Interview with Guy Hatfield III

The following is an unrehearsed interview with Guy Hatfield III, publisher of the Estill County Citizen Voice, Estill County, Kentucky. The interview was conducted by William Berge, for the Oral History Center of Eastern Kentucky University. The interview was conducted at Mr. Hatfield's office in Irvine on April 2, 1979, at 10:30 a.m.

Berge: I want to thank you...uh...for allowing me to come up here this morning, Guy. It's a...Monday's a busy day in the newspaper business, I know, you're just beginning to get it all together, but...uh...if you don't mind, I'd like to ask you some personal questions first. Uh... Like you tell me your name and where you were born and when and all that kind of business, and we'll go from there.

Hatfield: My name is Guy Hatfield. Technically I'm the third, but I don't use it very much. I was born in Gary, Indiana, uh...April 19, 1950, so I'll soon be 29.

Berge: Uh-huh. How come...uh...you ever got in Kentucky if you were born in Indiana?

Hatfield: Well, both my parents were from Kentucky, my dad is from here in Estill County. My granddad ran a store here for forty years. And when he died, my grandfather, in 1960 we moved from Indiana here. My dad use to be a history professor at Indiana University...

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: ...and then got into market research and was working for Real Estate Research Corporation in East Chicago.

Berge: And that's why you were in Gary?

Hatfield: That's correct.

Berge: And, your father's name was Guy Hatfield, and his father's name was Guy Hatfield.

Hatfield: Yes.

Berge: What was your mother's maiden name?

Hatfield: Baker. She's from Clay County.

Berge: What's her first name?

Hatfield: Lucy.

Berge: And her parents' names?

Hatfield: Aaaahhhh.

Berge: You know?

Hatfield: George and Lilly.

Berge: Uh-huh. Do you know where in Clay County she was...

Hatfield: Yeah. They were in Oneida. She used to teach school at Oneida Institute.

Berge: Your mother?

Hatfield: My mother did.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And my uncle is county clerk in Clay County and has been for thirty- two years. Uh... One of my uncles there. He was a prisoner of war in World War II. Another one of my uncles in Clay County just retired. Was principal of the Oneida grade school.

Berge: Uh-huh. In fact, I saw his picture in the paper. They had a...sort of a...

Hatfield: A big wing ding.

Berge: Big. Yeah.

Hatfield: Yeah.

Berge: I was up there last week interviewing some people, and I saw a picture of it. And...

Hatfield: And my...

Berge: Mallie Bledsoe and the whole bunch were there.

Hatfield: That's right.

Berge: Yeah. Let me just ask you this, where'd your mother go to school?

Hatfield: My mother....uh...went to school in Clay County and then graduated from Berea College.

Berge: Berea College. And where'd your dad go to school?

Hatfield: My dad graduated from Eastern and got his...

Berge: And did he go to Estill County schools?

Hatfield: Irvine High.

Berge: Irvine High in those days.

Hatfield: That's...that's when they had two high schools. I graduated from Irvine High School.

Berge: OK. You were one of the last, I guess, weren't you?

Hatfield: There was two or three classes after me. That's right.

Berge: And then he went to Eastern?

Hatfield: He went to Eastern and...

Berge: When did he graduate Eastern? Do you know?

Hatfield: '46. He...uh...was interrupted. Uh... He planned on being a dentist...was a biology major. And, then, when he got out of World War II, he...uh... finished up in that and then got his master's degree in history and started teaching.

Berge: Where'd he do his graduate work? At Eastern?

Hatfield: Indiana.

Berge: Indiana. Now tell me, where'd he and your mother meet?

Hatfield: His roommate in college after World War II was my mother's brother.

Berge: OK. So, they...

Hatfield: And her first husband was killed in World War II.

Berge: Hm-hum. So, they never...they didn't meet in school or anything...

Hatfield: No.

Berge: ...they met that...that way.

Hatfield: No.

Berge: All right. Now, uh...how old were you when your family left...uh...Gary?

Hatfield: Nine, almost ten.

Berge: Do you have any recollection of that at all?

Hatfield: Oh, yeah. Very much so. I remember a lot the kids I was in school with, and I remember moving down here.

Berge: Do you remember your teachers?

Hatfield: Uh... For the most part.

Berge: Uh-huh. What are you...what are your recollections of the move back to...uh...Kentucky?

Hatfield: Well...

Berge: Were you disappointed to do it? Or were you glad to do it?

Hatfield: Well...I...I thought...I thought I was more advanced in school than they were here. I wanted to be jumped a grade. Came down here in the middle of the fourth and I...after attending class a day or two I said well I'm way ahead of them and I'd rather be in the fifth. And, wanted to move on up. And...

Berge: Did they do it?

Hatfield: No. No.

Berge: You ever regret that? Or...

Hatfield: Well, I don't know of any...

Berge: It worked out all right.

Hatfield: It...it did fine. But, uh... I...I really did think... In Indiana then it was...and I assume it still is...it requires you go to kindergarten, something that Kentucky is just now getting into. And, I think that gave us a big jump.

Berge: Uh-huh. So...uh... But, aside...aside from that...were you...uh...

Hatfield: Well, that...I was...

Berge: What'd you think about coming back to Kentucky?

Hatfield: Well, the only times I'd been to Kentucky, of course, were to visit kinfolk, and I used to have a very sensitive stomach.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: And, when I hit these country roads, I use to get sick as a dog.

Berge: Oh, I thought you were going to say something about fat meat. [Both laughing]

Hatfield: And, I could not stand these curvy roads...

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: ...because in...in Gary there was only one hill and that's where they had to have the Soap Box Derby...

Berge: Yeah. Uh-huh.

Hatfield: ...things. And it was just...I just wasn't use to all these curves and hills and stuff. And they use to make terrible fun of me, but I've gotten over that.

Berge: Yeah. When...uh...why did your dad come back here?

Hatfield: Well, my grandfather ran a store here in Estill County and started in 1920. He was...it was called Hatfield's the Railroad Man's Store. This use to be a very big railroad town. And, my grandfather worked on the railroad. And, then, they had...uh...a rule that you couldn't moonlight doing anything else. Well, he's always been sort of a...hustler, I guess, for lack of a better term. And, he was selling watches to the men...to people on the railroad. Well, they fired him, which was probably the best thing that ever happened to him because he started this store. And, the whole time, the forty years even though he was fired, he paid his union dues from then on.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And, he...uh...uh...he hustled. He...he did pretty well money-wise.

Berge: In other words...

Hatfield: When a lot of people...it was a blessing in disguise getting fired from there.

Berge: Because the store... He really made a lot of money in the store?

Hatfield: That's right. Plus, he... during the Depression he had some...used to loan money. He...uh...he bought quite a bit of property during the Depression when money was super tight.

Berge: Well, did your dad come back to run that store or...?

Hatfield: He came back to run the store.

Berge: Did he?

Hatfield: And...for a couple years. And, he just couldn't...

Berge: That's sad.

Hatfield: ...do justice both of running a...the store and...uh...trying to do research work from here and commuting to Chicago. So, he...he sold the store. And...not the building or whatever.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: He did sell the store and went back to work for Real Estate Research Corporation until 19...oh...65...66 when he started his own research company. We got...

Berge: But, you all didn't... You and your mother didn't move back up there to...uh...Gary or anything?

Hatfield: Oh, no. No. No. We...uh... My grandfather died in...uh...January, and we moved here...uh...sometime in February.

Berge: And you stayed ever since.

Hatfield: We...we've been here since.

Berge: Uh-huh. Guy, when...uh...when you were in...uh...high school, did you ever have any idea that early that you might go in the newspaper business?

Hatfield: None whatsoever. The only journalism course I've ever had in my life was whenever I was a freshman in high school. And, that's it. Uh...and no...no inkling whatsoever about going into...uh...into journalism.

Berge: What did you think you might do? Politics?

Hatfield: Well...

Berge: Yeah. I know you always were interested in politics.

Hatfield: I...I was in college. I got interested in politics.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: And, I've run for things, I guess, all throughout my life. I guess that's an ego trip for everybody to want to do this or that. But, I was...been involved in Boy Scouts for twenty years, and I enjoy the leadership roles, this kind of thing. And, that's really how I got into the newspaper business is I was... I started out as an accounting major. I decide...I was planning on being a lawyer.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And... After I got hold of some of Eastern's finest, uh...I decided I'd better get out of accounting. So I got into political science, and whenever I was a junior, I guess, in college, I...I used to help ghost write some editorials for The Eastern Progress.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And...because some of the journalism people that were suppose to know about meetings of student government, would sit through an entire meeting and then ask me after the meeting...

Berge: What had happened.

Hatfield: ...what went on.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And, I would have to explain to them and give them background information of why this happened and why that happened and who voted against that and why that. And, they just...they said well why don't you help us do a story?

Berge: [Laughing]

Hatfield: Well, I would help them...help them in being kind is saying...but I did. I worked with them some on that. And, then I got to looking a little closer to my county newspaper situation. I said, well, I'm interested in government...what's going on with my government. Well, I didn't have any idea, and certainly couldn't tell from the newspaper articles. And, when anything was in there about the government it was taken right from the minutes.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And...from experience I've found that people that take minutes of meetings don't put in anything controversial whatsoever.

