Bill Robinson – writer extraordinaire, the man who dubbed Richard Petty “The King,” the man who once rolled a flat tire into the office to save his job – died last month in Alabama.
What does that have to do with this blog’s normal topic, digital news and trends? Nothing and everything. More on that later.
I, and a bunch of other now-
departed reporters and editors, spent some time with Bill (I called him Robbie then, but he also went by Billy Bob or Bill) at The Atlanta Journal (it really did “Cover Dixie Like the Dew,” like it said on the masthead) a good many years ago.
Robbie was a true gentleman, but also a true character in an era when there was no shortage of characters in newsrooms. This was a time when it was normal for your city editor to scream across the room, “John, come up here and tell me why we ought to run this piece of xxxx.” It was rough and tumble, take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’. Robbie, and the rest of us, kept on tickin’.
Sometimes he was late for work. One day his boss laid down the law: next time you’re late you’re fired. No doubt it’d be a quick and merciless firing; the HR folks back then didn’t even know where the newsroom was, much less get involved in its inner workings. One day soon, Bill doesn’t show up at his start time; the clock ticks on. The elevator door opens and Robbie comes out, rolling a flat tire: “I swear guys I had a flat tire. Here it is.” He made it for another day.
So back to the question: what does the death of a true wordsmith have to do with the industry today, the digital environment we’re in?
Robbie probably never heard of audience bifurcation, and he would have thought a “personal brand” was something only Texans had.
I doubt he ever gave a PowerPoint presentation about what he was going to do; he just did it. I doubt he ever worked a room in the insincere way of so many digi-jorno wanna-bes, halfway talking while glancing around for someone more important to latch onto. He was as sincere as they come.
What Robbie brought to the table was a reminder that content is still what it’s all about, that words can make a difference, that they can paint a picture, they can make you cry, or rejoice.
In a nice obit in the last newspaper where he worked, the Opelika-Auburn News, colleagues from years past talked about his sincerity, his genuineness, his appreciation for good reporting.
One of the writers recalled one of Robbie’s famous leads from his NASCAR reporting days, when he wrote that a car won by “running flat out, belly to the ground, chasing a hurrying sundown.”
Read that lead and tell me words don’t matter. Read that lead and tell me content isn’t important.
Thanks, Robbie, for reminding us.