teacher I had was Gordon Engelhart, who was night city editor and would sit in for Herchenroeder when Herch was on vacation. And Gordon was a very tough taskmaster and scared me to death on many occasions by taking me and dumping me into something that was really more than I could handle, but which I figured out how to do. He was an excellent teacher.    

BOBO: Does this seem to be one of the techniques that is used on young reporters - more than one has said that they were left in someone's office by an older reporter, cringing almost, not realizing that they were going to have to take over the interview. You're not necessarily talking about interviews so much as just work situations, I guess.    

SUTTON: Complicated subjects that you haven’t dealt with before, subjects that you don't even know the vocabulary. 12:00I remember one that Gordon dumped on me that was dealing with runways and that kind of thing at the airport. The first time I'd ever been on an airplane was when i came to Louisville for an interview. I don't know that it's deliberate. It could be just the nature of the business. Something comes up and you have to handle it, whether you're prepared or not. That's the generalist in all of us. Generalists are -- really good generalists - are pearls beyond price. We've got lots of fine specialists, but generalists are what every newspaper needs. I don't know that it's deliberate, I think it's just the way the job goes.    

BOBO: Can you think - still talking about say '55 to '60, 13:00can you think of what was really beginning to interest you the most at this point? What were you feeling the most comfortable with?    

SUTTON: Well, in those years, I really did everything. I was a general assignment reporter, and did everything. Politics, and features, and hospitals, and city hall, and sewer boards [laughs] and -- just everything that comes up in a daily newspaper. I suppose I was, my strongest point was writing features. I tended to be assigned a lot of the better features, I think. I really had some plum assignments. Going with the mayor and governor to Chicago when Queen Elizabeth visited there and various things. But I think 14:00that my -- it seems to me that I was better at features than at other things. I've always treasured an assessment of a tough colleague of mine, who said, "You can get a quote out of a stone." [Laughs] I thought that was a real compliment.    

BOBO: Very good. What were the circumstances behind you going and spending the summer in France, in '59?    

SUTTON: '57.    

BOBO: '57.    

SUTTON: Summer of '57, mm-hmm. This was when the International Center at the University was a fairly young institution, and they had a brand-new work exchange program going between France and Louisville. Dr. Brodschi, who was running it then, and did for many many years, was 15:00having a group of young French people over, and he was trying to find them jobs in Louisville. And he asked the newspaper if they would take on one, and Mr. Pope said, "Well, we'll take on one if we can send one of ours in exchange to France." The reason for that was that the governor - Happy Chandler at that time - was making his first moves for national office, and he was going to spend the summer in Europe to shore up his foreign credentials, his foreign affairs credentials. It was the first time, as I recollect, that a sitting governor had ever left the state and gone abroad for a summer like that. 16:00So it was a cheapie way for the paper to keep an eye on the governor while he was there, without sending a reporter to trail him around. It made a space in the budget for the paper to take on one of the young Frenchmen. It was just a nice thing. I was young and didn't mind living in squalor [laughs]. And so I went. I worked in a department store in Paris, La Galerie Lafayette, and trailed the governor around. Interviewed him on several occasions, and various places in Europe. A couple of times in Paris, and then later in London when he was getting ready to come back.    

BOBO: So that worked out really --   

SUTTON: It was marvelous, it was really wonderful for everybody. 

BOBO: You were sending back pieces, besides what you were doing on the governor, too.   

SUTTON: Yes, feature kinds of things.    

BOBO: There seems to almost be a French connection between this newspaper. Anytime anyone gets an opportunity to be in Paris, it seems there have been some really good writings coming back from that direction.    

SUTTON: Mm-hmm.   

BOBO: In talking to Molly Clowes, of course she was such a French expert, with her husband's background, etc., but it's been very interesting to me. As we move on in to the early '60s, you're getting close to the time that you're going to become an editor in the women’s section of the paper - what's happening? What transition-wise as far as your writing is concerned?    

SUTTON: I don't know that much was happening in my writing at that time, you kind of hit a plateau in reporting and unless you get into an entirely new field and so forth, you're pretty much doing what you know how to do, 18:00and at that time I was doing a lot of features. I had a couple of very challenging things happen to me at that time. One, I was doing some very large kinds of profiles on people, which we hadn't been doing for a while, for what was then called "The Passing Show" section, that was kind of a prestige, serious part of the paper. I was doing some profiles. And I really enjoyed that, it was a chance to go in depth with people. And then at that time, too, was a very uneasy period, certainly in race relations, and among the things that were happening were James Meredith 19:00was integrating the University of Mississippi. Well, my husband was covering education at that time, and they sent him to cover the integration. Norman Isaacs was then executive editor, and he, Norman was, very unpredictable and would race out into the city room and say, "You!" And "Uh-uh-uh, what now?" Well, he raced out one day about the time my husband had gone down to Mississippi and said, "You!" And he wanted me to do the ultimate profile on Mississippi. Why did all of this happen there? He wanted it for a full page on the front of The Passing Show the next Sunday. Which, this was Monday or so. I had a broken bone in my hand, I had a toddler at home, a husband being shot at in Oxford, and I said, 20:00"Why me? I've never been to Mississippi. I don't care..." So I just dealt with every piece of wire copy that came in, I interviewed every Mississippian in Louisville, I studied the history of Mississippi, the history of race problems there, and produced it. On time. So there were things like that happening, I was getting into kind of more serious things at that time.    

BOBO: Was he able - your husband - able to help you, I mean, sending back some --   

SUTTON: Oh, no. No, he had his hands full doing his job. And I had mine full at home.    

BOBO: I think it was in talking to George Gill, we were talking about this whole period, it was just like "pop, pop, pop" everyday you got up, you know, and there was a new major event going on. it had to be a very stimulating period, even though you may not agree with, of course obviously, 21:00things that were happening. Did you look forward to these types of assignments, even though you were maybe put on the spot, but?   

SUTTON: Well, you didn't know what to look forward to. It was, as I say, quite unpredictable. You really didn’t know what you might be doing. And I was covering the marches, the public accommodations marches, at that time. It's quite a memorable period for all of us. It's kind of like anybody who covered busing and desegregation - was a big news event and it was something new to a lot of us. For instance, it took me a long time, after moving to Louisville from St. Louis to realize how segregated this city was. Because in St. Louis, which was not one of the leading liberal cities, at least 22:00Black people went to the movies downtown and went to the downtown stores and tried on clothes. And I came here, and they didn't do that. Also, I was startled to learn that Male High School had only recently started taking women in the school, and I couldn't believe that. A public high school in the late 1950s? You know, that was quite shocking to me. It was stimulating, it was - to me it was  a very emotional period. It still is. I care deeply about what was going on, and tried to not let that get into my reporting, but it was... Tough time.  

  I could observe, having the freedom to move and cover things, I observed things that were happening, things the police were doing that the marchers weren't aware of. For instance, I remember a Black detective, a Black policeman, who was melding into the groups of marchers. He would get in and march around, and then he would finger the kind of leaders of the groups. And of course this was all non-violent and so forth. Then he'd melt out of there and go over to another group and melt in, and finger the people who were leading there. I had a terrible urge to say, "That guy is doing you in." But I didn’t do that, and I managed to, I think, 24:00keep my reporting fair and objective.   

BOBO: Objectivity. [Laughs.]  

SUTTON: But I was, internally, I was very involved.    

BOBO: Well, you had to stay [?] emotion, you would, as you say, and yet to report and report what you've actually seen and heard said, would be just a very difficult --    

SUTTON: And not become a participant in the event.    

BOBO: I'm sure that in some ways you lost respect for some people here, that you had thought were perhaps more liberal, and gained respect for others that you were not even aware of that had been working so hard in the community. Who were some of the people in the community that came to the forefront in your mind, as being fair and really wanting things to improve? Can you remember anyone?   

SUTTON: At that time, well, there were the Bycks, who were always leaders 25:00in a quiet way. There were the people of the Civil Liberties Union. There was Robert Weston at the Unitarian Church. And the church itself, which I made a kind of casual association with that church at that time, which some years later became a very strong association and I have since been president of the board and am quite active now. My husband's been president of the board, too. I think the people at the paper were right. Their stands were decent. I remember one marvelous 26:00scene. I was occasionally covering the school board at that time, too, as I covered almost everything in and out. The marchers were on the east side of Broadway, marching in front of one of the theaters, and that group was being led by Woodford Porter, who was then a member of the school board, and across the street, standing in front of the Blue Boar, keeping Black people out, was Eugene... what was his name? Terrible, I'm getting fuzzy. I think it's Eugene Johnson. Anyway, he was the president of the Blue Boar, and also on the school board. And they were doing battle in opposite 27:00ways, and then they would meet over the school board conference table a couple of days later and deliberate the school business in a moderate sort of way, I suppose. But I thought that was interesting.    