Berge: For a number of reasons. One, it's very hard to write. For one thing.

Hatfield: I'm sure that's true.

Berge: And, uh...secondly, it's just...it's...it's just...uh...better for the organization if you don't.

Hatfield: That's right. They...they might say they had a discussion of something...

Berge: Yeah. Yeah.

Hatfield: ...where it may have gone on for two hours and became almost violent. But, that was...

Berge: That's really your first...real experience.

Hatfield: That's when I started thinking about it. That's right.

Berge: Well, tell me Guy. What year did you graduate Eastern?

Hatfield: '72.

Berge: '72. And when you graduated, did you come right back here?

Hatfield: Yes... Well, yes and no. I...I graduated in August, and sometime in June or July, I guess, I ordered my equipment to start the newspaper. But, I knew it would not be in until ...uh...December. They promised me about November, but it didn't make it in until December.

Berge: Was there a paper here?

Hatfield: Yes. There was a paper here. It was...uh...well, in 19...give you a little background...in, in...19...

Berge: Yeah. Let's talk about that.

Hatfield: ...in 1968, there was a...there were two newspapers here. They were merged together. Uh... It was bought out by Bill Matthews and...uh...Newspapers Incorporated. Uh... Merged the two newspapers into the Irvine Times-Herald. The two newspapers were the Irvine Times and the Estill Herald. Uh... That's right.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Uh...there were two news...so he merged them together into one weekly publication. Uh...they ...they own now probably fifteen to sixteen newspapers in Kentucky and southern Indiana, but they have since been bought out by Landmark Newspapers...of...uh...

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: ...uh...Virginia, I think.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: But, uh...

Berge: Well, whatever happened to them here?

Hatfield: Well, in 19...January of '73, I started the paper here called the Citizen Voice.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And, in September of 1975, I bought them out. And, we ran them as two papers for a couple of months and then merged them in January of '76 into the Citizen Voice & Times.

Berge: Uh-huh

Hatfield: And, we've been running them...uh...like that since that time.

Berge: Why did you...uh...decide to go into the newspaper business when there was a paper here?

Hatfield: Well, because...I guess I had thoughts of...that that would be a good political power base.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Being able to have a newspaper. And, I tried to buy out the other paper, and they wouldn't even return my telephone calls.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And, uh...the week before I started here they offered me a job to work for them at $80 a week. And, I said, well, it's a little late since I've already ordered about $15,000 worth of typesetting equipment.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Uh...so I gave it a run. I never had any idea it would be as tough as it is. Because, it...I use to play golf three or four days a week. And, until last year I did not hit one golf ball. I was working...

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: ...70 and 80 hours a week [unclear].

Berge: Let me just ask you this. Did you also think it would be as successful as it's been?

Hatfield: No. But, that...

Berge: You said...you said the business is harder and better than you had thought it was going to be, isn't it?

Hatfield: That's right. But, it was...it came to the point where no matter what they priced the paper to me in 1973, financially I would have been better off to pay it than to fight them competitively for a couple years because all you do then is wind up paying the same price plus you've lost the money in the meantime.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Uh...There has been papers threatened to come up and start against me, even as recently as this last month.

Berge: How come?

Hatfield: Uh... Political differences. They...they...

Berge: Would they be Democratic papers primarily? Or...?

Hatfield: Yeah. The county judge here...uh...

Berge: (?Patch?) McClanahan?

Hatfield: (?Patch?) McClanahan. Yeah, Ralph McClanahan. He doesn't feel that we give him a fair enough shake.

Berge: Do you think you do?

Hatfield: I think we bend over backwards...

Berge: OK.

Hatfield: ...uh...to...to be fair.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Uh... He...he has an ego that won't quit.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: He...just an insatiable...or... If he was named...uh...head ass of National Donkey Society, he would want it touted.

Berge: Um-hum.

Hatfield: Uh...he just...he can't get enough certificates and...

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: ...and...honors. And, then he wants all of them made...

Berge: Public.

Hatfield: ...uh...public.

Berge: Through the paper.

Hatfield: That's right. Through the paper. And then declaring it...uh...National Soapsud Week or...

Berge: We have a county judge who that's all he does is get his picture in the paper. He doesn't do anything.

Hatfield: Well, uh...well, there is where....there's an awful lot of that in Kentucky where former sheriffs because they can't run again...in Madison County, run for the county judge seat? The same is true in...uh... Jackson County.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: That county use to be...

Berge: What's...what's McClanahan's background? Well, of course, I'll find that out today when I talk with him.

Hatfield: Ummm.

Berge: He's sort...he's...he's sort of like...uh...uh an armchair historian or something. He thinks of himself as being...

Hatfield: He...he thinks of himself that as far as the Kentucky River is concerned.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: He wrote some sort of little eight-page whatever...

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: ...and claims he's an author. But, um...his family has...has for the most part been pretty hard working family.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: They got...uh...were in the theater business. Uh...McClanahan's son used to be...was my first patrol leader in Scouts.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Um... He used to live right across the street from me by the way. Uh... They did pretty well money-wise. They had a...it was...a thing they called McClanahan Enterprises.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: They were into quite a bit. Well, then they got into the grocery business and lost their shirt and went bankrupt and...

Berge: Where was that?

Hatfield: That was here.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: They started a grocery store...it was a subsidiary of...Gateway, I think...

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: ...it was called Key Market Stores.

Berge: Oh, yeah.

Hatfield: It's where A&P is downtown. It's where now...

Berge: Yeah. Yeah. I know where it is.

Hatfield: ...is their...was their location. They owned two theaters then, a drive- in...

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: ...a laundromat...uh... Well, they got in the grocery thing and they lost their butt. And, Ralph left town for a couple years, went to work in Florida until he could get, I guess, get his feet on the ground and came back. Uh...

Berge: How long has he been a county judge?

Hatfield: He was elected in '77.

Berge: OK. Let me get back to you now. You... So, when did you buy them out?

Hatfield: September of '75.

Berge: Tell me this, Guy. Uh... What do you think are the plusses and minuses for...uh...chain... Well, first of all. Uh...Let me get this clear. When I talk about your paper and I use the term community newspaper, do you think that would be appropriate way to describe your paper?

Hatfield: Oh, yes. Very much so.

Berge: OK. When...what are the plusses and minuses when we're...for a community newspaper to be associated with a chain or to be locally owned?

Hatfield: Well, the plusses of being...well, you've got almost unlimited capital to back you up, where...

Berge: If you're in a chain?

Hatfield: If you're in a chain. If you need...if you get competition you can bring in additional manpower. If...uh...uh...you have to cut rates to fight the competition, you don't have to worry about folding up and...uh...that I think is a big plus. Plus they can also give you management that maybe you couldn't get on a...if you owned it yourself.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: They're going to have people and computers and...uh...that are...had experience that might could help you out an awful lot. Uh...the single ownership part would be that...uh...uh...just like any...oh...business that you call the shots yourself. You've...uh...you don't have to report to a higher up. It's...if you're happy and there's money in the bank, everything's fine. Uh... We would like to expand some, but we don't have the capital to just go out and...and not be afraid of losing fifteen, twenty thousand dollars in a year.

Berge: When you talk about expand, you mean expand your plant here?

Hatfield: Well...

Berge: Or...

Hatfield: ...not necessarily expanding...

Berge: ...you mean expand say to other counties?

Hatfield: It...there's going to come a time in the very near future that if...unless they have a...a super duper market, that there...a newspaper won't be able to exist unless they own several newspapers because of the economics.

Berge: In other words, you can print on the same machinery four or five papers and not even hurt yourself.

Hatfield: That's correct. I mean you've got...

Berge: You have machines sitting...

Hatfield: For the cost...That's... Sitting idle...

Berge: You have machines... Sitting idle... Uh-huh.

Hatfield: That...uh...plus you couldn't...if you own several newspapers in the same vicinity you can offer combination buys to your larger advertisers. Uh...your...

Berge: And increase advertising.

Hatfield: Larger chain... That's right. Larger chain groceries.Your K-Marts. And...

Berge: Maloney's and that kind of store.

Hatfield: Yeah. That type thing. That, uh... You say, well, I've got these three newspapers and we cover X amount of area.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And, if you'll advertise with all three we can give you a lot better rate then we could if you only advertise in one.

Berge: Uh-huh. And, even though that one...one of those...you don't have a store in that town, enough of those people will come here to make it worthwhile to...

Hatfield: That's right.

Berge: ...to the advertiser. Well, how do you think...starting off the newspaper business being relatively ill-equipped. I...I don't mean ill-equipped with ma...machinery...I don't know...I don't know anything about your machinery. But, ill- equipped in the sense that you didn't have a lot of experience. You...uh...you actually beat a chain newspaper here. How'd you do it?

