In the old days, reporters typed “-30-” at the bottom of their stories to let their editors know it was the end.
I thought about that recently when Glenn Allen Scott, The Pilot’s associate editorial page editor, announced that he’s preparing to write -30- to a career spanning nearly 45 years at this newspaper.
Scott, whose official last day is July 1, doesn’t use the word retirement. He says instead, “I am segueing to a lively new chapter in what has in many ways been a fortunate life.”
He plans to practice “independent journalism” and remain active in his church and in the community as well as travel. Did I mention he’s engaged to remarry?
“Believe me, there will be plenty to keep me busy,” Scott says.
I was a skinny college kid, the paper’s first black summer intern, when I met Scott in the mid-’60s. That was pre-computers and fax machines, when reporters and editors hammered out their stories on newsprint paper issuing from Royal and Underwood upright typewriters.
At that time, Scott was editor of the Sunday commentary section (then called The Lighthouse). He had joined The Pilot in 1956 as acting book editor and later covered, among other things, police, courts and general assignments before becoming Sunday editor in 1962.
There was about Scott a kind of glow in those days — at least as far as I was concerned. With his ramrod-straight posture and patrician carriage, Scott was an impressive figure as he occasionally moved through the newsroom, especially on the rare occasions when he wore his dress white Naval Reserve officer’s uniform.
I aped his walk for a time, and was flattered when he ran a couple of my stories in his section. One day, I vowed, I’d follow in his footsteps as Sunday editor — and I did.
Passionate is the word that comes readily to mind when I think of Scott — in those heady days of the ’60s as well as today.
There’s nothing wishy-washy about Scott’s thinking or discourse. Whether he’s waxing eloquent about the arts (he’s a patron) or politics (he classifies himself as a “progressive” who has more often voted for Democrats than Republicans), he’s got definite opinions. And he conveys them, sometimes with a mischievous, Peck’s bad boy sense of humor, but more readily with considerable depth of feeling.
Scott has had “not just a long but a distinguished and honorable record of writing about what he cares about, in particular, the advancement of his community,” says editorial page editor Alan Sorensen.
“Over the years, Glenn has opined with passion and grace — and had an impact — on countless issues. He wrote editorials about convenience store crime that helped propel federal guidelines to improve safety of convenience store clerks. More recently, his editorials promoted successfully the cause of preserving public green space on the downtown Norfolk waterfront.”
He argued for banishing cigarette smoke from airplanes, buses, workplaces and public spaces when that stance was unpopular. He pressed for restrictions on handgun commerce and a ban on military-style assault firearms, supporting the Brady Bill and former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder’s push for a one-gun-a-month limit on handgun sales to individuals.
Among other things, Scott championed the development of Eastern Virginia Medical School and the Norfolk campus of Tidewater Community College. He has also been an advocate for regionalism and the arts.
Scott’s entry into journalism was almost a natural. His parents operated The Smithfield Times, the business name for a weekly newspaper in Isle of Wight County and a printing company, and young Scott worked there.
A voracious reader, Scott recalls being “intoxicated by novels, short stories, poetry.” He read Raymond Chandler’s mystery stories and books by William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Leo Tolstoy. “And all of Thomas Wolfe’s books — which inspired me to become a writer,” Scott said.
Scott’s novel, A Sound of Voices Dying, was published by E.P. Dutton while he was a senior at Washington and Lee University. One reviewer called it “a record of youth by a young man of great talent who is taking his first step along the road to what promises to be a rewarding career as a novelist.”
I asked Scott if he has ever regretted pursuing journalism over other forms of writing.
Not at all, he says. As a writer he thinks he would have achieved a poor living at best. “I have five children, and it would have been irresponsible of me to attempt to make a living as a free-lance writer,” Scott said.
Scott finds much to admire about journalism. But he deplores journalism’s failings. “It has ever been a flawed enterprise,” he says, “like all other human endeavor. Much journalism has been and still can be shabby, mean-spirited, ignorant, bigoted, inflammatory, destructive, sensationalistic. . . .”
Journalism is at its best, Scott believes, “when it provides people with good information that helps them understand the world and their place in it and helps them in practical ways.”
He says: “The Virginian-Pilot was the Scott family’s favorite newspaper during my growing up years, which explains, in part, why I’ve stuck with it for nearly 45 years. So The Pilot is an old love. But it’s time to go.”