BOBO: Do you feel fortunate at this time, that you were on the staff of the newspaper that was known for its liberalness as far as editorial --   

SUTTON: Oh, yes! I would have had a very hard time being on a very conservative newspaper during that period. Fortunately, I didn't. Which is, I think was part of my choice of the Courier-Journal, the editorial positions that it had taken, traditionally, were certainly a positive element in my choice of the paper.    

BOBO: We'll come back to this at any time that you feel there are other things 28:00that you want to add. I'm going to move on for a few minutes to 1963, when you became women's editor, I believe. You were 29 years old --   

SUTTON: Pregnant.    

BOBO: Pregnant. Already had another child.    

SUTTON: Mm-hm.    

BOBO: What was it like to have this kind of responsibility with your other responsibilities, at home and...   

SUTTON: Well, it was very exciting. The section that I took over, became editor of, was called "Women’s and Society News." I felt that it was a very creative part of the newspaper. There was a lot that could be done there, to bring that section into modern times. It was just very stimulating. The first night after I talked 29:00to Norman Isaacs about it, I couldn’t go to sleep, because all I -- ideas were just tumbling out, about where we could go, and subject areas that had never been covered, and how to get in tune with what was happening to women. Things were happening then that didn't become obvious until maybe the late '60s or early '70s, but they were happening then. It was when the birth control pill was put on the market, which certainly made for a lot of changes in women's lives. It was a good period to have the responsibility for a creative section, a section of the paper where everything wasn't dictated 30:00by what had to be done. You see on the city desk --   

BOBO: We have to stop on this side.    

SUTTON: Okay.    [end of first tape, side 1]  [beginning of first tape, side 2]  

BOBO: This is Mary Bobo, I'm talking with Carol Sutton. We're talking about 1963, she moves into, as woman editor in the paper, we're talking about the changes that are taking place, the things that she's interested in doing as society itself has made so many changes. Go ahead, Carol.    

SUTTON: Well, at that time, the word "abortion" never appeared in the newspaper unless someone was convicted of performing an illegal one. No Black face had ever appeared in the women's section, I don't believe - certainly not in engagement and wedding announcements. It was an era of the paper where women were protected from 31:00controversial subjects, from things that might offend them. It had a kind of whiff of magnolia about it. That didn't suit the women, I don't believe, of the early '60s and heading into the mid-1960s. So it was a lot of responsibility, but it was very challenging and very stimulating.    

BOBO: I really don't remember the day on this, and I actually forgot to check on it, but at that time the particular announcements of things like this were very socially segregated, too, were they not? I remember you at one time had larger pictures of girls from more prominent families. I may be jumping ahead of my story, now, but do you remember about what time you phased that out and everyone had the same 32:00size pictures in --    

SUTTON: That was in the late '60s.    

BOBO: Was it.    

SUTTON: Uh-huh. We ran the first Black engagement in, I believe it was '63. Then, we continued with the large pictures, certainly people liked that, it was a great game among readers to "who will be the big picture and who will the little picture." It was toward the -- well, it was after mid-60s, maybe 67-8, somewhere around there. And what was happening, was Louisville was growing, becoming democratized in many ways, and those judgments were getting harder and harder to make. On what grounds do you make these judgments? And they became really more difficult. Which tells a newspaper person something, if that’s becoming more and more difficult, isn't your situation 33:00changing and maybe shouldn’t you take a new look at this. We did, and decided that that wasn't the way to do it anymore, that these were such subjective judgments. Course a lot of news judgments are, but if we were going to continue this practice of carrying all the engagements, and we felt committed to that. It was part of readers' lives to have their marriages recorded in the paper. Then maybe we better take another approach. So we went to all the same size pictures and in alphabetical order, through the section, in order that we couldn’t be accused of playing favorites. Now we prepared the readers for this by announcing it every Sunday for weeks before we made the change. They were 34:00well informed, and it did not come as a shock to them. And that was quite a big change in those days. As it turned out - I thought the roof would fall in -    

BOBO: That was my next question, what --   

SUTTON: And I just waited and shuddered and so forth. Never, never, never. I'm sure that there were people who did not like the change. But I think what happened was that the atmosphere was such that it wasn't really respectable to complain. I know that people around town were muttering among themselves, "why did they do that?" and "the paper's going to hell in in a hand basket" and so forth, but the complaints were never directed to us.    

BOBO: Well, I guess this hit about the same time that even debutante parties and things were stopped for a brief period, was it not? So --   

SUTTON: Things - the whole social atmosphere was changing. 35:00Women were certainly getting into controversial things. Birth control was a big subject. I remember one of the more controversial stories that I did. The Council of Jewish Women was having -- we were still concentrating on women and their concerns. Another thing that was happening at this time, is that it became harder and harder to isolate what were exclusively women's concerns. That was part of the changing social atmosphere. But I remember the Council of Jewish Women had a series of discussions, almost consciousness-raising sessions, I think, on the subject of desegregation and school desegregation. I covered that, and a lot of -- they were facing a lot of tough questions. This was before anyone ever talked 36:00of busing and so forth. And they were asking themselves questions. "What would I do if Black children were bussed to my child's school?" Well, that was easy for them, "Well, I don't care if Black children come in." Then they say, "Ah, but what if your children are bussed to Black school?" Well, that's harder and harder. And they were facing a lot of questions like this, and I just wrote a story about what they were doing, and got anonymous mail accusing me of being a communist and so forth, just for covering the story. But anyway, that whole atmosphere was changing, and tougher questions were being faced, and again, the lines were getting fuzzy and...   

BOBO: I want to remember, I know I was a member of the League of Women Voters for a couple of years in between school and children and working, and I want to say that they were talking a lot about the [?] plan and things like that, too, so I guess it was the same period of time. 37:00Like you said, nobody really had to make any decisions, but they were beginning to mutter about it. You know, "What are we going to do, --"   

SUTTON: Mm-hm.   

BOBO: "and how are we going to handle it," and this kind of thing. Let's jump back, just for one minute before we get off of it. On the Black announcements, had you been receiving them and just not using them? How did this actually happen?    

SUTTON: No. I think what happened, it's just one of those things that happens on newspapers. You just go along in a certain way for a long time and don't reassess. Which is easy enough to do. I mean, you can all of the sudden take a new look at something and you'll find a hole that you should have plugged years ago, but nobody ever thought of it. And I think that may have been it. I don't believe that there was a conscious effort to keep Black announcements out of the paper. I think 38:00that Black brides didn't submit their engagements because they never saw any in there. I don't recall any ever coming in that somebody rejected. I think that it was just a question of, this is the way things are done. So we went out and solicited an engagement to break that bar. As we tended to do in those days, our associations with Blacks in Louisville were usually through the head of the NAACP or the Urban League, you know through the kind of establishment Black figures. I believe we went to the head of the Urban League, maybe, and asked him to get us a Black engagement. Maybe, 39:00my recollection is we did that again and again and it took a lot of years before it became apparent. Your engagement is welcome here, send it in. And now, the flow is very free and the lines are open. But they weren't at that time.    

BOBO: Well as you said, this is a matter of record of great importance to people’s lives, and even though maybe looking at it with the total problems of the world someone may not think of this as being a great step forward, I think it's probably a bigger step than you realize, because that's something somebody's going to remember. "My engagement was in the Courier-Journal."    

SUTTON: Mm-hm, mm-hm.   

BOBO: When they don't remember whether the war in Lebanon's hot or cold.    

SUTTON: That's right.    

BOBO: They're going to remember these things. Let's see if there are some other items like 40:00this to pursue that perhaps we have not thought about, such as the Black engagements, that there was a change in the women's pages, subtle changes. What are some story topics that you decided to deal with during these years. Again I guess were talking about 63 to 69, something through there.    

SUTTON: Well, I can remember, we broke a lot of ground in those years, in an evolutionary kind of way, I think. We certainly weren't attempting to shock readers. We were trying to inform them of subjects that were important in their lives. But there were a lot of ground breaking kinds of things that happened and I remember spending a lot of weekends stirring a pot of soup and shaking in my shoes and thinking that the house is going to fall down tomorrow morning when the Sunday women's page comes out. 41:00One of the stories I remember, we did a very - the first serious look at birth control activities in the Appalachian area. There were a lot of public health projects going on at that time, and it was an important subject. I mean, those people were poor, they were malnourished, poorly fed, and family planning was one of the most important subjects in the lives of a great portion of our readers. It affected everybody in the state, ultimately. And we did a very honest, frank, serious look at those efforts, and that had never been done. And 42:00I thought, "Oh, ooo."   