Hatfield: Being a local boy. I couldn't...if I'd hired the people to compete against, I couldn't have had better people to do it because they were incompetent in being kind.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: One was...uh...a fellow that had been in the newspaper business since 1920, and he was from the old letterpress days of hot metal. And, he knew absolutely nothing of...uh...the new printing methods...uh...of offset. And, he was secretary of the Kiwanis Club. And, a lot of which the lead story would be Joe Blow is speaker at the Kiwanis. And, he was...uh...notorious for getting the minutes of meetings. And, he was not sports oriented, so therefore the newspaper was not sports oriented.

Berge: So, in other words, you just think you put out a better newspaper.

Hatfield: I think we did.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: It was. There again it's tough because the...the women that make a newspaper go because they go out and make the purchases took the other newspaper because they had the grocery ads.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: Uh... They knew we were coming in to start a newspaper. The equipment man ran off his mouth, so before we could put out our first issue they gave away a brand new car in a subscription drive. So, they had everybody and their mother signed up for the paper...

Berge: How'd they know you were going to do it?

Hatfield: ...for two and three and four years.

Berge: How did...how did they know...how did they know you were going to have a paper?

Hatfield: The equipment fellow that I ordered my equipment from...

Berge: Oh, told them.

Hatfield: ...told them, said well, said there's going to be a new newspaper in Irvine.

Berge: [Laughing]

Hatfield: And, so I...I...there wasn't anything I could do but sit around and let them sell those subscriptions.

Berge: You could have tried to win the car [laughing].

Hatfield: Well, I passed on that.

Berge: [Laughing] Well, tell me what happened when you started. What...what was you circulation when you started?

Hatfield: Uh...well, the first couple weeks we gave it away to everybody in the county.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: The first paper we put out, and it also turned out to be...the first issue January 17, 1973, which ironically turned out to be the birthday of the competing editor. Uh... we started out that night, uh...it was a Monday night, we were putting the paper together...we had never put together one. We said well, we were going to have eight pages. Well, about 10 o'clock...

Berge: Did you ever...did you... Had you ever seen anybody put one out...or?

Hatfield: Yeah...well, we'd...we'd...looked at other people about how they do it.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: We visited Richmond and Winchester and some other places. And, we...we had a general idea of how to do it. But...uh...our graphics was terrible, but at the time we thought they were great. But, we started out thinking we were going to have eight pages. About 10 o'clock, we decided, well, we can't go eight, we've got to go 10. Well, about 3:30 in the morning, we decided we were going to have to go 12, and we had to be at the printer at 8 o'clock in the morning. So we were up all night long, and took the paper to Winchester to print it...all 12 pages. And, we printed...uh...forty-four hundred copies, I think.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And...it was a very proud moment for me to see those papers rolling off the press.

Berge: I'm sure it was.

Hatfield: I just thought it was... And, each succeeding week I kept thinking it was getting much better. Uh... It may have been. But, our...the first week had 12 pages, and the next week we had 10, and eight, and then it went back to 12. We decided we were going to run 12 no matter how much advertising we had.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And, I can remember several weeks of when we had less than $300 worth of advertising, which didn't even come close to paying...well, yeah, I guess it paid the printing bill.

Berge: And, that was about it.

Hatfield: That was about it. I did not take a salary up here for over a year. If I needed $5 for cigarettes or soft drinks or something I'd take it. But, there was a staff of three when we started. My brother and myself and a girl that set the type, sold the ads, and kept the books.

Berge: Um-hum.

Hatfield: And I think I started her out at $80 a week or something. And, I just thought it was terrible having to pay anybody $2 an hour. I just...said I just can't afford this. But, we made it. And, we worked very hard on building up our circulation. On getting...uh...grocery accounts and whatever. And, the other newspaper, whenever I was starting to buy them out, looking at their books, they went from a profit of $23,000 in the year that we started, because of circulation...

Berge: That'd be '73.

Hatfield: ...circulation income...to a loss of $2,000 the next year. And...corporations have a way of which...if it's not making money and good money, we're going to unload it. So....they started making a little bit of money while we were in negotiations there.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: So, they thought the paper was worth a little more. Uh... But, bought it. In another four years and three months hopefully it will be mine.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: But, if they...they financed it themselves.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: After...uh...the usual 29 percent down payment.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: But...uh...after that's out of our way, you know, I can see some light at the end of the tunnel. But, since I've been here, the most money that I've personally made out of this newspaper was $7,023. And, people say, ahhh, you make a lot more than that in the newspaper business. Well, I don't...

Berge: Except in value of the buss...of the paper.

Hatfield: Except... That's right. Except the value of the paper.

Berge: Now, I'm sure the value of this paper has increased incredibly.

Hatfield: Oh... It's...it's worth twice now what I paid for it.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: Because...

Berge: Is that including the...starting it and the original and...and buying the other paper out? Do you think it's worth...

Hatfield: Well...if it would've...if I was to set a...a value on it in industry accepted value of the paper in that sense, it is worth twice what I paid for it in 1975. Uh, newspapers to a large extent is like real estate. There's only so much of it.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: There are newspapers started. But, like in my situation, one either absorbs the other...

Berge: Uh-huh. I mean this is a one town newspaper, and that's all there is to it.

Hatfield: That's right. Well, 98 percent of the communities nationwide are one newspaper towns.

Berge: [Not clear] one town newspaper.

Hatfield: They...they may gripe about it and say this is horrible, why doesn't somebody else start one. But, the economics of publishing...

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: ...are such that you...for the most part, there are...there's one newspaper. But, where there are two newspapers in Kentucky, it's usually because of political differences.

Berge: Uh-huh. And somebody's picking up the tab for one of them. You can...

Hatfield: That's right.

Berge: ...rest assured of that. I guess.

Hatfield: That's right. And, sometimes they're only for a particular election.

Berge: Oh, yeah.

Hatfield: Like in Laurel County there was one...the Pittsburg Free Press.

Berge: That's right.

Hatfield: That was started, and it's lasted about a year and a half. And, after the election and whatever, then they...

Berge: Got burned out, too.

Hatfield: Well, I...I don't know about that. But...uh... The guy's parents that started that used to work for me.

Berge: Joseph? Jacob?

Hatfield: Ken Moore.

Berge: Yeah, yeah, I know who he is.

Hatfield: Ummm. He works for Laurel Grocery now in charge of advertising of this [unclear].

Berge: Yeah. I live near there. You know, I live in... I have a place in Laurel County. I know something about them. The...uh...did...was there any time before you bought this other paper that you started getting any of the ads though?

Hatfield: Oh, yeah. I was getting...we...

Berge: You were making inroads into...

Hatfield: Oh, yeah. Some of the other advertisers were like taking week about. And, some of the advertisers were just advertising with both of us even though it killed their soul budget wise...uh...to do that. But, yeah, we were making quite a bit of in roads.

Berge: Guy...what's your circulation?

Hatfield: In-county or total?

Berge: Total.

Hatfield: Total circulation is about seventy-one hundred.

Berge: That high. What's it in-county?

Hatfield: It's about forty-three hundred.

Berge: You're about like that Casey County paper. Everybody that moved out of the coun...moved out of state wants to get the paper.

Hatfield: We've got...We get letters from people when they renew that say they haven't lived here for thirty and forty years...

Berge: But...

Hatfield: ...and still take the newspaper. Say they know very few....may not be one paper a month were they'll see a name of anybody that they know.

Berge: My mother still gets the weekly from Pennsylvania.

Hatfield: We have an awful lot...

Berge: And, I haven't lived there since '49. You know? And she still gets the weekly from there. Do you...uh... Do you get many letters telling you that they think the paper's improving and all that kind of business? People write that way...

Hatfield: The first twenty-one weeks, I think, that we had the newspaper...

Berge: You're talking about after you bought them out?

Hatfield: The original. No, no...no.

Berge: Oh, the original paper?

Hatfield: The original paper. I think for twenty-one straight weeks we had a letter to the editor talking...telling us how much they appreciated our efforts in this town.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: The last couple of years, letters to the editor have just fallen off tremendously. People don't want to take a stand on anything.

Berge: Well, they're... and...of course, they're use to you now and they don't feel like they have to jack you up any either.

Hatfield: Well, that's...well...now that...I'm sure that's possible. But what letters we get...uh...occasionally we get a rip roaring one, and we got one this week. That...they're from...uh...publicity chairman of...uh...Arthritis Society...

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: ...whatever...thank you for your publicity and all this kind of thing.

Berge: Do you print those?

Hatfield: Oh, yeah. We print 'em as long as there's a...

Berge: They're signed?

Hatfield: They're...they're signed and...we'll print 'em. We got one last week that...uh...was challenging one of our editorials on several points. And we printed. They...uh...insinuated...it was an industrial group and they chall...they put in a plant here...and they said that if we didn't print their letter they would not expand any further in this community. So we printed their letter. Not that that would have made any difference...

Berge: Um-hum. Yes.

Hatfield: But, I thought that was a little unfair...

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: ...them saying whether there would be future employment in this county is dependent upon whether we printed their letter.

