It was a classic scene from 20th century American journalism that is now nearly extinct from modern newsrooms – a man hunched over a typewriter as the letters of another column strike the page.
As it happens, it was just last summer. Harry Foote, the now retired editor and publisher of the American Journal, was working on one of his history columns, “Looking Back,” which still appears on page two of the newspaper.
The old American Journal office around Foote and his typewriter was mostly empty. Several years ago, the desks, chairs and stacks of paper that used to surround him moved to a nearby office on Main Street, where, under new ownership, the newspaper’s office is now located. At the age of 89 – 40 years after leaving an editing job at a daily newspaper to run a weekly newspaper – Foote still returns to the old office regularly to write his weekly column.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the formation of the American Journal. Foote purchased the Westbrook American and South Portland-Cape Elizabeth Journal from Roger Snow in the fall of 1965 and merged the two papers. He published the first issue of the American Journal on Nov. 1, 1965.
The American Journal plans to pay tribute to Foote and his contribution to the communities he covered in a short ceremony at 1 p.m. Saturday at the main stage in Riverbank Park during Westbrook Together Days.
Working ‘day and night’
Before running his own newspaper, Foote worked as city editor of the Portland Evening Express. Guy Gannett Publishing Co. owned both the Express and the Portland Press Herald. Instead of filling an assistant managing editor position, the company promoted Foote to an editing position over both papers – a position Foote called “lousy.”
“I decided at that point I’d cut loose,” said Foote.
Looking back on it 40 years later, Foote makes the decision to leave a secure job at the largest media company in Maine to buy his own paper sound easy. He had four children headed for college.
“I don’t think I realized how much courage a lot of people thought it took for him to do that,” said Susan Foote, the oldest of his four children.
Susan Foote said many of her friends’ parents thought it was a radical move. The father of one of her friend’s later cited the decision as inspiration for his own decision to purchase part of an old tourist railroad line in New Hampshire.
Susan Foote said she also didn’t realize how it would affect her father’s and the family’s life. Up until then, her father had worked fairly regular hours. The children all got to see him in the morning before he left for work, and their mother, Anne, would bring him home in the evening.
“I don’t think we really knew what it would involve,” she said. “We learned.”
Running a newspaper consumed her father’s life. He wrote, edited, sold advertisements and covered many of the local city council and school board meetings himself.
“He just seemed to work day and night. He’d come home for dinner and then go back for meetings,” said Susan Foote.
Over the years, he also got a lot of help from his family – notably his wife, Anne, who wrote and still writes a column for the paper, and his son, Raymond, who in more recent years reported for and edited the paper with his father.
Foote said his wife had a positive influence on the paper and in the community. “She was a balance wheel for me. I tend to look at things in black and white, and she sees all colors.”
Focusing on people
Foote was known for his ability to take complete and accurate notes in long hand of almost everything that was said at meetings. Foote said he learned the skill on his first job in journalism working for the Wellington Enterprise – a weekly newspaper near his hometown of Lorain, Ohio.
Foote said he believed in the importance of quoting sources at length accurately because it brought out the personalities of those he covered. He said often the people in stories get lost in the reporting.
Pete Blanchette, a former Westbrook city councilor and longtime friend of Foote’s, said he often marveled at Foote’s ability to sit in the back of a room a capture everything that was said accurately. “He used to sit in the back there, and I’d swear Harry was able to read lips because the next day in the paper he’d have exactly what you said,” said Blanchette.
Taking good notes wasn’t the only lesson Foote carried from the Wellington Enterprise to the American Journal. He remembers challenging the owner and publisher on why he wasted his time on social notes that reported on the daily lives of average people in the community.
“Social notes? People eat them up,” Foote said his editor responded.
Foote said he came to understand the social notes contained “cross currents” or common strains in people’s lives. He believed they could bring communities closer together by showing the people who lived in them what they had in common with one another.
Long after many American newspapers dropped social notes, the American Journal still carried social columns for each of the communities it covered. Foote said the best example of this was longtime Gorham social columnist Gertrude Hanscomb, who would call everyone in town about four times a year to ask them if they had any news to report. She kept track of those she had called and what kind of response she had gotten with marks in her phone book.