BOBO: Where did you think most of your opposition would come from?    

SUTTON: Just the fact that some words like "contraception" and so forth would be in the women's pages would be offensive to - perhaps - older women readers, to rural readers. I didn't know. It was untested. I didn't know where it might come from.    

BOBO: Did you have any problem with the editors - I mean, anybody from the rest of the newspaper about writing about these things?   

SUTTON: No -    

BOBO: Executive editors...   

SUTTON: No, not really. Sometimes I'd see an eyebrow arched, a question. I remember one, this was about 1969 or '70, 43:00when the women's movement was in its earliest stages, and there was a lot of activity on the university campuses, Indiana and University of Kentucky, and so forth. I mean these young women were beginning to be heard. And that was the period when the rest of the world was regarding them as "bra-burners," when they were being really outrageous, or sounding outrageous, to the rest of the world. And as in any revolution, they overstated things and so forth. And we did a section front, I sent reporters to the various campuses. What are these women talking about? What do they want, what are they doing, so forth. So we did a pretty major piece on the new voices. 44:00A male editor said to me, "Don't you think you're overplaying this?" and I said, "No," I said, "I think we're on the threshold of the largest social change you'll ever see in this country." And he looked startled and said, "Well, okay." And indeed, that's what happened!   

BOBO: But let it go, let it go.    

SUTTON: Let it go, mm-hm.    

BOBO: Who were you sending out to do these articles? Were you sending younger women that could identify with what was going on, or were you sending men or who--    

SUTTON: We had a mix of ages and they were all women, until... I believe we integrated in '72, '71, something like that, we had our first male reporter. 45:00He was a young man who just was right in the spirit of everything. He didn't feel he had been banished to the women's department. He was excited about the subjects that we were covering. He did a marvelous job. Went on to become a distinguished medical reporter, higher education reporter, and now is an editorial writer for the Louisville Times. So we really had a mix, which I always liked on a staff because different life experiences bring different points of view and ideas, and ways of looking at things, and I think that's what our readers deserve.

BOBO: By this time, had you had -- I don't want to say a "different breed of woman" coming into the newspapers, but were you beginning to see women with a little bit different outlook, that they would prefer to stay 46:00with the "hard news" rather than again, staying with these feature articles? Could you see any resistance on the part of the - say, a woman who graduated in 1966-67, to coming into the woman's department as opposed to someone our age?

SUTTON: Well, yeah, there was - again, there was a lot, there's always change going on, and there was a lot going on at that time. The numbers of women began to grow. The numbers coming out of journalism school. In the late '50s, early '60s we had no women on the copy desk. They just weren't coming. There were the three of us that I mentioned before on the city desk. You're getting more numbers, and you're getting more serious journalists. This is beginning to happen. They're not women who are just putting in a year, wait and get married, 47:00and leave. They're intending to have long careers in the business. So you're seeing a new kind. And indeed, I remember one young lady who was sent to the women's department, and I could feel it in her presence that she resented being there. She wanted to be in the news and so forth. And as it turned out, she -- I would guess, I would say, she was more of a militant feminist type than any we had had in the section. And so I kind of assessed this, and she was not very experienced, and the real reason that she was sent to me was for training. We had a smaller operation and I could spend a lot more time with young people than most city editors had time 48:00to do. So I just set up a very tough regimen for her, and ran her, and worked her on stimulating stories, until she kind of threw up her hands and said, "Okay, you've proved your point. It's exciting work and I’m glad to do it." And she stayed with us and was one of our really best reporters, and is now the editor of a feature section herself on the west coast.

BOBO: Well, I believe it was about '72 that you changed the name of the paper, right?

SUTTON: We changed it twice.

BOBO: Twice?

SUTTON: We changed it in --

BOBO: Section, I should say.

SUTTON: -- the mid-60s to "Women's World." We dropped the "Women's and Society News," which is too bad - "society" is such a good word, and I'm afraid it's tarnished for a long time 49:00to come. I would like to bring it back as a section title of some kind, in its lowercase meaning. We changed it to "Women's World," and then it was - I guess it was '72 when we changed to "Today's Living." A lot of discussion went into that, something that you know, really ought to be a fairly simple thing was something that got an awful lot of attention. Everybody had to look at all the [titles?], all the editors and the chairman of the board, and - you know it was really a big undertaking to change that name, to take the "women" out. What happened, again we're back to "how do you identify these subjects we're covering: daycare, education, child development, nutrition, birth control" -- all of these subjects. 50:00How do you identify those as of exclusive interest to women? Even wedding news. That's not only of interest to women. We had a couple of men, who volunteered to us, "I sure like your section, I find interesting things in it. But I feel I have to sit under the table to read it, because it says 'Women's World'." It was a flag that kept readers out of the section. It turned them away. Or at least that was what we felt it was doing. And it was not an accurate description of the material that was in there. So that was when, after consensus and discussion, we came up with "Today's Living," which was never a particularly favorite title of mine, but, at least it was a little more accurate.

BOBO: Did you get any feeling from - again, the hard news people - that you 51:00might be moving into their areas of subject matter if you dropped the "women"? The word "women" from your title?

SUTTON:  Well, I guess there are those territorial things in the paper. Every section editor, "is this my story in the state, or is this an Indiana story, or is this a city story, or is this an "accent" story as it's now called?" But not very much. These were all areas that were not being covered anywhere. So it was truly subject matter that needed to be covered and was not being covered. It was new, it was things that were changing in the society. Daycare. We never heard of daycare in the mid-60s. That was something new. And these subjects just weren't being covered. So we weren't 52:00encroaching on anyone's territory. And we had the whole world to work in. It was very exciting.

BOBO: What was happening with - you obviously are involved in professional organizations. What was happening with other newspapers of the quality of the Courier-Journal at the same time, with their women's sections, or their geared more towards women's interests?

SUTTON: There were a few that were, I would say, on our wavelength. I think we were early, and I think we were pretty creative, and I think we were pretty gutsy. And I don't think we alienated readers as we went along. We didn’t just decide that we're going to be a more aggressive thing and startle everybody everyday. We did it in the flow of the news, and so forth. 53:00I think we were ahead, and there were a few others. I think the Miami Herald was doing some, a lot of these things at that time. I think the Philadelphia Enquirer, when Dorothy Journey moved in there.

BOBO: But you didn't just pick up the New York Times, say in 1968 or the Los Angeles Times, and say, "Hey, this really looks great." This was, again, something creative that happened here.

SUTTON: That’s right.

BOBO: At this newspaper.

SUTTON: I really believe that. And I was pretty much in touch with other papers at that time. It was the only old girls' network that existed, were the women's editors around the country. And they were fairly close. And pretty early on you could identify the ones, or at least I could, that I felt 54:00very comfortable with, and that we were saying the same things and trying to do the same things. One of those was Dorothy Jurney, who was the women's editor at Miami, and really was a pioneer in changing content. She went on to be an assistant managing editor at Philadelphia and has now retired. I was talking to - I don't know if you've heard of Eileen Shanahan, but she was a very excellent economics reporter for the New York Times for a lot of years, and also became rather militant on women's issues and in fact took part in a suit suing the New York Times for discrimination. She went on to become an assistant managing editor of the Washington Star and is now managing editor for news in Pittsburgh. Anyway, I was talking to Eileen about some of these things, and I mentioned this case 55:00of the male editor saying, "Aren't you making much of this women's thing?" and she said, "What year was that?" and I said, "That was 1970." And she said, "You were really early." And the New York Times was one of the last to come along. I mean now, they have a feature section, a home section, a living section and so forth that are all interesting, and so forth, and kind of set the standards for a lot of features sections, but they were very late. That's so recent. I think the Chicago Tribune was earlier than some. Sun-Times -- well, not the Sun-Times really, at that time. There weren't very many.

BOBO: Well, I'll ask this question: Did you get any opposition on the part of your colleagues out with these other papers? Did they think you might be moving too fast, 56:00or can you remember anything at all?

SUTTON: No, we didn't --

BOBO: Did they say, "I wish I could do that?"

SUTTON: Yes, we had a lot of that. There were a lot of intelligent, experienced women working in these sections at this time. They were professional journalists. Traditionally, women's sections had had women who were women in the community, perhaps, who knew the social scene. They weren’t trained professional journalists, generally. But that was changing, and you're getting more really professionally experienced journalists in these sections. And so, yeah, you're getting a different look at how you cover certain subject areas. You cover it as a professional journalist. And I think to a great extent, there were some of us who were teaching the class at that time. Again, 57:00it was Miami, Minneapolis and St. Paul were doing good things. Milwaukee was one of the early, good ones.