Berge: Hm-hum. That...uh...let's see, I think I'm getting close here. Yeah, I want to...wait a minute... [Tape stopped and restarted]

Berge: But you...you think that they're probably... just people are becoming less involved...or what? Why would you...

Hatfield: I just...I just think that this whole country has just become sue crazy and they're afraid of...uh...putting... We get letters in...they're...that we use as really as a news tip. But, they won't sign their name...concerned citizen and that kind of crap.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: But, they won't put their name to it. I...I just...but, it's...it's industry wide. It's just not here.

Berge: Yeah. Have you been...have you been sued since you've been here?

Hatfield: Naw. We've been threatened to be sued.

Berge: Hm-hum. But, that's...

Hatfield: Hundreds of times.

Berge: ...that's common, isn't it?

Hatfield: Well, the county judge was going to sue us a couple weeks ago.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: He wanted to sue for a million dollars. But, so far I haven't received any papers. So, I'm not nervous...

Berge: What was he going to sue you over?

Hatfield: Well, we were saying that...uh...well, I'll give you a cup of coffee with the paper. It was this Visumatic Industrial Products, which makes parts for IBM. It's located down the street here a couple blocks.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Well, when they were...they moved into the old National Guard Armory.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Which was deeded to the county whenever they built the new one. And...with the previous administration they were talking about paying a $10,000 a year, somewhere in that ballpark, rent for a five-year lease. Uh, well, when McClanahan took office, they got the building all right but got it for a dollar a year. And, we were saying that there was an awful lot of politics being played with the hiring of the employees up there. And, we asked them for a list of their...uh...employees. And they refused. And, I said well, they have a right to do that. And, they told us... They did tell us they had forty-eight employees. So, we went out and investigated...uh...who worked there. And, out of the thirty-seven that we were able to identify as working there, thirty-five of them were Democrats.

Berge: What's the ratio of Democrats to Republicans in this county?

Hatfield: Well, here... Well, that worked up to a percentage of ninety-four percent.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Well, this county is forty-four percent Democrat. And, we said we think that's hardly a coincidence.

Berge: Of course, Democrats are harder workers, Guy. And, that's the reason they picked... [Laughing]

Hatfield: Well, now. But, I've also been told that Democrats...Democrats needed jobs.

Berge: Yeah. [Laughing]

Hatfield: And, all Republicans are...millionaires...and are hard working...

Berge: Already had... are rich and they're working. Yeah. Yeah.

Hatfield: But, uh... That's one thing I argued with my political science teachers about.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: Political science teachers are notoriously bleeding liberal Democrats.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: And, I don't think I'm a...a Barry Goldwater or anything. But, I...I ver...I challenged quite openly and it...it cost me grade wise while I was in Eastern, about ...uh...saying that I hate generalizations that all Republicans are rich and all Democrats are poor and this type thing. I said I can take you into Estill County and show you some of the poorest people that live and they're diehard Republicans.

Berge: Well, Jackson County is...not a Democrat in the county hardly, you know?

Hatfield: Jackson County is the largest Republican registration percentage-wise in the nation.

Berge: I know that. I know that. And, one of the poorest counties in the nation, too.

Hatfield: That's right. That's right. But...uh...

Berge: So, really the letter to the editor you were talking about is really related to the same thing that you're talking about now.

Hatfield: Yes.

Berge: From that...

Hatfield: Well, it was...as...as it turned out it was a continuing drama. We wrote an editorial. Then Visumatic responded to it by letter. And then we responded to their letter. And, we haven't received any more on it so I think that... But, we were in...we were just saying that the fiscal court has not made any attempt whatsoever to save any money.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: That...uh...they're...they're hiring all their political cronies and giving them jobs that really...they don't do anything. And, one of these days when revenue sharing is whacked off, which is being done to a degree now, the county is going to be bankrupt and so are the two cities.

Berge: Um-hum.

Hatfield: But...uh...they've not...they just looked upon revenue sharing money as a federal gift. And, hooray, we don't have to raise taxes. So, therefore, they haven't...

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: ...raised taxes. In years.

Berge: And, so nobody in this county's really paying for anything.

Hatfield: That's...that's what it amounts to.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: That almost all the employees in the courthouse are on revenue sharing. Well, they...anti-recession...

Berge: They're CETA? Well, uh...

Hatfield: CETA. CETA workers. Uh... Almost all the policemen in Irvine are CETA workers and this type thing. The...the last legislature...

Berge: So it's...

Hatfield: ...abandoned...uh...judge pro-tems.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: Just said we're going to abandon that position. Not in Estill County. The judge has a judge pro-tem. Who just by coincidence is his brother. And...the...the previous county judge told me that he spent sixty to seventy percent of his time trying cases.

Berge: And there are no cases to try now.

Hatfield: Speeding cases. That's right. There are no cases to try. And, he had two employees...

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: ...in his office. Well, now McClanahan has got twice that.

Berge: Four employees.

Hatfield: Employees. Uh...

Berge: And, no cour...and no cases to try.

Hatfield: And, no cases to try. Plus a pro-tem. Uh...they made him fire his...uh...nephew from the ambulance service because they said that was nepotism.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: Because his name was McClanahan. But, uh...his, uh...sister-in law works there. Because her name is something different, the federal boys didn't catch that. And...

Berge: How'd he get elected?

Hatfield: I could just go on and on. Well, he...he ran against somebody that...uh...said what was on their mind. And, the people didn't go along really well with that.

Berge: Uh-huh. Would he be re-elected?

Hatfield: Uh...well, let me finish my story that I was starting up.

Berge: OK. OK.

Hatfield: See, he beat me. See I was the one that ran against him.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: So maybe I'm prejudiced in...in talking about him. But, uh...no, I don't think he's got a prayer of being re-elected.

Berge: Um-hum.

Hatfield: The last three county judges...this county is notorious for...yeah, we'll elect 'em, but they damned well better do something for me or we're going to get rid of 'em.

Berge: Yeah. Yeah. Are you going...you going to run against him again?

Hatfield: I don't know. Uh...I...It's really too early to say.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Sometimes I really get keyed up about doing it. And then sometimes I say...ahhh.

Berge: Um-hum.

Hatfield: But, you know, that goes back...that's what I was trained to do. I was in public administration. I...

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: I enjoy that. I mean, that's... really the challenge has left the newspaper. There's nobody to compete against now...

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: ...besides myself. And, I get tired competing against myself. So, that's...that's where I've either thought about going in to another newspaper or...or looking at something else to do. But, uh...the last three county judges have all been beaten in their...in their own primary. Not the...the final election.

Berge: Um-hum.

Hatfield: Uh, so the...the people around here are very fickle.

Berge: Um-hum.

Hatfield: And...people that...that worked very hard against me in the last election have come up to me and say, you know, forgive us. You know, run again and we'll elect you.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: You know, McClanahan's the lieingist son-of-a-bitch that ever... [Both laughing]

Berge: So it's just...that's the kind of stuff that happens up here.

Hatfield: Yeah. So, you know, I don't know whether I'll run again. I...I...

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: I've been encouraged to run. But, I've gotten married in the last month...uh...again, my first wife died. And...uh...so, I don't know. Sometimes...I mean... It's...it's two years off. I really don't know. But, the reason that I think that we've been overly fair to McClanahan in the newspaper is I knew if we started out as soon as he took office giving him hell, people would holler sour grapes.

Berge: Um-hum.

Hatfield: That...uh...You're just mad because you didn't...uh...you didn't win, and you want to give him a hard time. Well, he's been in office a year and four months. And...up until the last couple weeks I think we had been overly fair to him. I mean there was things that we probably should have commented on editorially, but didn't...uh...but it just got to the point where I have put up with sss....I just...I just think that the county was being overrun by McClanahan because he didn't think anybody would say anything about it, challenging...

Berge: Of course, you probably feel that you have a responsibility to do it, too.

Hatfield: That's right. That's one of the reasons I'm saying I...I waited.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: And I...and I...I had people calling me after the first editorial and say...you SOB. Said, we thought you'd been bought out by McClanahan, because we know they've been thieving from us and you wouldn't say anything about it.

Berge: Yeah. Yeah.

Hatfield: So...I just said, well, I said we're a newspaper. We're here to...to comment on public things and...and to educate people of the county about what is going on. And, if those people...raise cane and say sour grapes, I'm sorry. But, I think we've got more of an overriding responsibility to the...to the majority than we do to the...what I call pimps of McClanahan.

Berge: Let me ask you...this is...this is kind of a hard question to answer, I think. But...as the...uh...publisher of a...of a newspaper that's got some sort of public responsibility, I guess you feel that...uh...you have ...uh...certain responsibility to the county to print all the news that's fit to print and all that kind of business. And...a certain amount of responsibility that way. But, does that ever go the other way? Because of your responsibility to the community is there ever a time when you think, well, even though I know this, we could print this, it would be better if we didn't. Do you ever decide not to print something you know?