“I loved (social notes) and encouraged them. They’re harder and harder to get because they’re looked at as an invasion of privacy,” he said. “You’re not supposed to be a social person but a private person. Bologney.”
Getting the details
Over the years, Foote passed many of his philosophies on journalism on to writers and editors now working in the state. The American Journal has long been a training ground for young writers.
Westbrook City Councilor Brendan Rielly, who now writes an occasional column for the paper, worked there after his first year at college. Rielly, who also delivered the paper when he was in junior high school, said he remembers well working for Foote and his son, Raymond, who wrote and edited for the paper.
Rielly described the office of the paper, which was located at the time on Main Street a couple blocks from where it is now, as a “bunker.” He remembers the sound of Harry pounding away on his typewriter. The room was filled, from floor to ceiling, with stacks of newspapers and used sheets of paper. Foote always used both sides of a sheet of paper.
“I think he had a good sense that what really mattered were the people in a community,” said Rielly.
Rielly covered Scarborough and South Portland, including former city manager Jerre Bryant who is now the city administrator in Westbrook. He said he learned a lot about writing and reporting from the Footes. They taught him how to construct a story, an awareness of the length of stories, how to write on deadline and – a Harry Foote specialty – getting all the details necessary for a story.
Foote was known for his meticulous attention to details. Before Roger Snow owned the Westbrook American and South Portland-Cape Elizabeth Journal, he had worked as a reporter for the Press Herald. He once had to report to Foote when he covered a fire for the Evening Express.
When Snow returned with his notes from the fire, Foote had a lot of questions he couldn’t answer. He wanted to know what the occupants of the apartment had rescued from the fire, what their plans were, what was on the stove when the fire started, etc…
“I found out ‘my god, this guy is really thorough,'” said Snow. “He really wanted to know everything.”
Pursuing the truth
Foote, who had been an interpreter during World War II, could be dogged in his pursuit of the details. Susan Foote remembers hearing her father on the phone when he was reporting stories from home.
“I remember some interviews he did from home how persistent he could be,” she said. “He would be very nice, but just be persistent.”
The American Journal never shied away from controversy. Foote would often be critical of those in public office with whom he disagreed. The practice didn’t always endear him to those he was covering. Foote disagreed publicly, perhaps most notably, with former Mayor William B. O’Gara over O’Gara’s support of Urban Renewal.
“There were terrible pictures of dust and construction equipment,” O’Gara was quoted as saying in a 1993 story on Foote in Down East magazine. “It was so negative.”
Foote believed Urban Renewal was a case of the federal government spending a lot of money on meddling in the private market. In Westbrook, he believes, the program had disastrous consequences.
When he bought the paper, Westbrook had a lively downtown with a variety of businesses that competed with one another. “Urban Renewal wiped them out, wiped out the competition and, to a large degree, wiped out the variety,” said Foote.
Foote was never shy with his opinions. He held strong beliefs and applied them to the editorial page of the newspaper. Susan Foote said some of the crusading newspaperman in him probably came from his parents in Ohio who were strict Baptists.
“I think his family growing up he had a strong sense of morality drilled into him, of making sure things go right in society. I always had a sense that he was fighting on the good side, making sure people didn’t cheat, as a kind of a watchdog,” said his daughter.
Although Foote’s opinions and reporting on some issues occasionally upset people, others admired the way he went about reporting on the community. “He always looked to go beneath the surface,” said Mayor Bruce Chuluda. “He was dogged in his determination to find the truth and print it. That wasn’t always pleasant to a lot of people.”
Regardless of how people perceived him, Foote grew to be a legend in the communities he covered and in Maine journalism. In 1990, he received the Maine Press Association’s Journalist of the Year award. In 1999, he was inducted into the Maine Press Association’s Hall of Fame. In 2001, Foote sold the American Journal to Current Publishing, which continues to publish the paper.
“My image of Harry will always be him banging away on a typewriter on the back of a piece of paper,” said Rielly.
Harry and Anne FooteSend questions/comments to the editors.
