The last of the old school editors

Mike Reliford embodied just about everything that comes to mind when you think about old school journalism.
And, when I say "old school," I don't mean men in suits and women in dresses and hats talking at the speed of light while chain smoking in a black and white film.
"Say, chief, what a scoop! Put me on it, whatta ya say?"
No. I'm talking about the guys and girls who pounded the pavement for years, worked their sources, did their research, knew about the principles and ethics of the business and worked their way up the ladder -- all while chain smoking and taking an occasional slug from the bottle.
Mike Reliford, the editor of The Independent in Ashland until his death this week at the age of 68, was old school.
He was everything you expected a newspaper editor to be. He had a gravelly yet somehow soothing voice that both boomed and cuddled at the same time. The only way I can describe it is as some sort of cross between Ed Asner and Donald Sutherland.
He had literally been through everything in the business, from winning awards for his brilliant writing, to having a gun pulled on him because of the way he covered high school sports.
Dropping Mike's name in strange company was a flip of the coin, because people were either going to embrace you and buy you a drink or chase you around the block with pitchforks and torches.
When I knew Mike, I could easily imagine him bellied up to a bar in an Old West saloon, piano plunking along, cowpokes gambling, hookers with hearts of gold swaying in their layered dresses.
Then, the saloon doors burst open, and some wild-eyed kid swaggers in, saying he's looking for Mike Reliford.
Mike would sigh, put down his drink and slowly turn around on his bar stool. He would raise his hat, make some remark about how he was getting too old for this, and then appraise the kid.
"Well, I haven't killed anyone since noon," he would say. "You look young, you sure you want to try me?"
It didn't surprise me at all that Mike really liked the HBO show "Deadwood."
I had my first meaningful encounter with Mike in 1999. I was scrambling for a journalism job but I didn't really have any experience aside from what I had to do to earn my degree. I couldn't get past the guy in front of Mike because he simply wasn't going to put up with someone who was so wet behind the ears.
I was working at a carpet store owned by some of my best friends' parents when the owner suggested I talk to Mike instead of the guy I was going through.
So I went to Mike.
He pondered my resume for a second, raised his eyebrows slightly and said "Well, shit, you've got the grades. You don't have any experience?"
"I thought I was going to go post-graduate in English," I said.
Mike offered me a deal.
"Go to the Portsmouth Daily Times," he said. "They're always hiring. Get some experience and then come back."
So I worked for five months in Portsmouth, Ohio, when I finally got the call up from the farm team to the show.
"Well, kid," Mike said in his gruff voice. "I'm going to take a shot on you."
I was 23 years old. As far as I was concerned, I had made it in journalism.
The Independent (or "Daily Independent" as it was then known) was a premier newspaper gig at that time.
Kentucky Press Association awards adorned the walls, proclamations from government officials congratulating the paper on its vigilance hung in stairwells. The staff was loaded with experience, including a writer who had been nominated for a Pulitzer for his work on a series of stories about poverty in Appalachia.
We were owned by a company called Ottaway, which, in turn, was owned by Dow Jones. So we could say with pride we were a sister paper to the Wall Street Journal.
These were people I could learn from.
And in the middle of it all was Old School Mike.
For the first couple of years he called me "cub" (a term for a rookie reporter) or "Young Ben," even though there was no old Ben at the business for comparison.
He spent a lot of time in his office, but we all relished in the times when the mood would strike him, and he would stride out to the obituary station in the fore of the room, lean his elbow on the lip of the desk and launch into a story about how he and Jim Todd (another great reporter and editor, who has since retired) would have a gun pulled on them in a bar across the river in Ironton, Ohio, because people weren't happy with one thing or another.
Mike also kept up the old school image after hours, when he would hit the bars. His favorite spot was a Mexican restaurant called "La Finca."
I remember one morning Mike showed up super early for work and asked me and another reporter if we had seen a police statement concerning a fight at the establishment.
"If you see that, it wasn't a fight. It was nothing," he said, and strode into his office.
My colleague and I exchanged confused glances. Nothing else was ever said about it.
I only went drinking with Mike once. Before I knew it, five hours had passed, I had missed an appointment and I was in trouble with my wife.
"So this is what it's like to be you, huh?" I asked Mike as I slouched out of the booth. He just chuckled.
But there was so much more to Mike Reliford than bravado and image.
He had a warm spot for the community he lived and worked in, and a soft spot for people in trouble.
His detractors, and I was among them at one time or another, called it "pity journalism."
When he would become concerned about how an article about a crime or a trial or lawsuit would affect the suspect's family, I would always say "Look, Mike, everyone has a mom or a grandmother or a brother or an uncle or somebody."
But he would always counter that they also had kids who would have to go to school and deal with their peers knowing about what their family member had done.
Sometimes we held names until we couldn't do it anymore. Sometimes we held entire stories. I remember being furious on those occasions. But, looking back, I was a cub. I didn't know better than Mike Reliford.
Mike had emphysema from the time I started at The Independent.
He would always talk about how it was going to take him down, but he did it with a smile and a laugh, almost as if he saw his fate and would deal with it when the time came. Who knows, the old gunslinger might even shoot down death.
My last years at The Independent were the worst. Mike could no longer make it up the stairs, and was operating out of an office on the first floor. He was on oxygen.
We were no longer sister to The Wall Street Journal. We had been sold in 2002 to an outfit that was no more than a holdings corporation for the Alabama State Teacher's Association retirement fund. They had no interest in us except how much cash we were generating.
For the first few years everything was fine, but then, little by little, we started losing resources. Some of our best reporters and at least one editor jumped ship.
Less people were doing more. Circulation was dropping.
We experienced a bit of a return to the golden age when two reporters who were friends of my wife joined us, and Jim Todd came back as a reporter.
But it didn't last.
I started to feel like it was time for me to go, too.
I shook Mike's hand on my last day, and thanked him for giving me the chance all those years ago, which by then had totalled nearly eight.
I thanked him one last time at his visitation.
I met up with many of my former colleagues, who remain friends to this day, at the funeral home. They said Mike continued to come into work faithfully every day, barring some trips to the hospital, until the end.
Mike Reliford had often postulated, elbow on desk, where he would end up after everything had been said and done.
As for me, I have no doubt God is tugging Mike's sleeve, asking to hear one more story.