BOBO: Can I draw the assumption that those papers who have had a history of being liberal editorially were ones that were also moving in this direction earlier? Or was this not necessarily so?

SUTTON: I think that's true. The Washington Post was out there fairly early. Although later than some of these other papers, some of these smaller, Midwestern papers. I think that's true. I had not thought of it in that way, but I think that's true.

BOBO: So even though it may be ten years behind Civil Rights, it's moving again, as you said, evolutionary. As 58:00it's going to move with the papers.

SUTTON: Some of the papers, when they did make a commitment to changing, to opening up the content of these sections to other subjects, just went way too far too fast. All of the sudden, all of the traditional interests that had been covered previously in those sections, were tossed out. I think that was a terrible mistake, because food and people and clothing and homes and so forth -- those interests didn't go away when the other interests came in. They stayed, they were still there. Just looking at them in new ways. I think that a lot of papers overreacted and just threw everything out that they had going for them. And consequently 59:00severed themselves from their readership. I don't think we did that.  

BOBO: I'm going to need to turn the tape over in just a minute, but I was wondering, would this be a good place for us to talk about your outstanding feature on hunger in Kentucky, which I believe came out in 1972? Was this not in Today's Living, wasn't this on the front of it?

SUTTON: That's right. The idea originated in our department. It turned out to be a multi-department project. City desk reporters, state reporters, became involved. But we handled it, we originated it and handled it, and did indeed kick it off with a Thanksgiving Day section front which was an entire front-page 60:00photograph of a refrigerator, an actual refrigerator that we found in an elderly woman's house, in which the only item was a container of lard. That was all that was in there. [end of first tape, side 2] [beginning of second tape, side 1]

BOBO: This is Mary Bobo. I'm talking with Carol Sutton. We’re continuing talking about the Today's Living section. We are dealing with the series of articles on hunger in Kentucky and how this came about. Would you continue, Carol?   

SUTTON: Well, the trigger for it was that the previous Thanksgiving-time, a child or two - I think it was two children - died of starvation in Louisville. And you know, we thought, "Well, that couldn't happen in our city." 61:00And indeed it did happen. So with that in mind, we took this long, deep look at how much hunger really existed in the state and the region. The lead reporter on that story was Irene Nolan, who is now assistant managing editor for features, for the whole Courier-Journal. And she was kind of a rookie reporter at that time, but she was good [laughs] from the beginning. She was one of the new breed coming in. She had two small children, she had not finished her degree, she came in looking for a part-time clerk job. That's how she started with us, and she began filling in, doing stories, and she did them so well. In the meantime, she got her degree, worked and took care of these two babies. So it was really amazing. And then she's just been going up ever since. So 62:00that started our series, and it was a pretty stark way, I suppose, for readers to look at Thanksgiving, but I think it was pretty powerful.   

BOBO: Well, as we're saying, we're talking about a period of less than ten years where you have just completely changed the kind of - I mean, in 1963, you would have not dared --   

SUTTON: No.   

BOBO: -- to have something like this, at the time that you became the woman's editor, on the front of that section.   

SUTTON: No, that's true.   

BOBO: So you can see that --   

SUTTON: And by this time, I had quit being nervous about everything. [Laughs.] Right.   

BOBO: What are some other things that you feel particularly proud of, that happened in these, this two-year period, before you became managing editor of the Courier-Journal? 

SUTTON: Well -   

BOBO: The fashion events? I know your expose on the fashion industry was during this period, was it not? 

SUTTON: Yes. That was pretty significant, in professional history, I think. That was work I did for the Associated Press managing editors first Committee on Professional Standards, and George Gill was chairman. That's how I got involved in it. And he asked me if there weren't something in fashion, food, furnishings where there were some pretty blatant unethical things going on. And I said, "Sure!" We had, by this time, investigated our own 64:00activities to a great extent and had, I think, eliminated most conflicts of interest. And we were not covering these fashion shows because they were pretty much staged by the manufacturers of the clothing and the promoters, and the reporters were pretty controlled as to what they saw. Their copy all read alike because they were all seeing the same things, and it was as if no human being came between the event and the print, almost. So, he asked me if I would take on this project, and I did, and went to three staged fashion events in the summer of '72, as if I were a fashion reporter. I'd never covered a fashion show 65:00in my life [laughs]. And went around and took every free gift that was being offered, and took advantage of every free meal and theater ticket and cocktail party and what have you. It was an undercover job, is what it was, and I had some really bad moments in all of it. In the first place, it was hard for me to grab all the stuff - it went against all my training and my convictions and so forth. And there was a young woman in the group who was fairly recently out of the University of Missouri, and covering this for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and she and I became quite friendly, but I never told anybody there what I was doing. At one evening over dinner she leaned over to me conspiratorially and said, 66:00"Isn't it awful the way these women are grabbing all these gifts?" And I said, "Well, what do you think about it?" and she said, "Oh, I just - it's just appalling," and "I'm embarrassed," and so forth. And she came to my room one day to borrow a raincoat and the room was just stuffed with all of this stuff. She never said a word about it. So anyway, I brought it all back and figured up what it was worth, and figured up what all the meals and freebies were worth. I looked at the coverage that other papers did, and it was again this kind of sameness, and what was fed to them in the event. So that was June, and when the report came out, in November -- and I did one for our paper to coincide with the release of the report to the Associated Press managing editors -- I went out to present it in Kansas City, where they were meeting, and stopped off in the St. Louis airport, and I called her up 67:00and I said, "Say, you'll never guess what I'm going to do tomorrow." And she said, "What?" and I told her, and she, "Oh, I don't believe it! Well, it's about time somebody blew the whistle." The result of that report was kind of interesting. It fell with what I thought was a distinct thud on the profession. None of the editors seemed to get very excited to be embarrassed by the practices that were going on in the press. My biggest fan letters came from public relations people, who said, "It's about time. We're tired of all of this. The press expects certain things and we don't think it's good," and so forth. Well, but what happened then was that Watergate was beginning to unfold. Of course, we were -- the press 68:00-- was getting tougher and tougher and tougher on the government and elected politicians, which put the press in a more and more vulnerable position about its own activities. So they began looking at these revelations that were in the Professional Standards Committee report with new interest. And ethics - our own ethics -- became a much hotter item and the discussion began, and the changes began. And now, my best estimate is that maybe 80% of the daily newspapers in this country have some code of ethical conduct for their staffs, which didn't exist 69:00before. I'm sure a lot of bad practices are still going on, but at least it's not respectable, and people don't do it openly, and I think profess not to do it. But I think there's still some things going on. Anyway, that was that, and that story went on to win the Penney-Missouri Fashion Writing award, which is kind of funny. I had a lot of questions about "How long have you been covering fashion," and... [Laughs]  

BOBO: Just rose right there from the beginning..?  

SUTTON: Uh-huh.   

BOBO: There was something that I did skip, that I wanted to mention, was your articles on the Hyden Mine Disaster and the widows --   

SUTTON: Mmm-hmm.  

BOBO: -- I believe you returned to that area a couple of times, or at least at Christmas or whatever to write about what had happened to these women. 70:00In talking with other reporters that covered these particular disasters in strip mining and just the whole Appalachian situation, I don't think people have gotten emotionally involved much more in anything than they have in this.   

SUTTON: Mmm-hmm.   

BOBO: What were some of your feelings in dealing with this particular story?  

SUTTON: [Sighs] Well, I think that story affected me more than any I ever covered. The mine blew up the night before New Year's Eve, and the next morning, early in the morning, 4 o'clock in the morning or so, a photographer, Bill Luster, and I were on the road to Hyden, and hit a snowstorm outside of Hazard, at Jackson. It was just awful. It 71:00ultimately wound up I think something like 10 inches of snow in that area. We couldn't drive from Hazard to Hyden. it's a short distance on the map, but it's over a couple mountains. And so we finally got a Jeep and got over in there. It was - I still see it, the gymnasium with the bodies lying on the floor, and the little inadequate blankets over them, and the burns, and... it's just something you never get over. And from there, well I spent New Year's Eve - I remember this very well -- up on top of a mountain at David Hawpe's house. Hawpe was then bureau chief - or bureau person - in Hazard. And walking through ten 72:00inches of snow to the motel, and no telephones in the motel. Somebody standing out in the parking lot in the middle of the night yelling, "NBC! NBC! Call your office!" It was really just searing, the whole experience. Shortly after that, we finally got out of the mountains, and a lot of people were -- reporting, press-type people -- were trapped up on top of the mountain in Hazard at La Citadel, and I was down on the ground because I had taken to my feet and so I had a lot more access. Some of my colleagues came loping down the mountain the next day and found me down there and I'd already been working and they were most put out at my having had a head start on them. But anyway, I went back and interviewed 73:00the families of every one of those miners. Thirty-eight of them. This is -- it was quite an undertaking, because if you know that area, you know that it's not easy to get around. A lot of these people live up hollers where there are no roads. The weather continued to be bad. We did it in snow and rain and ice and so forth, and managed to touch base with every one of the families. We put out - and then other people were doing other aspects of the - mine safety, and so forth - and we put out a special section called "Death in the Mines," that I think was one of our better publications. I have a bias, but... 74:00But I guess I did become pretty emotionally involved with a lot of those families. And I went back a year later to see how they were getting along, and just do an update, what had happened. And I had old friends in the group. People who were glad to see me, and who still send me Christmas cards. [Laughs]  

BOBO: Do you find more of an acceptance of life and death among these people than say the general population? Are they more prepared for a overall disaster in that they, the population's so small and when anything like this happens --   

SUTTON: Well, they live with that danger every day. They know it's there. They're aware of it. They're pretty fatalistic. But there are no choices. It's the only good-paying 75:00work that they can get. So it's not any easier on them than it is on anybody else. And they're very family-oriented people. They're devoted to their families. So it's not easier on them. But they are pretty fatalistic and they are conscious of the dangers and people die in mines all the time. Just one of the scale was just overwhelming and it's size and the way it touched everybody in a large area.   

