The Conversation: Catching up with retired Marion Star sports writer Denny McPherson

MARION - From hot lead building newspaper pages to computers doing the same, and from typewriters and notepads to keyboards and iPhones, Denny McPherson saw the width and breadth of the industry.

The Elgin grad started at The Marion Star as a part-time sports writer in the late 1970s, working under legendary sports editor John Short who would hold the position for more than 40 years.

McPherson eventually became a full-time staffer, first working in the lifestyles department and later in news.

While in Tennessee wrapping up a vacation, he got a call from the paper asking if he would be interested in returning to sports full-time.

"I said yes and they said you better get home because you come to work Monday. I said okay and I was there from '81 until 2015," he said.

McPherson was innovative, being one of the first sports writers to regularly quote high school athletes in stories. He was an enthusiastic follower of the local scene and immensely popular in the community and with the readers.

Even though he retired in the fall of 2015, he's still a regular at ballgames all over Marion County and beyond as evidenced by this story.

I recently found my oldest friend in the business working as the press box "concierge" at Pleasant before a football game and here is some of our conversation.

Q: What was John (Short) like to work for?

McPherson: He was an excellent journalist. Tough at times, but got the job done. There might have been an issue or two where a higher-up might have thought something wasn’t right, but he’d go to bat for you. If you got the work done, he was great.

Q: When you started were they still using hot lead in 1979?

McPherson: Yes they were.

Q: And then it moves on to computers and online. You’ve seen the whole gamut of the industry.

McPherson: I’ve seen the whole dinosaur from the back end to the front.

Q: Does it boggle your mind when you think back to how we used to do things to the way things are done now? You had to literally change all the time.

McPherson: You literally had to change all the time, but back then there were a heck of a lot more people employed by the newspapers and The Star was no different. And it was a big family. We’d have staff get-togethers all the time. Now there’s not enough to get together. People were really proud of their work and you could see it in them. You could hear it in the way they talked.

Q: What was your fondest memory of your whole run?

McPherson: Oh Lord, there are a bunch of them, a lot of funny ones.

Q: You covered a lot of great kids and great champions.

McPherson: I think the championships all stand out one way or another, but so do the games that didn’t really mean anything because the kids are out there trying. If you escape from the win-everything attitude and watch the kids play, a 3-5 team or a 2-7 team playing and still trying to win the football game and focus on that, they were giving as much effort as anybody else. It was fun to see that.

Q: Looking back, when did you first start talking to kids and quoting kids because you were doing that way before a lot of guys were doing that?

McPherson: I don’t know how long ago that was.

Q: Where did that come from? That’s what made you stand out, Denny. You were one to give athletes a voice.

McPherson: Somebody got the idea that maybe we could get the kids a little more involved in the stories. They said interview the kids, and I said I don’t know how this is going to be. I said we’ll give it a go. I started doing that and it made the whole thing more fun. You got different angles on stuff, and you picked up real quick about what to print and what not to print. If a kid said something like I don’t like the way my coach does it, you don’t necessarily print that.

One thing about high school reporting is you’ve got to remember who you are dealing with — high school kids. These kids aren’t getting paid to play, so I don’t think you criticize them per se. You might point out mistakes. Say there’s a kid at the line with no time left and down a point and he’s got two shots and he misses both of them. I never put the kid’s name in the paper. He’s going to remember he did it. The people who were there will remember he did it. But why make that history? It might hurt the kid. The kid is hurting enough the way it is. Leave that go and he’ll get over it in time. He doesn’t have to see it in print.

Q: What do you miss the most?

McPherson: Keeping up on things and being in the know on everything and being on top of stuff. You know how it is. We try to do that and have to do that. I find out things third-hand now, and I’d rather know it right away. I miss talking to the kids because now I don’t know the kids as much as I used to. I still go to the games. I go to a football game every week. I average about 60 basketball games a year, and I do the (score) book for Ridgedale’s baseball team in the spring. I’m around the kids all the time, but the only interaction with them is the baseball at Ridgedale. I really enjoyed getting back into that. That helps getting with the kids again.

Q: Do you enjoy your time retired?

McPherson: Yep. As long as Bill Runda keeps driving me to the golf course, I love it. He and I play a lot of golf in the summer. It’s helped me health-wise because there’s a lot less stress. As you know, it’s a stressful job. It can be. I do miss some of the interaction with the kids more than anything.

This is a new weekly feature in The Marion Star sports section. Anyone who has a good subject for The Conversation should reach out to Rob McCurdy at rmccurdy@gannett.com, work 740-375-5158, cell 419-610-0998, Twitter @McMotorsport, Instagram @rob_mccurdy_star.