Hatfield: Yeah. We did that on a...on a...uh...electrical generating plant that we knew was looking here for a site.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: That would have employed...uh...uh...2,000 employees during a construction of six years. And, after it was built then it would...uh...employ something like 200. Well, we need jobs around here. And, in the past there has been industrial groups look here, Sylvania for one and some others, that...that were very seriously considering Estill County. Well, word got out that they wanted a particular piece of property. The real estate all of a sudden jumped five to ten times.

Berge: It's criminal.

Hatfield: So that...they said well, if they're going to come here. And, there are only a very few people that control the majority of land in this.... Most newspapers have real estate listings out the butt.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: We've got two brokers. And, one of them runs a...about a $8 ad a week. [Knock on door]

Hatfield: You want a story some time. That'd be the one to get. Where you have city employees that...those are your sanitation workers...they come into your building, pick up your garbage cans, taken them out, and bring them back in. You don't have to take them out back or any of that stuff. Hell, they just walk right on in.

Berge: That's something, isn't it?

Hatfield: That's so...that's $3 a month that they add on to your water bill. I've never found anything like it anywhere.

Berge: No. No.

Hatfield: And, it doesn't matter how much you've got. If I decide to clean out the old newspaper files and I've got three ton of newspaper, they'll just stay here until they get it all carried out.

Berge: For $

Hatfield: For $3 a month. Doesn't matter what you've got. They come twice a week. Mondays and Fridays. Like...they will just walk in and come get the garbage can...

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: ...and take it out there. And they're very good about your...uh...trash can liners.

Berge: Huh.

Hatfield: They'll save them if you want. If they just need to fill two, they'll put it back in there for you. Neat and everything.

Berge: That's great.

Hatfield: Minimum wage.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: OK. What were we talking about?

Berge: You...were talking...

Hatfield: [Unclear]

Berge: Yeah. We were talking about...

Hatfield: I'll tell you about the plant.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: We knew they were looking here. We discussed it. And, said that we will sit on it until...uh...we called them and they confirmed it that, yes, they were looking here. And, they said they would...uh...let us know so that we could make an announcement and all that kind of thing. You know, we like scoops as well as anybody I suppose.

Berge: Oh, yeah.

Hatfield: So, we sit on it for about two months. And, then...uh...the honorable judge down here decides he's going to make the announcement that they're coming here.

Berge: So they'll say...that he can say that he got it.

Hatfield: Yeah.

Berge: The plant.

Hatfield: So he can say he got the plant. And, it was...uh...They took an option on several county [unclear] sites. They...they finally purchased some property in Clark County, but they won't say for sure that's where they're going to build. They have to have something like forty-three separate regulatory permission slips before they can build.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: But, it's going to use something like two and a half million tons of coal annually. And, it was a mixed bag. Yes, we could use the jobs, but it depends on how they're going to bring the coal in.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: And, we also heard they were going to truck it in. And, I'm not real interested in having a hundred and fifty...

Berge: Coal.

Hatfield: ...tandem trucks.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: And, especially the site they're talking about is less than a mile from the high school, which is the same road they have to travel, and it is very narrow. And, I just could see one of those Mac trucks breaching a school bus.

Berge: Oh, yeah.

Hatfield: Uh...so, I had mixed feelings about them coming here. But, it...they may or may not come in.

Berge: You don't think they will though?

Hatfield: Right now I think not.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: But, I think we will get an economic spill over because it's on the Estill County side of Clark County.

Berge: Some of your people will work there on the construction anyway.

Hatfield: Oh, yes. We have people that live here that work as far away as Frankfort.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: And drive every day. And just all kinds that work in Lexington.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Square D and IBM and... This is very much a bedroom community.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: Richmond and Winchester and Bluegrass Ordinance and Avon. And just... early in...five and six o'clock in the morning...

Berge: They're burning up that road between here and Richmond aren't they?

Hatfield: That's right. That's right. You'd think there's been a bomb set off or something.

Berge: Yeah. I travel some early coming this way. Uh... What do you think...uh...is the thing this county needs the most? [Pause] If you could give this county anything it...you could...and, you know, let's say you had the power to give it anything you wanted to, what would you give it? Jobs? You mentioned that two or three times.

Hatfield: Jobs. OK. Jobs is very, very important because we have an awful lot of people that are underemployed the ones that are employed.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: And... But, there's also...I wish there was some way to break up the number of people that own so much land. Because they just control everything, and you have no way to break that up.

Berge: I use to come up here and watch them sell those mountain farms from those courthouse steps.

Hatfield: Hm-hum.

Berge: That was... Same guys bought it every week.

Hatfield: And, the road situation especially because of the last three winters has just destroyed the roads.

Berge: Do you think there's enough stuff for young people to do here?

Hatfield: No. There's noth... That's one thing that I got on the previous county judge about whenever I beat him in the primary. It was that there's no funds expended for recreation in the budget. And, so far there's been none in McClanahan's budget.

Berge: Who was that guy you beat in the primary?

Hatfield: Bobby Rose.

Berge: Where's he work?

Hatfield: He works for the Commonwealth Attorney now.

Berge: Who's that? What's his name?

Hatfield: Mart Mainous.

Berge: Oh, yeah. Somebody...one of my people talked to him this morning.

Hatfield: Talking to Mainous or Rose?

Berge: Rose.

Hatfield: He was the previous county judge.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: I beat him in the primary by one vote.

Berge: One vote!

Hatfield: Well, I like to look at it that I beat him worse than that.

Berge: It was worth the $3. [Both laughing]

Hatfield: I beat him on the machines by ninety-six votes. But, he beat me on absentees, which is an entirely different story that I don't want to go in to.

Berge: Were you living in Richmond when I ran for city commissioner?

Hatfield: What year was it?

Berge: I can't remember. It's a long time... it's about that time. Maybe it was right after you left. But, anyway, I...I ran because...uh...of something happened and I decided to...uh...raise heck with...uh...with Virgil McWhorter who was the mayor. And, uh...it was over...uh...city commission. I like the city commission form of government...

Hatfield: By the way, my dad went to school with Virgil McWhorter, and he said he was an asshole then. [Both laughing]

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: If that tells you.

Berge: Well, anyway...Virgil... I...I ran and...uh...four...I finally got into the run off, there were eight of us got into the runoff for four seats. And, then...when the votes were counted the night of the election I was third of the eight.

Hatfield: Hm-hum.

Berge: And, when the absentee ballots came in I was fifth.

Hatfield: Well...

Berge: So, I didn't get on the city commission. So, it was about the same kind of thing with you, except that...

Hatfield: Well, but twenty percent of the people of this county that voted absentee.

Berge: Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, you can imagine how many voted when I went from third to fifth.

Hatfield: Yeah.

Berge: You know...there were...there were a lot of absentees.

Hatfield: Well, I was ahead by ninety-six votes on the machine. And, he beat me...

Berge: Won by one.

Hatfield: ...and, he beat me on absentees by ninety-five.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: But, they were just so blatant with the absentees it was just unreal.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: You could see that they'd been steamed open four and five times.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: There was names marked off...

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: ... and the other ones checked. But, according to the great law that we have, it doesn't matter. They say, well, the guy could have changed his mind. Yeah, he could have all right. He didn't anymore know what went on than the man in the moon.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: I could give a nice college lecture on the art of...of how to steal votes by the absentee method.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Because I've certainly seen it done in [unclear].

Berge: Yeah. It can happen. Tell me this. This is a...this is a question. Let's say that you and I went to college together somewhere years and years ago. And, finally after I became retirement age I came to... back to visit you in this little town and I had three or four days to stay with you. And, you asked me what I'd like to do and I said, Guy, you know what I'd like to do. I'd like for you to take me around and introduce me to the two or three or five or six or eight or ten, however many it took, but introduce me to the people in this community, and when I say this community, I'm talking about this county. I'm not just talking about the two towns. Intro...Introduce me to the people in this community who really make it run. Now, in other words, I don't just mean the people who do get the things done in this community. I also mean the people who keep things from getting down in this community. In other words, you know that it takes just as much or more power to keep things from happening then it does to make them happen. And so...and you don't have...I don't even particularly care for you to do it judgmentally. In other words, I don't want you to tell me, well, I like what this person does and I don't like what that person does. But, just tell me who those people are, by name if you will, if not by name, by some kind of way to identify them. So like...like...

Hatfield: Well, I don't care...

Berge: ...I'd know if they were businessmen or farmers or...

Hatfield: Well, the Commonwealth Attorney Mart Mainous is very influential.

Berge: He's a Democrat. No...

Hatfield: No...he's...

Berge: ...he's a Republican. That's right. He's a Republican because your former works for him.

Hatfield: Uh... And he was uh...

Berge: Is he young?

Hatfield: Fifties, early fifties.

Berge: Fairly young then.

Hatfield: He...uh...oh...on a personal basis, he was...uh...very hot for Rose. And, after I beat Rose he worked very hard against me.

Berge: You mean in the general election?

Hatfield: In the general election. And, didn't care who knew about it. Uh...

Berge: Will that hurt him do you think politically?

Hatfield: To a point, but there's nobody to run for these offices.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Uh, because they...there's so few lawyers around, and they've all got their own little office dug out and nobody really challenges that.