BOBO: Thirty-eight men would just - with their families -- would touch well over 200 people probably.   

SUTTON: Right.   

BOBO: I believe you had another series that you were very proud of during this time 76:00period. "Cradles of Fame," would you say the name of it is?   

SUTTON: Yep.   

BOBO: Tell us something about that.   

SUTTON: Well, it was really more fun to work on than anything I think. Or at least there were a couple of us who had a great deal of enthusiasm about it. Me, and Keith Runyon, who did most of the other articles. Keith's the one who's writing editorials now. It was a series aimed at history, the arts, travel, it had all of those elements in it, I think. What we did was go to the hometowns of famous people in our region and really kind of recreate for readers what was still there that was associated personally with these people. What you would do if you wanted to go visit these places; what you could see; 77:00a history of these individuals. Among those we did were Cole Porter; Frank Duveneck, the painter from Covington. We did Zelda Fitzgerald's Montgomery, Alabama. Warren Harding's hometown. A number of things like that. And it was really - well maybe Keith and I were the only people who were really excited about it, but we loved it. I got started on it, it kind of grew out of my wish to do something about Elizabeth Madox Roberts, the writer, one of my favorite writers, and the house she grew up in and so forth in Kentucky, and the places associated with her writing. And we did a lot of people in the series and never got around 78:00to Elizabeth Madox Roberts. [Laughs]  

BOBO: This probably isn't a very profound question, but did you find some common ties between people that had, say, been raised in small towns that were able to accomplish something, whether it's some basic things about their personalities, or their families, or was there anything that you could..?   

SUTTON: I don't recall any similarities of that kind. These were all creative people, with very different backgrounds, really. Very different roads to achievement. I just can't think of any common threads.   

BOBO: Did you wonder sometimes how some of them had been 79:00able to make the name that they had for themselves? I mean were there so many obstacles for some of them to overcome?   

SUTTON: Oh, well, sure. Well, Duveneck, for instance, who - I enjoyed doing that one, particularly - he certainly was not particularly famous in his lifetime. He certainly is now, and his paintings are terribly valuable, but he never became a wealthy man from his paintings. he just was somebody who was determined and gifted and did it. Had a funny experience on that one. Billy Davis, who has retired, 80:00photographer, and I went up to Covington, kind of retracing Duveneck's steps. He spent a lot of his time in an old bar up there. We charged into this bar, we found it by research and asking and so forth, and went charging into this bar, where the reception was extremely cold. I couldn't figure it out. I thought, "Well, maybe if we ordered a beer they'd be nicer to us." So I asked the bartender for a beer, and he said, "We don't serve ladies in here." This was a men's bar and... well, I wasn't going to be stared out, I was going to get my story before I did. But it was a very hostile atmosphere.   

BOBO: That’s interesting. Well, time moves on, and 81:00as we approach '74, I believe it was in September of '74, you were off in the jungle someplace, or --  

SUTTON: No, it was summer, it was June of '74.   

BOBO: You were selected to be managing editor of the Courier-Journal. In anytime previous to that had -- where were you thinking careerwise? What directions did you have your highest hopes that you would go in?   

SUTTON: I left for vacation in South America on the day that it was announced that George Gill was being promoted. My parting words as I walked out of Louisville and headed for Peru, were, "I'm too old to train another managing editor." It never occurred to me to think of that job for myself. I come out of an earlier generation 82:00where women didn't tend to make long-range career plans. Dumb of them, but it was, that’s the way things were. We sort of - we professional women - sort of thought if we worked hard and did good work somebody would say, "You're doing good work" and give you a raise or promote you and so forth. And frankly, I had not gone beyond. It just didn’t occur to me. No woman had ever held that job on a major newspaper. Certainly not in Louisville. There had been no women city editors, no women state editors, no women in positions of responsibility, other than 83:00the women's section. So I guess I didn't really think beyond that. And I was in Lima, and had barely got there with my family, and the telephone rang, and I thought, "Oh my gosh, who's calling me in Peru? I don't know anybody in Peru." It was the office, and the executive editor, who said, "We're considering you for this job, and we don't know whether you would take it if it were offered." I said, "I don't know if I would take it if it were offered." [Laughs.] So anyway, I called back in a couple of days and said, "Well, if you want to consider me, fine." But I never really thought it would happen.   

BOBO: Well, when they notified you were you more surprised or just, were you thinking, 84:00"What am I gonna do now? What changes do I want to make?" What were some of the first thoughts that you had?  

SUTTON: Well, I was surprised. I had my hands full. I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. I'm the tour guide in my family, and the one who negotiates in Spanish with hotel keepers and so forth, and bus drivers, and I had just started on a month's vacation, and had two smaller children then, and my husband, and me and a complicated schedule in a very difficult area of travel. I didn't have very much time to think about "what am I going to do now." I wrote a letter to the executive editor, and I said, "I assume that you want me to deal in areas of content and personnel primarily, or those would be my major things," and he said, "Yes." So I just 85:00went on and tromped through the Andes for a few weeks and came back. It was a strange beginning. The week I got back, impeachment proceedings had started for the President, the busing, school desegregation situation was in the courts and decisions were being handed down regularly. We went on from that to the resignation of the President, to the inauguration of Gerald Ford. Vietnam was still raging. Within the first three weeks I was in the job, we had 86:0072-point banner headlines most days. Having been just totally out of touch, I mean I read the newspapers in Huancayo and Quito and so forth, but no way to really be up on things. And also, I was a novelty. A real novelty. It wasn't only the internal things that were happening so fast and the news events that were happening so fast. it was the constant barrage of the press. My colleagues. They wanted to see if I had two heads. It was strange.   

BOBO: How did you, personally, Carol Sutton, react to this? I mean, you were bound to have wanted to say, "just leave me alone and let me do my job." how did you handle 87:00this questioning your ability, or whether or not you should have been chosen instead of a man? Did...?  

SUTTON: Well, I'm kind of a sucker for newspaper people. I mean, I've asked a lot of people as a reporter and an editor to do things for me, let me interview you, let me do this and that. So I felt a certain responsibility to be available, to talk to reporters, and I also felt a certain responsibility to try to demonstrate that I didn't have three heads and that I did have experience and background and certain abilities. But it was a lot of pressure. It was really a lot of pressure. Because it was trying to learn something completely 88:00new in public! In a fishbowl, with the spotlights turned on.   

BOBO: It had to be a fishbowl type situation.  

SUTTON: It was.   

BOBO: Had you been in the news department prior to this, rather than in a separate section, do you think this transition would have been easier for you? You needed the management skills that you had gotten with the other section, but I guess I...  

SUTTON: But the news flow, there’s something about being involved in the news flow everyday that's very important. That would have helped. It would have helped if I’d had any experience as a city editor or on the copy desk. See, I had never worked in the production, nighttime production of the paper. It would have helped if I’d ever been to a news conference. [Laughs.] I went to my 89:00first news conference as managing editor. So, there are certain things that would have been helpful.   

BOBO: Well, I don't want you to get into anything that you don't want to get into, but do you have some resentment that you were, maybe these steps had not been made for you, or that you had not pushed through these steps before going into a position of this importance?   

SUTTON: No, I don't think I resent that. I don't think that will happen again to either a woman or a man. But I don't feel resentful.   

BOBO: We're going to turn the tape over.    [End second tape, side 1] [Beginning second tape, side 2]

BOBO: This is Mary Bobo. I'm continuing talking with Carol Sutton. We're talking about her years as managing editor of the Courier-Journal, some 90:00of the difficulties that she found as she went into this position, and some of the things that she feels the best about, that were accomplished during her tenure.   

