Former Journal owners share paper's past
By JENNIFER WILSON
News editor
Once upon a time, Hillsboro's newspaper was printed with an aging linotype machine and a hand-fed printing press. No computers, no fax machines, no e-mail.
Those were the days of Talmadge and Laura Hiebert, who spent just under a year in Hillsboro in the early 1950s with a whirlwind stint in the newspaper business. And in the process, they were part of the merger that brought together the Hillsboro Star and the Hillsboro Journal into one entity.
The couple visited Hillsboro last week and took some time to share some memories of their brief life as journalists. They now live in Michigan.
Tal and Laura were both living in Washington, D.C., during the early 1950s as Tal did graduate work at George Washington University. Laura taught school during that time and worked as a gifted-child consultant.
Tal didn't know much about Hillsboro, but Laura did — she was a native whose father, L.J. Franz, was president of Tabor College. It was through her connections that they heard of the newspaper situation back in Hillsboro.
At the time, the town's two newspapers, the Star and the Journal, had fought such a newspaper war that both were ready to collapse. The year was 1952.
That's when the Hieberts decided to relinquish their life in the nation's capital for a year and become impromptu journalists in Hillsboro. Tal arranged to take two semesters off from his studies, and he and his wife came to Hillsboro in the fall of '52.
"We didn't know anybody," Tal said.
The Hieberts purchased the ailing Journal for a sum of $2,000. They continued to have it printed at the Mennonite Brethren Publishing House, which was located on North Main, Tal said.
But they did make one significant change: The Hieberts printed the entire paper in English. Previously, half of the content had been printed in German.
Six weeks later, Chet Ashcraft, the owner of the Star, decided it was time to throw in the towel. When they heard this news, the Hieberts decided to get some advice from a consultant at the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas.
After forking over a $100 consulting fee, the KU folks told them the solution was simple: merge.
"If you merge, you get the best of everything," Tal said.
The Hieberts proposed a deal: the papers would become one unit, and the operations would move to the Star office, which was located where the Star-Journal office is today. Ashcraft would remain the head editor.
The newly formed Star-Journal was published on Thursdays, and the Hieberts soon got a crash course in running a newspaper.
"We didn't know what we were doing," Tal said, laughing.
Both husband and wife got a taste of every aspect of newspapering. Tal wrote most of the editorials and sold ads, and Laura got news from every possible source, from who had dinner at someone's house to what the scores of the ball game were.
Laura also handled much of the photography.
"I spent a lot of time in the darkroom," she said.
Photography got even more complicated when it was time to go to press. All photos had to be taken to a lab in McPherson, where they were converted into zinc plates that would be positioned on the press.
Both agree that the job consumed much of their time.
"We spent many, many hours here," Laura said. "It was very labor-intensive."
And when it was time to go to press, the fun was just getting started.
To print a page, each individual character of each word (of each sentence) had to be formed with hot metal, then arranged on the linotype machine that was constantly breaking down, Tal said.
As the words and sentences were arranged, they'd fall into place on the machine with a loud clunk that could be heard down the street, he said. Next, the proofreader got to read the stories in their linotype form: upside down and backward.
Next, the presses went into motion — but only after a sheet of paper was inserted by hand. That process was repeated on the fronts and backs of the pages, to form an eight-page edition.
About three months after the merger, Ashcraft took over the Star-Journal completely, Tal said.
"He was a newsman from beginning to end," he said.
By the next spring, Ashcraft offered to purchase the entire entity from the Hieberts for $25,000. So after spending about nine months as journalists, the Hieberts returned to their lives in Washington, D.C., in 1953.
A few years later, the paper would be purchased by Bud and Marcella Bruce.
Looking back over their time in Hillsboro, the Hieberts call their season as journalists "refreshing."
Tal Hiebert went on to become Dr. Tal Hiebert. After earning his bachelor's degree at KU, he got both his master's and doctorate at George Washington. His M.A. was in endocrinology, and his Ph.D. was in neurophysiology.
Dr. Hiebert went on to do a medical internship at the University of Chicago before settling into a career in public health. Before he retired, he was the director of a research institute at the University of Michigan.
Laura also went on to earn her master's degree at a later date.
The couple have three sons, and all are successful in their fields. Franz earned his Ph.D. and lives with his wife in Austin, Texas. Fredrik is also a Ph.D. and an archeology professor at the University of Pennsylvania. And Rudi is a doctor too, serving as professor of epidemiology at New York University.
The Hieberts can be reached by e-mail at ak971@northlink.net.