Berge: Yeah... Yeah. Yeah.

Hatfield: Well, I mean there's commonwealth attorney, county attorney, and district judge and a couple to be defense attorneys for those who go before those guys.

Berge: [Laughing]

Hatfield: And that just about takes it up.

Berge: Who's the district judge for this?

Hatfield: Billy Wilson. He's the one that ran again Mainous that last time he ran for commonwealth attorney.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And, he's a Democrat. And, in the district that Mainous runs in, Estill, Lee, and Owsley, the registration is very much Republican. Well, uh...Mainous almost lost the election, and he's originally from Owsley County. Uh...because he was run...it was his third term as commonwealth attorney and so Wilson ran for district judge unopposed.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Uh...but Mainous is one of the king makers. He can...uh...

Berge: He's a real important man in other words.

Hatfield: That's right. He...uh...

Berge: Who would you rank up with him?

Hatfield: Uh...the Democratic patronage man.

Berge: Who's that?

Hatfield: J.W. Henderson Jr. His brother...

Berge: That's because of his power with Frankfort and jobs?

Hatfield: His Frank... Now, there's a very big power structure, I mean power struggle, going on now between McClanahan and this fellow. Because McClanahan being a Democrat claims that since this is a Republican county he is so influential...uh...that he wants to take care of the patronage from Frankfort and Washington. And... There's been a big struggle about who's going to be the McBrayer chairman. McClanahan wants it and Henderson doesn't want it but he doesn't want McClanahan to have it.

Berge: Hmmm. In fact, if I was a Democratic I wouldn't know whose...whose side I wanted to be on right now.

Hatfield: Well, that's where I can't understand McClanahan. If he had any sense politically would say...

Berge: Stay out of it.

Hatfield: ...I'm for the winner, and I'm going to support the ticket and go on. But, no, he doesn't care who knows about he's for McBrayer. And, there are people who supported him that are on other tickets that are damn well pissed off about it.

Berge: Yeah. Let me ask you something. And, this is...this is sort of an aside. But, do you think that Brown...uh...elected your man when he came in the race?

Hatfield: That who did that?

Berge: Do you think John Young Brown really helped Nunn that much when he came in the race?

Hatfield: Oh, yeah. I think so.

Berge: Yeah. That's the way I read it.

Hatfield: Uh...I think, because I think it, whether they'll admit it or not, it took a heck of a lot more votes off McBrayer than anybody else.

Berge: Yeah, well, and besides it...it...the one person it didn't hurt is Mrs. Stovall, but she's the one person that can't win the general election.

Hatfield: That's the way I feel about it.

Berge: That's the way I read it. I don't think she can win a general election. I think she's got her 25 percent of the vote and that's all she's going to have in...

Hatfield: But, 25 percent of the vote now is a winner in the primary.

Berge: Yeah, but it's not going to be in the...

Hatfield: In the fall.

Berge: ...in the general election. [Laughing]

Hatfield: That's right. Because, uh...Happy Chandler's hot for McBrayer and nobody can ever accuse Happy of...uh...always voting the Democrat ticket.

Berge: No.

Hatfield: Louie Nunn never would have been governor.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Uh... That's the reason that...uh...I-64 didn't leave Frankfort to Lexington until after Nunn left office. They damn sure run it through Versailles.

Berge: Yeah. Yeah.

Hatfield: That was the payoff there.

Berge: Yeah. Yeah. All right, so...

Hatfield: Back to Henderson.

Berge: All right...you name...you named Henderson now.

Hatfield: OK. Now Henderson's brother is connected in the real estate business. He's a broker. And along with R. W. Henderson and Joe Nolan, they control several thousands of acres in this county. And prime acreage.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Uh...river bottoms and big farms and whatever.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: And they're also both directors of the new bank in town. So, they can control mortgage money as well as...uh...the land that they have. So, I would think those two real estate people have an awful lot of influence. And...and the brother of one of them is the patronage man and has been since Wendell Ford's...

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: ...uh...administration. And, Ma...like I...Mainous. Let's see, who else would I consider wheeler deal...uh...Harry LaViers, who owns...

Berge: How do you spell that?

Hatfield: L-A-capital V-I-E-R-S. He came...he came from Paintsville. Oh, probably...well getting close to twenty years ago. And, is owner of Southeast Coal Company here. And, they have mines in Letcher County and whatever. And, he is...uh...

Berge: Is he politically active or just economically?

Hatfield: Economically, but he will also contribute financially. He doesn't...

Berge: To any special group or anybody?

Hatfield: Well...to...uh...anti-union candidates.

Berge: Republican or Democrat?

Hatfield: Republican or Democrat that's true. Uh...and...uh, but's he's basically a Republican and will consider pretty...contribute pretty heavily to the Republican races.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: But, because of the economics and so many jobs that even unskilled labor...uh...out there they start about at nine something an hour.

Berge: Um.

Hatfield: Uh...so that...their payroll is just a tremendous influence on this community.

Berge: Hm-hum. Hm-hum.

Hatfield: And they're thinking about doubling the size of their plant.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: But, he's a genius in his own right and as an engineer.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: He's got lots of things that he's designed that are used industry wide.

Berge: Is he good for the county?

Hatfield: Very much.

Berge: Uh-huh. So he's a pro...progressive...

Hatfield: But, see there's...there's no coal mining in this county. They bring it in from Letcher County on coal cars that he used to buy for next to nothing and they were wrecked. This was before there was a premium on coal cars. Well, now he probably owns several hundred coal cars that they reworked out here in Irvine, and now he hauls his own...has his own coal cars, which brings the cost way, way down.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Uh...And whenever there's a crunch on coal cars for these other companies, hell, he just empties his and goes back and gets more.

Berge: Yeah. Yeah. He's got it whipped.

Hatfield: Uh...He's a very progressive thinking fellow.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: And, he's done an awful lot, I mean as far as contribute...he gave $75,000 to the county to build a swimming pool if they would come out with another $75,000.

Berge: Did they?

Hatfield: Yeah. They got a...a Outdoor...um...Bureau of Outdoor Recreation. Yeah, I guess that's what it was. BOR grant.

Berge: Any other people like this? Or...

Hatfield: Uh...

Berge: More powerful? How about any physicians? Or, uh...

Hatfield: Physicians...

Berge: ...dentists or anybody like that?

Hatfield: Well, I would think a...I would rather have personally in a political campaign some grocery store owners for me than just about anything.

Berge: Uh-huh. Are there any of those guys active?

Hatfield: Uh...yes. Uh... They're in and out of the grocery business. So that's the thing. They set, you know, they get 'em...

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: ...and set up in another part of the county, build up a base, and go somewhere else. Uh...Larry Riddle.

Berge: Who's that?

Hatfield: He...uh...owned a grocery store over on the Richmond Road, it was a...couple miles out. He's out of that grocery now. But, the Riddles come from a se...well, he's a very...controls an awful lot of Democrat votes. Uh... A section of the county here called Pea Ridge that just...everybody's a Riddle or married into it. And...whoever he decides he's for in an election, and he happens to be for Thelma Stovall, that's the way that precinct goes.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: 'Cause he just flat hauls them out of there. And, up until they changed the law, absenteed the hell out of 'em, they never knew how they voted. Uh...so he was pretty much a powerful old crow in through there, in that section of the county. Uh...

Berge: Who owns the most of the property in this county?

Hatfield: Well, besides the...the Nolan Henderson real estate people, I guess the...the biggest land baron is a fellow called Preacher Arvin.

Berge: Who?

Hatfield: Preacher Arvin. A-R-V-I-N.

Berge: What's he?

Hatfield: He's a farmer, and he's one of these pseudo-preacher kind of things.

Berge: Uh-huh. From where?

Hatfield: Uh...Crooked Creek. Is... He probably owns...

Berge: Where's that?

Hatfield: Um...

Berge: What part...

Hatfield: It's out past Wagersville, it's in the...

Berge: OK. OK. I know where it is.

Hatfield: Out...out in that neck of the woods.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Plus he owns farmland. And, he probably owns, I don't know, three to five thousand acres in this county.

Berge: Which is a lot in a county...

Hatfield: Which is a lot of...of tillable land. And, he has...uh...probably five or six sons and they all just work like slaves. And, the guy wears around a...doesn't matter even if he's plowing a field, he wears a tie and bib overalls.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And, he looks like he's just poor as he can be. And, he's come up here to pay for his subscription and given me a hundred dollar bill.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Uh...I mean, probably as far as liquid assets he doesn't have much.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: But, if he decided he wanted to get out of it...

Berge: Yeah, he's loaded.

Hatfield: ...he could just about name his price.

Berge: Yeah. [Tape stopped and restarted] The following is a continuation of an unrehearsed interview with Guy Hatfield III. The interview was conducted on April 2, 1979.

Berge: OK, you were talking about...

Hatfield: Preacher Arvin.

Berge: Preacher Arvin.

Hatfield: If he...if he decrees to his family who to vote for, they vote that way. But, it's not like he does it every election.