SUTTON: Well, getting back to that beginning period, as I say, coming out of the rarified atmosphere of the Andes. [Bobo laughs.] Another thing - my predecessor, George Gill, had already moved into his new position. So it was an empty chair there. He also was sent off almost immediately after my return to a long seminar to learn how to work a calculator. So I mean, he was going into a new area for him, too. Our transition was a half hour in the company cafeteria. [Laughs.] That was the transition period.   

BOBO: "Here are my files." [Laughs.]  

SUTTON: That’s about it. "Here are the commitments I have made, 91:00and here's some things you oughta know." And that was it. [Laughs.] It was rather hectic.   

BOBO: Well, you said that you had, in talking to the executive editors, you had said your first commitments would be to personnel and to content. How did you go about organizing yourself? "What am I going to do first?" After you get the reporters out of your room to do it.   

SUTTON: [Laughs.] There was never a period like that. Never. In addition to all these monumental news events --   

BOBO: Right!  

SUTTON: -- that were really going on, and I was trying to learn the night operation. The most famous staff member died unexpectedly -- Joe Creason -- within three weeks after I had walked into the job. I mean that was really quite a shock. And 92:00then, you will recall, mid- to late '74, was a terrible financial period. Bad recession. I was faced with budget questions that I had never handled before. And this is trimming back to meet actuals, as opposed to what was budgeted. I felt all -- and the press attention continued. And I've got an awful lot of friends in the business around, who would ask me as personal favors, "Would you come and speak to the New Jersey Press Association? And would you come and speak to the Sigma Delta Chi 93:00convention?" and so forth. So I was working five days and then spending weekends doing that. It was just really... And that never quit, those 7-day weeks, because we moved from that, with financial problems continuing, there was no way to expand, there was no way really, to work much with content, because we went from there into the school situation. Much earlier than we had expected, we got the merger, and on the heels of that, the busing/desegregation order, and there was no air. There was no money, there was no air. Everything we had was committed to covering the biggest local story in my experience. 94:00The one that affected the most lives. I got a few little things done that were then later undone. [Laughs.] A proposal I had made in 1971, that we take the feature section and give it a daily theme, concentrate on different areas on a given day, giving it a predictability, which readers like, and getting into areas of consumer affairs, home design, clothing, leisure activities, people - more profiles, more people stories. We did get that going.   

BOBO: That's your Accent section.   

SUTTON: That was the Accent section. It started out with Accent: The Consumer; Accent: Leisure Time, 95:00that sort of - that was the approach. Which, by the way, the Chicago Tribune, some years later, took up and it was hailed as innovative. And the New York Times then did it, and every time a new paper would start doing that and it would highly regarded as what a marvelous idea, I would say, "Oh that's a wonderful idea." [Laughs.]  

BOBO: You should have patented it. Copyrighted it.   

SUTTON: I should have. I should have patented it in '71, but didn't. We began into it in '72. We did add the mid-week Leisure Section. Then my idea was to just add one at a time until we had the whole week covered. In '74 or '75, 96:00we did get into that, but it was all later dropped.   

BOBO: You're talking about it being dropped. The name "Accent" of course has continued with the paper. What elements are the same, or what elements are different?  

SUTTON: Well, you don't have the daily theme. You don't have a locked-in, predictable subject area for readers on a given day. I mean, they don't know that every Monday they can pick up the paper and read about all the parties that went on over the weekend, for instance. Or, a religion story, or whatever was anchored in those daily sections. But the elements, the subjects, that I had intended that we look at on a regular basis, or that we present to readers on a regular basis, are all there. Consumer and religion and people 97:00stories and leisure activities and entertainment and food and clothing and the older people. The subject matter is all there, it's just not grouped as I had hoped and in there on a regular predictable basis. That's a very difficult thing to do, by the way. The staff, the size of staff, has not grown. And we're ever more ambitious with what we try to do, what we try to get into the paper. So having those theme sections is very difficult to do with dwindling resources. 

BOBO: It's not like you can put out Time or Newsweek and have one page of each thing each week, you've got to...  

SUTTON: Right. You really have to have somebody who's thinking that way all the time.   

BOBO: All the time.   

SUTTON: And we just don't have that luxury. 

BOBO: During this period, of course we talked about some of the big things that were happening. I believe the paper won a Pulitzer for the writing on desegregation.   

SUTTON: No, we didn't win a Pulitzer -- yes, I take that back, sorry, the photographers won a Pulitzer. We were a very strong contender, the newspaper. You can always - I've judged a couple Pulitzer juries, so I think I know how they can work. I think that one thing against our winning it is that the Boston Globe had won it the previous year for the coverage of desegregation 99:00and busing. That can work against you. I don't know. But we did win the Sigma Delta Chi public service award, which is in my book, number two in prestige, anyway. And we also won the Roy Howard Award for coverage of busing and desegregation. A friend of mine, who was a judge in the public service category of Associated Press managing editors - and we were in the finals two years in that for coverage of busing. He said to me, very sincerely on one occasion, he said, "That the work you did, you the Courier-Journal, did on busing was the best piece of preventive journalism I've ever seen in my life." What we tried to do was to get out all the information 100:00as soon as we could, to prepare the way, to keep people as informed as possible. I don't know if you remember all those maps that we did -- map after map after map -- of how the areas would break down, who would be bused where, and that kind of thing. That was a magnificent job, I think. [Laughs.] And I didn't personally have anything to do with that, other than trying to keep the paper running. [Laughs.]  

BOBO: Just getting up in the morning and getting to work had to be --   

SUTTON: Well, during the actual coverage of the busing, it was just horrendous. You'll remember the buses started out at 6 in the morning, and we were staffing 24 101:00hours. Well, we were staffing 20 hours. We were staffing a 20-hour cycle, from 6 in the morning until after the final edition at 2 the next morning. Because we were following those buses from beginning to end. We had two shifts, high schoolers going first, elementary second, and then after all the children would be safe and the buses put away, the rioters would start. They would go well into the night. It was just -- just on a personal level, my own children were being bused, and they were apprehensive. They were, and the schools were in a turmoil. I was getting them off at dawn and coming to work, and... 102:00it was terrible. [Laughs.]  

BOBO: If you're like me, you haven't gotten up later than 5:30 for the last 7 years. [Both laugh.]

SUTTON: Well I do now! I'll say, I do now. But I didn't then. After two weeks - and this was going on on weekends, too. And I really stayed with it. And after two weeks, I came in on a Saturday morning, early on a Saturday morning, and the city editor was there. At that point, he and I were the only ones who had not had a day off in two weeks, and we were very proud that we had managed to get everybody else a day off in that period. Heard this noise, and we went over to the window and looked down, and there was another march, coming our way. I said, "Oh boy, here we go again." [Laughs.]  

BOBO: Carol, looking back on the two coverages, the Civil Rights demonstrations and then the desegregation, 103:00what are some thoughts - put those two together for me. You were talking about how it was so hard to remain objective during the...  

SUTTON: Well, I wasn't on the street in '75. I was more removed from it, not in the middle. Some of the reporters who were on the street were very emotionally touched by things. They were hurt by the rejection of them, the nasty things that were said to them, and by the physical danger they were in. I mean, we had a couple of really bad incidents in which reporters were in real physical danger. So that didn't exist in the open housing, public accommodations 104:00coverage at all. I was, I guess, more personally involved because of my children. I think we were much more experienced and much more professional by the time of the busing and desegregation. I think we -- well, I know -- we threw everything we had at it. We took every resource we had, and used it. We had people coming in from state bureaus, we had feature writers. We were much better prepared. We were much more alert to the issues, I think. 

BOBO: I believe it was Barry Jr. that said that you had sent people to Boston to talk with them there -   

SUTTON: Yeah, uh-huh.   

BOBO: As to how they had covered...   

SUTTON: We went, Barry and Gill and [Bob Bernard?] - several of us went to Boston in the spring of '75. Still thinking we had another year and a half. We thought the order would not come until '76. And talked about their experiences. And of course, they had shots fired through their pressroom window and things. We learned from them some things to expect. One of the things I remember about that visit so well -- everybody sitting around talking about all of these kind of philosophical problems and so forth, 106:00and the fellow who was then, I guess he was an assistant managing editor then, Jack Driscoll, kind of a tough Irishman and who's now the executive editor of the Boston Globe, sort of leaned over to me at lunch and he said, "You want to see what it's all about?" and I said, "Yeah, I would." We went to the school in South Boston where most of the trouble had occurred, where the Irish were very aggressive and so forth, when the kids were coming out of school. And the buses were there, and the armed guards were standing all over the streets, ushering the children out of school and so forth. That was a very strong lesson to me. [Laughs.] It was really shocking. 

