From the editor’s desk: A short account of Robert Galvin’s long journey to the RV Times

Published 10:00 pm Friday, July 7, 2023

When you’re starting a newspaper from scratch, it’s important to have people who are versatile.

I could use many adjectives to describe our editorial page editor Robert Galvin, but being the editor of a family newspaper, I’ll start with versatile.

With 45 years of newspaper experience, Rob has worn about every hat in the newsroom closet. When I was tasked with hiring a news staff for the Rogue Valley Times, Rob was one of the first people I called, because we had several posts to fill, and he could have done any of them.

The problem was that he had retired as editor of the Mail Tribune in May 2022, and I wasn’t positive he could talk his wife, Joyce, into letting him back in the game. Thankfully she did, because Rob adds a voice to the paper and a presence to the newsroom that would be difficult to match.

Why did he leave a life of leisure to get ink on his fingers again?

“It hit me right in the core” when the Mail Tribune was shut down without any warning, Rob said. “And when this opportunity came along, I thought … it doesn’t do any good to be mad about it unless you’re willing to help resurrect the paper. I’m happy with the decision I made, because if I didn’t, I’d be sitting at home saying I wish I was a part of that.”

As most readers know, the Times began life inside the old JCPenney building as tenants of the Southern Oregon Historical Society in downtown Medford. For the first few weeks, our offices were being painted, carpets were being cleaned, electrical outlets had to be installed, internet cables had to be pulled through walls, desks ordered, etc. So we started out in the SOHS conference room, crowded around a single table, sharing outlets and extension cords and talking on our cellphones until phone lines could be installed.

“I think about those first days sitting around the conference table, sharing plugs, and I think, if it was easier, I don’t know if it would have inspired us as much to get it done,” Rob said. “What we’ve done in such a short amount of time is really remarkable. We’ve been able to reestablish something here so quickly.”

“It was like a perfect storm. There was such a resentment in the community that the other newspaper was taken away so quickly. … But no matter what we do, or the resources that EO Media puts into it, it comes down to whether readers would accept it.”

Even though Rob and I have worked together for about 17 years, I learned a lot about him over a cup of coffee Thursday.

He graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in English lit and a minor in journalism. His first official newspaper job was at the Cape Cod Times in 1979, a paper owned by Ottaway Newspapers, which also happens to be the family company that owned the Mail Tribune when Rob and I began working there a quarter century later.

“It was the best training ground I could have had, because I did everything. I worked on the copy desk, covered sports, wrote theater reviews for summer stock, did hard news, features. It gave me a grounding I didn’t get in school.”

From there his resume reads like a travelogue — the Daily Hampshire Gazette, regional editor and sports writer at the Amherst Bulletin, Florida Today in Melbourne under Al Neuharth, who had used that paper as the template to launch USA Today, the Mail Tribune in Medford.

Prior to all of that schooling and professional experience, however, the journey began at Smitty’s Variety Store on Main Street in Falmouth, Massachusetts, where 10-year-old Robert was hired to come in at 5:30 in the morning to put inserts into newspapers and get them ready for sale.

“I got a free paper, $5 and a pack of baseball cards. For a 10-year-old kid, it was great.”

He was the kind of kid who would rather watch news than cartoons.

“I was always fascinated by newspapers, no matter what it was — high-brow or low-brow.”

Through all those years, the job hasn’t changed, he said.

“You start the day with nothing, and you end the day with something. You start with a blank page and you fill it.”

The first editorial he ever wrote was for the Cape Cod Times — about the final episode of “MASH.”

Rogue Valley Times readers will be aware of his weekly column, “Thinking Out Loud.”

Even though I read it every week, I would have a hard time telling you what it’s about, so I asked Rob to describe it.

He laughed when I asked. He started and stopped a few times.

“They never go where I think they are going to go,” he said. “They never go from where I start them. If I started with an outline, they wouldn’t be what they are.”

Which is what what, Rob?

“Bob Hunter (the long time Mail Tribune editor who hired both Rob and I years ago) described them as ‘stream of subconsciousness.’ That’s pretty close.”

— David Smigelski, Rogue Valley Times editor