WALTER W. WEBB
MY CAREER EXPERIENCE
I first began writing for publication when I was in high school. Although the Louisville High School Review came out only four times a year, it was part of a high school course in journalism. Our teacher worked for a newspaper and had a journalism degree from the University of Missouri, at that time one of the top journalism programs in the nation.
When I went to college, I naturally found the student newspaper office and was put to work. The second year I was the sports editor. That experience lead to a real job with the state's largest newspaper, The Clarion-Ledger. I was hired as a sports reporter covering the Big 8 Conference high school games. My duties included manning the sports department from 3 p.m.. to 11 p.m., pulling the sports wire and making up pages for the morning editions. Football weekends were a frenzy of activity with three state football programs playing on Saturdays and game results had to be in the final runs for Sunday morning.
After a stint on active duty with the Naval Reserve, I returned to college at Ole Miss where I enrolled in the journalism program with a double major in business administration. Although I never worked for the Daily Mississippian, I was a stringer for The Clarion-Ledger covering Ole Miss basketball. I worked part time at The Oxford Eagle as a reporter covering the federal court beat. I was editor of the Mississippian magazine which had not published for several years. I was named the Most Outstanding Student Planning to Enter Community Journalism and won several photography awards.
One of the highlights of my days at Ole Miss was a tour of media outlets from Nashville to New York. We visited a high profile political advertising agency in Nashville. We went to the press room in the White House and the Pentagon. We visited the American Newspaper Publishers Association in Pennsylvania where we saw testing on the newest innovations in newspaper publishing and we visited in the CBS News studios in New York.
After graduation, I extended my journalism education by pursuing a masters degree. I completed all course work and began preparing my thesis but a job in a weekly newspaper was waiting for me. I decided to get to work and continue on the thesis in my spare time. But I never found time to complete it.
While working for the weekly newspaper, we published the largest edition in the paper's history for the Bicentennial. I had come to this newspaper with the understanding that the publisher would sell the paper to me when he decided to retire. However, newspaper chains were becoming very active in the state and the publisher got an offer he couldn't refuse. I declined to work for the new publisher and resigned.
Shortly afterward my name was put in nomination for the executive director of the Mississippi Press Association, a trade organization made up all the newspapers in Mississippi. This was a tremendous opportunity to provide service to Mississippi newspapers with seminars on all aspects of publishing newspapers. i was responsible organizing the state convention on the Gulf Coast with over 300 newspaper people in attendance.
It also put me in the position to realize my goal - ownership in a newspaper. That opportunity came when the publsher at Holly Springs had decided to sell his newspaper. I was invited to join a group to buy the property and would be the managing partner as editor and publisher.The partners were two newspaper publishers and my journalism professor at Ole Miss.
It was like jumping on a galloping horse but things had worked out for me and I was where I wanted to be. Week after week for 1,092 issues, we started with a blank page every Thursday and created a new product in a week's time. When I came to the newspaper, type was set almost blindly with only a ten inch screen spelliing out what was being typed. The rapidly moving techology required updating publishing systems every few years until we were paginating by computer and transmitting the files to the printer electronically.
After 21 years I decided I would rather work in public relations or at an advertising agency. I sold my interest in the newspaper and went about changing my career. Reflecting that what I liked most about publishing a newspaper was designing the front page, I decided to become skilled in graphic design and named my company WebbGraphics. While I was producing many high-quality brochures I was often asked about websites. So I immersed myself into learinng web design and began produced a number of websites for tourism, economic development, dental practice and hospitals.
With these new skills in hand, I joined a start-up healthcare management company to create their healthcare brand, producing brochures, websites and marketing materials. Each new hospital needed advertising, marketing and positive publicity. I also became involved with business development and wrote business plans, presentations, marketing plans, proposals, RFP responses and certficate of need applications.
My career has provided me with valuable talents and abilities, especially learning the capacity to embrace change. I always told our employees when a new system was being implemented. Change is good.