BOBO: Well, again, as a parent, as well as a professional, 107:00having already seen armed guards in schools, did this make it even harder for you to be objective when this happened in Louisville? 

SUTTON: I think we were very objective. I think we just were questioning ourselves all of the time about it. We had a lot of things in our experience that would help us be objective. We had drills on our own professional practices. What we did was follow our own best standards and keep reminding ourselves of them. I felt we did it very successfully. Both sides were mad at us. 

BOBO: Couldn't please anybody.   

SUTTON: That's right. It was such an emotional issue, that if you weren't for 'em, you were assumed to be against 'em. Both sides 108:00accused us of bias. Pro-busers came in with marked newspapers, and they had judged news stories as "pro," "against," and [laughs] whatever, and they had marked them in red, green, and blue. And I had all I could do to be polite to those people. I said, "How are you making these judgements? What are you trying to say, that we're against busing? Why are the busers breaking all the windows in our building?" I don't know. But anyway, I think we did it well enough that both sides [laughs] thought we were 109:00for the other side and so I think we played it right down the middle.   

BOBO: Maybe you were very successful [laughs].   

SUTTON: I really think we were. And I think it's one of the best reporting, editing, jobs we've ever done.   

BOBO: We're just going to get some wrap-up thoughts on the desegregation story here and the fact that the paper, as Ms. Sutton has just said, was run by the events, what was happening. Tell the story that you - about the –   

SUTTON: Well, back to both sides being mad at us: circulation was falling rapidly, or showing a fall. It later regained that, but the anti-busers were circulating forms for people to send in and cancel their newspaper. So these forms were coming in. And one came in from a fellow who had said, "Do cancel 110:00my paper, I don't like your stand on busing." But he had written across the bottom, he said, "Well, I really don't subscribe to your paper, I subscribe to the Indianapolis Star, but I want you to keep this on file in case I ever lose my mind and decide to subscribe, don't let me." [Laughs.] We were undergoing that, and physical threats to the building, as well. Broken windows, bomb threats in the pressroom.   

BOBO: Bad news.   

SUTTON: Bad.   

BOBO: Carol, as we move on into '76, the later part of '76, or May, there were some changes. You assumed a new position. Michael Davies followed you as managing editor. Tell me about this new position. Tell me about some of the things that you did and are doing...  

SUTTON: Well, it was fun. It was 111:00-- [laughs] I was out from under a lot of physical and emotional strain at that point. And again, kind of breaking some new ground, doing some exploration, experimentation. We were looking at the idea of the tailored newspaper. Can we tailor the content of the paper to the individual information needs of readers? A lot of things were happening. We thought we were soon going to have the ability to identify our subscribers. We had not at that point computerized our subscribers, we didn’t know who were our subscribers, who weren't. We knew that we had a lot of material that was coming in every 112:00day that was just being thrown away. We knew that there were some readers out there who want less on one subject, more on another. I did a number of things. I first assessed what material we had that was not being used. It was 65%. Then we did a couple experimental publications. Probably the dullest publication anybody ever put out: everything you ever wanted to know about that federal budget. We took all the material that was available and put it into a package and offered it for sale for a dollar or something. And we sold a thousand of them [laughs] which just, you know, kind of - or 500, I’ve forgotten. Anyway, 113:00anything over two would have startled me. That was just sort of testing our ability to put it out on a short time, to use the material, and to see how cheaply we could do it, and see if anybody was interested. Well, it was - you know, there was some interest and it was fun, and we kind of tested ourselves with it. And then we did a couple of other things. We put out the text of a Jimmy Carter speech that people bought. And then began looking at this tailored idea. Well, we really still don't have the ability to tailor newspapers on the press. The day may come when we can do that. So instead we tried an experiment, a separate experimental publication for sale. 114:00My idea was to start with foreign news. It happens to be a particular interest of mine, and it's an area where we've got so much material that we don't use. It's an area that I think there's a real built-in readership, small but intense, where we might be able to sell a special publication. The goal of all this was the hope that someday you could get the consumer edition of the Courier-Journal and your neighbor could get the sports edition, and the next neighbor could get the business edition. Someday we may still may do that. I don’t think we've given it up as a good idea. We just don't have the ability to deliver it. But anyway, we decided not to go with foreign affairs, and I’m still sorry we didn't, 115:00but to put out a consumer publication, because it has a wider interest and might give us a better look at the market than this foreign affairs. So for a year - well, we did some experimental work and it looked promising and we did some market research and it looked promising -- and for a year we put out the consumer extra. It sold separately. Had a growing subscription list. I mean we were up at 3500 - 4000, something like that. Short of the breakeven point. But, what happened? A number of things happened. Our ability to deliver it with the newspaper still had not developed. All the computerized subscriber lists had not developed. We're now 116:00two years behind where we thought we would be. So that had not developed. The original idea was to use the resources we have, so we couldn't do that. Also, we had not anticipated the frontend money that it costs to get a new publication recognized and accepted and sold. So we had the money to start, but we didn't have the money to promote, sell, and so the experiment was stopped after a year. We gained an awful lot of valuable experience, [laughs] we learned that a new publication takes more frontend money than we happened to have, and that we were early. I think again, we were ahead of our time - the whole business was so interested in it. I mean, they just couldn't learn enough 117:00about what we were learning. The publishers' association, the editors, everybody wanted to know. People were coming in here from all over the country. I think we were ahead of our time, and I would not be surprised to see the Courier-Journal putting out tailored newspapers one of these days, or a basic newspaper with special interest supplements.   

BOBO: Well, after having talked with some who are into the video techs and this kind of thing, I can't help but feel that this might be a direction that you're really going to go into with your tailored situation.   

SUTTON: Right --   

BOBO: I mean, in talking with Barry Bingham --  

SUTTON: Convinced of it. [Laughs.]  

BOBO: Right, but there are believers that this is when you will be able to pull out this information and let whoever needs what –   

SUTTON: That's why my office is still a mess. I've saved all of our numbers 118:00and that sort of thing.   

BOBO: We're not going to be able to really cover it on this side, but let's talk for a few minutes about your recruitment of minorities --  

SUTTON: Okay.   

BOBO: -- and this direction that you've gone into also.   

SUTTON: Mm-hm. Well, that's the thing I really like most about what I’m doing now. There's a strong commitment at these papers that starts at the top, to diversification of our staff, diversity on the staff. It's the moral thing to do, but it's also in the interest of the papers to do it. Diversity enriches the newspaper. No product I know of, except maybe a single piece of art, a painting or a book or something, 119:00more reflects the people who produce it than a newspaper. Because it's a world of ideas and thought and so forth, and so when you get a diversity of life experience and points of view, you have a richer mix of content, I think. That's an oversimplification, but I really believe that. So - okay.   [End second tape, side 2] [Beginning third tape, side 1]  

BOBO: This is Mary Bobo. I'm talking with Carol Sutton. We are talking about the Courier-Journal's policy in regard to the recruitment of minorities and some exciting things that have happened in the past years. Carol?   

SUTTON: As I was saying, it really is in the paper's self-interest, I think, the diversity of the background of the staff. It makes the newspaper closer 120:00to its readers, to all of its readers and not just one portion of them. We have had a real commitment to minority professionals for a long time, and we've had Black reporters and editors - very few in the early days - on these papers, since about 1964 or 5. But it would be an occasional one here and one there, maybe. When the riots hit in '68 we were not prepared to cover them. White reporters, photographers, were not welcome in the areas where things were very tense, and we didn't have Black reporters and photographers to do that for us. In '68 we began 121:00some really strong programs, minority recruitment program. We couldn't find the numbers we needed coming out of school, and so we were recruiting minority people who had no experience in journalism, but some flair in that direction, and training them ourselves. We started a high school program at that time, sending minority students in the summer to Northwestern. Those efforts paid off for a while, but a lot of those people really weren't suited for journalism. They went other directions later. And also, we came to the point where we thought, well, minority people are going in greater numbers into journalism programs, we ought to be getting them through the regular flow of the system that we usually recruit from 122:00and so forth. But we weren't doing very well. About a year and a half ago, we had four percent minority professional figure on our news staffs. So in light of the long, strong, real commitment here to increase minority employment, I was assigned to do something about it. We have done really well. Next week we'll be somewhat over 8% of our professional staff. Of course the number that we look at, we don't have any percentage goal, but a number that we do look at is that 12% of the population 123:00is Black and so it would make good sense to have something near that number reflected in the staff that covers news for the readers of this community. And we're doing very very well and have some marvelous people. We have 19 Black professionals on the staff now, on the Times, Courier and Photo. And an interesting thing to me is that -- somebody asked me if they were well-prepared -- half of them have master's degrees, and I'm sure that’s a higher figure than in the staff as a whole. So that's just one element.   