Berge: Uh-huh. Just when he's interested enough.

Hatfield: That's right.

Berge: Anybody else...

Hatfield: Another...

Berge: ...you can think of?

Hatfield: ...another pretty good influence person is a fellow called Charlie Vanhuss. He writes a column...

Berge: Spell his.

Hatfield: V-A-N-H-U-S-S. One word.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: No capital letters. He's been involved in Democrat politics...well, since the early '30s. Since...uh...the FDR days. Uh...he works next door here at the drug store. He writes a column for the newspaper. He barely graduated from high school but is very self-educated.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Uh...and...

Berge: Is it...is it a popular column?

Hatfield: Very much so. Every time we run a...every time we run a readership survey it's right up at the top.

Berge: Do you get...have many people like him that do columns?

Hatfield: No. I use to write a column every week, but whenever I filed for office I canned that. I thought that might be undue influence.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Umm... But, he's written a column for us since the day we started the paper. Hasn't charged me a dime.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: At Christmastime I may give him a little. But...uh...um...and then we have a humor column and then we run a column out of Frankfort.

Berge: Who does the humor column?

Hatfield: Russ Metz. He's in Bath County. He's a real good friend. He's a...owns the paper there. And, then we have a...a column by S.C. Van Curon that's out of Frankfort. He used to be editor of the Frankfort State Journal.

Berge: Do you have of these...uh... community reporters?

Hatfield: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was...

Berge: Any of those...you don't have any Myrtle Shoupes or anything like that? That woman from...

Hatfield: Not...from Manchester.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Uh...yeah...why...that's where they had to start running that "Printed Exactly as Written"...

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: ...under her column. We...those get good readership. I personally abhor them. I wouldn't read them if someone paid me.

Berge: But you have them though?

Hatfield: Uh... We run 'em.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Because...uh...

Berge: People buy them. Don't they?

Hatfield: They...they...they...really... Especially people that live outside the county. They really want that stuff.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: You know. Who's visiting who and who came in and all that.

Berge: The ones I like are... So and so and so and so went to Richmond to be near so and so who's in the hospital.

Hatfield: Um-hum. I always liked the ones that always say so and so is getting better. Well, better than what?

Berge: Yeah. Yeah.

Hatfield: Uh... Better than Abe Lincoln or something?

Berge: Myrtle...Myrtle Shoupe always mentions herself in her column like...Myrtle Shoupe went to London today.

Hatfield: [Laughing] We have those, but it's...it's becoming harder and harder to get anybody to write them...

Berge: Well, that's what I've heard from people like you.

Hatfield: ...because most people that...that write them are elderly.

Berge: Uh-huh

Hatfield: ...that have been...uh...

Berge: Doing it forever.

Hatfield: That's right. And, it's hard to get any younger people to get involved in that. They just...

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: They... For one thing, it's...with...uh...better transportation and stuff it's not like they're stuck up on a...

Berge: Um-hum.

Hatfield: ... a hillside for a year and a half without ever getting off. And, people visit so much in and out. So, the other newspaper used to have just pages upon pages of that but they had someone like fulltime who didn't do anything but call.

Berge: Call those people and get the stuff?

Hatfield: Uh-huh. And ask. You know. Is there anything new happening up your way?

Berge: Uh-huh. [Laughing] How many people do you have working for you here?

Hatfield: Six full time, four part time.

Berge: Tell me, before I turned the machine on a little while ago, you and I were talking about the relative merits of working for weeklies and...uh, running a weekly and running a daily. Uh... Tell me which you prefer and why and then also tell me what you think are the different...oh...missions of each kind of paper.

Hatfield: Well, I'm prejudiced. I prefer the weekly paper. Uh... Because everything in it is self-generated. There's no AP to depend on. I think the Richmond paper, for an example, up until the last two years was ninety-nine percent AP.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: I mean, here lately they have changed their layout some. They've...uh...made it six columns on the front page.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Given it a little air and...and I do see some local stories.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: But, they don't take a stand on a damn thing.

Berge: No.

Hatfield: That I see.

Berge: No.

Hatfield: And, to me it should be called the Richmond Cash Register, because it is one money-making son of a buck.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Because they damn sure don't pour anything into editorial staff.

Berge: Un-uh.

Hatfield: Uh... But...you know, I get that they're part of a chain, and I guess maybe they get their bonuses on...uh...how much cash they bring in.

Berge: I think that's probably the only thing that makes any difference, wouldn't it?

Hatfield: Well, their other papers that I know they own are not much different from the Richmond paper.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: The Maysville paper, it's a dog. It's terrible.

Berge: What would you say are some good dailies in this state?

Hatfield: Uh...the Elizabethtown paper, which was...and I'm prejudiced toward it because it was a merger of two semi-weekly newspapers that came out on four different days...

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: ...and then they made it a five-day a week daily. And, some of those people that used to work for those semi-weeklies are now employed by the daily. And, the people were used to local coverage and they get it. And, now, I think that is an excellent small daily newspaper. But, there again, it's grown. It's over 10,000 circulation now, which is bigger than Richmond or Winchester that's been daily for years and years.

Berge: Who...What else are some good ones?

Hatfield: Uh...I think the Somerset paper is good. But, there again, there's a combination of weekly papers in the last few years. Uh...is a good small daily. The...the Henderson Gleaner. Uh... But... but there's a paper of...well, I still consider that a small daily. That's 11,000. Uh...

Berge: Let me ask you about weeklies. Name what you think are the good weeklies. And, I don't mean the bigger weeklies. But, just big ones, small ones. What would you name some good weeklies?

Hatfield: All right. I'd probably give you five that I would recommend if someone wanted to read good weekly newspapers. The Shelbyville newspaper. I can't even remember the name of it now. But, they've merged it a couple of times. But, it's a twice a week paper. It is very well done. The Campbellsville News-Journal is...there again a combination of some merged papers there.

Berge: But, that's a weekly?

Hatfield: It's semi-weekly or twice a week.

Berge: Oh. Are there many semi-weeklies paper? I've never...I've not talked to anybody from a semi-weekly yet.

Hatfield: Well, there's not that many. Russellville has a semi-weekly. Shelbyville. Campbellsville.

Berge: How about some weeklies though. Tell me what you think are good weeklies.

Hatfield: OK. The Bath County News Outlook. The one that we were talking about earlier. Russ Metz. Excellent small... I mean it's a county of 8,000. And, the...the...the graphics are excellent. The... There's a local editorial almost every week, which is difficult because, I mean, unless you just want to become peaches and cream you [unclear] us or you aim for the Women's Club planting four flowers out in front of the courthouse. It's hard to come up with a local editorial every week. But, that is a very good newspaper. Uh...I'll think of ones that I look at. Russellville were Al Smith is in western Kentucky. He owns five or six weeklies down there. Um...his paper in Russellville is a good newspaper. Uh...

Berge: Out...out...outfits like Al Smith's where a guy owns a few papers. Do you consider those chains or you just think that's like a guy that owns a couple papers?

Hatfield: Well, technically I suppose it is a chain. But, the way he runs them I consider it a guy that owns several newspapers.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: And, not so much he's a chain operation.

Berge: Well, that's the reason...that's the way I felt about it. That's why I asked you. You know.

Hatfield: Yeah. That's the way I consider... But, Landmark, which was bought...which bought out Newspapers Incorporated, most of their weekly newspapers are very good newspapers even though they're chain owned.

Berge: Um-hum.

Hatfield: The Shelbyville paper I was mentioning is owned by them. The Campbellsville paper is owned by them.

Berge: Would you want to mention what you consider to be a less than desirable kind of chain?

Hatfield: I think the Scripps league bunch is...just put out some dog newspapers. They bought the Hazard paper, which was owned by the World bunch, who didn't do anything with it either, so I don't...can't say much for them. They also bought the Georgetown papers. And, the Paris Daily Enterprise. The guy that sold them that ought to have to carry a pistol with him, because he really sold them a bill of goods there. That daily paper sold for a million and a half dollars. And, I've got more typesetting equipment than they had when it sold.

Berge: Hm-hum.

Hatfield: It was so bad. I've seen as many as twenty-four stories on the front page of the Paris Daily Enterprise. This is before they were bought out. And none of the headlines was over 24-point type. It was terrible. Just atrocious. Uh...the paper bordering us, the Jackson County Sun, is about the poorest excuse for a newspaper. And most of Eddie Wagoner's papers from Columbia...uh...

Berge: Of course, they're run...they're run by a secretary who works in those towns half a day. Or something like that.

Hatfield: That's right. Yeah. Well, Eddie...uh... I went down to visit Eddie once...

Berge: Can...can...can he afford to have those papers like with 395 circulations? I mean, how can they do that? You know...