BOBO: You really don't have need, then of staff recruitment as far as women are concerned anymore, but what are your considerations as far as...  

SUTTON: Well, no, women are just 124:00naturally going to be coming in in greater and greater numbers because they outnumber men in journalism programs now. But I am concerned that our percentage of female professionals moves along to the point where it reflects the women in the workforce in this community. And I do watch to see if their positions, if their numbers in supervisory positions reflect their numbers in the staff as a whole. And they do. We don't have -- let's see, the highest-ranking woman in the news operation is Irene Nolan as assistant managing editor for features, but we have an assistant city editor who's a woman, a features editor who's a woman, on the Times, 125:00the Neighborhoods editor is a woman, there's a woman on their city desk who's not really an assistant city editor but performing that kind of function. And a features editor who's a woman. So their numbers in supervisory positions do reflect their numbers on the staff as a whole.   

BOBO: Do you think women in general are feeling good about their promotional opportunities within these properties now?  

SUTTON: That's hard to generalize about. I don't hear a lot of grumbling. In the companies, all the companies, Linda Purcell's the head of Dissly Research; got Donna Zapata, very highly-placed at WHAS; Karen Olson, who runs all the money things at WHAS - they 126:00look around and they see women in positions of great responsibility. I'm kind of, I suppose, a little off to the side, being in news administration, and I don't hear people grumbling. I would think, however, that they're bound to notice that at the really top levels of this company, all white men. Any meeting of any executive committee is pretty unintegrated [chuckles], and I don't think that escapes women's notice.   

BOBO: You suggested that we make some comparisons of what has happened with women over the 27 years that you've been with the newspapers. Take a stab at it.  

SUTTON: Okay. Well, when I came here 127:00in 1955, on the Courier-Journal, as I said there were three women on the city staff, no women on the copy desk, and the only other women were those in the women's department. Women did not work at night then, they were protected from that. Which I kind of liked -- working 10 to 7, those were the great hours. That certainly has changed. About a third of the staff now is women. They're in supervisory positions and at various levels. There is for heaven's sakes a woman in the sports department. About a third of the copy desk - a third to a half -- women. Maybe it's a half now. They're no longer protected from working nights or anything 128:00else. They're really just part of the news flow and they're all professionals. So a lot has changed.   

BOBO: We were talking off the record a few minutes ago about the difference in the support system for women working, and just from a historical point of view, I think we need to point out that, like, daycare and other things we were mentioning have changed, which has made it possible for women to stick with their jobs and to rise according to their ability.   

SUTTON: The society is slowly shaping itself to the reality, and daycare is a word that didn't exist when my children were born, or that nobody spoke of, or "daycare facilities," that was kind of a new phenomenon. Tax breaks for 129:00care for childcare. And the society is gearing itself more to the fact that there is often not unpaid help in the house. It's very different.   

BOBO: Carol, what things are going on right now with you? What projects do you have going and do you anticipate for the future? Next year or so?  

SUTTON: Right now? Well, right now I'm continuing the minority recruitment. We're certainly not as far along as we want to be. And of course, we recruit good people, and then big brothers like the Washington Post –  

BOBO: Gobble them right up. 

SUTTON: -- come in and snap them up. Which irritates me, because they're not doing their own work, as we are. We're still running our high school programs and college programs, and trying to raise our own people and some of those other papers aren't doing that kind of work, and they can certainly afford to, and I get a little angry 130:00at that. [Laughs.] So I’m continuing that. I'm currently involved in a rewrite of our conflict of interest guidelines, which apply to all the news people on the staffs. These are guidelines we've had for 10-11 years that grew out of our own ethical concerns and they're fairly restrictive. We don't let our people take part in political campaigns. We urge them to stay out of controversial situations where they might become part of the news. We are very careful about the kinds of outside work that they do, things they take money for. And all of this is in the interest of underscoring their independence as reporters, that they have no financial ties that might 131:00cause them to slant a story one way or another. It's not that we don't trust our professionals, it's really a set of standards to hold up, and to say to the public, "These are the things that we recognize and we're doing everything we can to assure you that your news is being independently reported and edited." It's a set of standards by which to hold us accountable for what we do. So I'm working on a rewrite.   

BOBO: This has to be a touchy issue, just from things that I'm aware of that have come up in the papers, with Sallie Bingham herself, and Paul [Janusch's] wife, and David Hawpe - where do you draw the line? Where does it stop? With the person who is employed by the Courier? Does it extend to the person's family? It has to be a very 132:00sticky situation.  

SUTTON: It does not extend to the person's family. And when these conflict guidelines first came up -- ten years ago, eleven -- the original draft of them, written by men, covered spouses. I argued strenuously against that, I mean I said, "You can't do that." So when they were ultimately issued - these were management guidelines -- there is one article that still covers spouses, and this is in the ownership of competing media in the area. And I am - that's not my area of responsibility. Mine is news staff. But I’m still making arguments that that come out as a flat restriction, 133:00but rather be in as a precautionary note, that it could cause problems. Because I don't believe that any of our guidelines can cover anybody except people who work here. The news department guidelines do not mention spouses, so.   

BOBO: In some ways, would you not maybe have the reverse discrimination, I can't imagine anyone getting on you because of anything your husband was involved in, but yet I think it might be more natural that people jump to any interests that the wives of various executives might - interests that they might have. Does it work the opposite way?   

SUTTON: Oh sure.   

BOBO: I mean, have you had –  

SUTTON: Oh sure, it works the other way. These are things that spouses have to work out between themselves. I have asked my husband not to do a couple of things and he 134:00has agreed not to. Because they could be embarrassing. He may not like it, but it's a working arrangement that we have between us. And indeed, when I was managing editor, there was a very hot political campaign and my husband works in education and he's been involved in a number of public issues, and in controversy with public figures, and there was a politician who was saying that the reason we were printing such nasty things in the newspaper about him was because he and my husband had had an argument. And he made sure that got back to me. I mean, it was a threat.   

BOBO: Carol, if there are not additional things, I'm going to wind down for today and let you get back to what you were doing. I do feel that we've covered a lot of area here, and as you know, the newspapers are in a period of change, 135:00as they always are, and we've tried to cover some of the important changes that have been made during the years that you have been involved in the papers and things that you particularly feel good about that you yourself had worked with. Just wrapping up the things we've just mentioned of course, is the working with minorities and the conflict of interest guidelines, which you're continuing to work on. I would like to leave this open-ended, that if at any point you wanted to add on some things to what we have talked about, or if things come up in the next year, say, that you felt would be, that we should record as far as newspaper history and your work is concerned, that you would call me, and that we would do some additional taping on this. Quite often, after people get away, they think of three things worth 40 minutes that we should have gotten into. This is part of what we do, 136:00is a continuing subject analysis on these topics. I do want to thank you on behalf of the Courier-Journal, the Bingham Foundation, and the Kentucky Oral History Commission and the University of Louisville for taking part in this. Do you have any closing remarks that you would like to make?  

SUTTON: No, I think we've really covered it all. I do want to - I just thought of one to mention that is not in there, something that gave me a lot pleasure and I think is interesting in the company since. We have been into book publishing over the years, and not terribly successfully. But you know, there's a great deal of material that's generated here that is of historical interest, and I would 137:00like to see us judiciously do a little more of this. We had a good example this past year, we took Billy Davis' 40 years of work of aerial photography, which is a unique body of work, there is no newspaper that has that kind of a visual record for that long, over that large an area. We put it in a book. I volunteered my time to do the writing on it because I thought it was important and people were kind of skittish about getting into a project that would lose money. And Tom Hardin, our photo director, volunteered his time to do the photo editing on it, starting with 20,000 pictures and getting down to a 156-page book. Anyway, we were very gratified that it sold out 138:00the first printing and went into a second printing. I would just like to see us carefully do a little bit more of this with this fantastic what is now called "database," but with this tremendous volume of material, of high-quality material, that we have here, and make it available for the public.   

BOBO: Well, I think as you've said, you've got an audience of people that do have special interests, be it Joe Creason or Billy Davis, or Ruby, or whatever, and this is part of your job, as you’re saying, to create special projects, is my understanding, is it not.   

SUTTON: mm-hmm, mm-hmmm.  

BOBO: And to come up with new ideas of how to use the material that comes into these newspapers. Well, as I say, we will be quitting for today, if at any time you want to begin it again, we'll just start all over again. Thanks a lot Carol.  

SUTTON: Thank you. 

  [end of interview]