Hatfield: I have no idea how they do it. I went down to visit him. I said, Eddie...you know I just...I wanted to see how he could put out twenty newspapers and none of them have even fifty percent advertising when the industry figures you've got to have sixty percent advertising to make any money. To even be half way. Uh...and, he...I was down there maybe four hours and they churned out three newspapers while I was there. They just mass produce them son of a guns like no tomorrow. And I guess that brings his cost way down. And, from talking to suppliers of newspapers, Eddie never pays his bills. It's easy to...uh...put out a newspaper...if I didn't have to pay my bills I could do well myself.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: But, he ordered a press down there and never made the first payment on it. They...he said yeah, I'll buy it if you let me have it through the year without any payments. Well, he took the year all right and then plus some. So, maybe he's made some payments on it now. But, even these supplementary services I get from people they say, yeah, we had to repossess this.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Or, I cut Ed Wagoner off 'cause he didn't pay that. And...

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: ...uh...

Berge: Yeah, he had some papers that there's...there's no way...395 and...

Hatfield: Uh-huh.

Berge: ...400 circulation and such. It wouldn't pay the gas for the people to drive up to that town to pick up the...

Hatfield: Well, he tried to sell me the Madison County News Week for $20,000. And, I said well, hell Eddie, what have you got to sell? He said, well I've got this list of subscribers. I said, well, yeah. I could pick them up on a Saturday afternoon. And, I said, once they sign up to that paper you never cut 'em off.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: I said if they sign up ten years from now they're still getting it. I said you may send them a renewal notice every now and then, hope they'll pay. But, I said you're not about ready to cut them off. And, I'm not interested. But, he's taken this one paper in Tennessee...started a paper down there, and it's going great guns. Running twenty-four pages, and big percentage of advertising.

Berge: Well, then.

Hatfield: And, it's the same kind of crap that he [unclear] around...

Berge: Yeah, but of course, if he gets a couple of winners like that, then he can cover a lot of bad ones with them, I guess.

Hatfield: Yeah, but he had to pay a pretty good amount to get the Madison County News Week from Newspapers Incorporated originally, which used to be a fairly good newspaper. Betty Cox before she started crusading used to put out...

Berge: Oh...she... Yeah, but, you know, she's the only one that's ever had a paper in Richmond who's tried to do anything.

Hatfield: Uh-huh. And, she got whacked off.

Berge: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She died with me in that campaign that I ran over there. She was my biggest supporter I hear. But, that was interesting. Uh...would you... If you had to do it all over again, if you were starting out and you were graduating from Eastern and coming back here, would you send away for that $15,000 worth of typesetting machines and do it all over again or not? On paper, you have made some money now in the last eight years...seven years.

Hatfield: Yeah, but very... But, yeah, but it's gone to pay off the newspaper.

Berge: Well, I know...I understand...I understand...

Hatfield: Yeah.

Berge: But, I mean...

Hatfield: But, we're probably...

Berge: In the next four, three or four years, if things go like they are you're gonna be in good shape.

Hatfield: Oh, yeah. That's right. There'll be light...there's light at the end of the tunnel.

Berge: Yeah. Yeah.

Hatfield: But, we are probably the best equipped weekly newspaper in the state for the size paper we have.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: We...I put almost every bit that we've made in this paper back in the paper. Either in new equipment, or better staff, and...uh...this type thing.

Berge: Yeah. What are some of the good weekly plants in...in the state? Not just papers, but plants themselves. Say, like, the Laurel County paper, would that be a good plant?

Hatfield: Oh, excellent. Excellent plant.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And, I...I talked to them not more than a week ago. I can't understand why they don't go at least twice a week.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Uh... London and Shelbyville, to me, are the places that will be going daily next.

Berge: I get that paper.

Hatfield: Which one? The Sentinel Echo...

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: ...in London?

Berge: Yeah. Yeah. I kind of like the kind of stuff that Margaret puts in there. Like the historical column, you know, where somebody writes about how to plant asparagus, you know? I love to read all that stuff. My wife reads that paper cover to cover because of the...there's always something in there, how to do something.

Hatfield: Hm-hum.

Berge: Yeah, and a...there's one thing after another in there, just a...

Hatfield: Yeah, the London plant is ...

Berge: Do you think they'll go twice a week?

Hatfield: Oh, yeah. Very definitely.

Berge: They've got so much advertising they could do it easily. Couldn't they?

Hatfield: Well, I went to Pikeville in December. And, the week I was up there they had sixty-four pages. And, of the sixty...they had...and then they had five inserts on top of that. And, they had four pages that had color adverting. Of those sixty-four pages. And, they told me, they said we're thinking about going twice a week. I said, think hell. I would have been twice a week two years ago if I'd owned it. Because they could just name their price in Pikeville for their advertising.

Berge: Yeah, because it's an absolute monopoly, you know.

Hatfield: Well, all the papers in that end. Pikeville...Prestonsburg...Paintsville. They went together and bought a press. And, they're all put...they all put out a hell of a lot of pages.

Berge: Do you print anybody else's paper?

Hatfield: No. We don't print our own.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: We print at Winchester. We set all of our type and make our negatives and stuff here. But, no, a press is a...a minimum of a hundred thousand dollar investment. And...

Berge: Yeah. Hm-hum. If you bought four or five papers would you do it?

Hatfield: Oh, yes. It's a lot of headaches, but economically you'd have to. Uh...but London has their own press, but they print a couple other newspapers.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Um...this...uh...Landmark bunch that I was telling you about, they have special...just central plants. Uh...that...uh...the one...they have one in Cynthiana, and Shelbyville, and Elizabethtown, and Tell City, Indiana, some place in Maryland. And, uh... The one in Cynthiana prints something like twenty- some weekly newspapers. And, there's a newspaper in...the newspaper in Cumberland was driving to Shelbyville to print every week. I don't know where they're printing now.

Berge: You mean Cumberland, Kentucky?

Hatfield: Yeah.

Berge: Yeah. Well, you know that...uh...the one in...uh...Pineville goes to...uh...like Adair County...

Hatfield: Glasgow.

Berge: ... Glasgow or something like that. Yeah.

Hatfield: But that...the connection there is because of Carroll Knicely.

Berge: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Hatfield: ...that...uh...owns the paper there and then sold out the Glasgow paper to (?Conrad?).

Berge: You know about three weeks ago every employee of that paper left within a one-week period?

Hatfield: Well, I saw in the Kentucky Press Bulletin that they had a new editor up there.

Berge: Well, not just editor. Janitor. Editor. Typist. I mean, every soul that worked there.

Hatfield: What was any background?

Berge: They all got jobs.

Hatfield: Oh.

Berge: You know. I...I think the editor made seventy-eight hundred or something like that.

Hatfield: And, he was no young chicken either. He had a... I don't know if he was married or not. He used to be mayor up there so...

Berge: No. No. He quit a little while ago.

Hatfield: Oh.

Berge: He came back and took the place of the editor that quit for about a week or two.

Hatfield: Oh.

Berge: He was in there for about a week or two.

Hatfield: There's an awful lot of editors in this state that are making seventy-eight hundred dollars a year.

Berge: Oh, I know. Oh, I know that. I know. Yeah. It's incredible the amount of a...and yet the guys who own those papers fly in and talk to them.

Hatfield: Some...I'd say that's a very...

Berge: Some do. Some do though. Some do though.

Hatfield: Well, some people have a hell of a lot better markets to work with. I'd fly off to a few places, too, if I had London's market.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Uh... And, it's just going to get better and better and better.

Berge: Oh, that's...that's incredible...that's a gold mine there. There's no way of knowing what that plant's worth with the business they have there and ...they sell all that furniture and...

Hatfield: Well, they do over $600,000 a year in office supplies. And, they spent at least $300,000 remodeling that place and an additional typesetting place.

Berge: Um-hum.

Hatfield: And, uh...

Berge: I've got a couple stock questions I've have to ask you [unclear] I'm taking too much of your time and I have to go.

Hatfield: OK.

Berge: Um... I see you belong both to the Weekly Newspaper Association and the Kentucky Press Association.

Hatfield: Right.

Berge: Which do you think is most valuable for you?

Hatfield: Kentucky Press Association. Kentucky Weekly Newspaper Association is, which I use to be president of, doesn't have any kind of full-time staff, and... it really began before I got in the newspaper business as an offshoot of the Kentucky Press Association because weekly people thought they...

Berge: Getting short shaft.

Hatfield: ...were getting the shaft by the daily people.

Berge: Of course, they have every other president and everything, don't they?

Hatfield: Well, now, the Kentucky Press Association has...there's two weekly presidents and then a daily.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: So, it's really stacked two to...two to one.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: But, there are well over three or four to one weekly newspapers to daily papers.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Uh... but, I've always spoken my mind either in newspaper meetings or whatever, and...in some circles I guess I'm considered a maverick in the newspaper business. Of course, I did make some friends. Most chain newspapers are universally hated by independents.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: So, whenever I competed pretty successfully again a chain, and then when I bought out the chain...uh...I was...uh...

Berge: People started...

Hatfield: ...somewhat of a celebrity...

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: ...to those people.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And, and I gripe about...I think newspaper conventions should be a learning process and something to help put an extra buck on the...in the books rather than to go get drunk and play golf. I mean, I can get drunk and play golf in Irvine.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: If I want to go to a press convention, I want to figure out how to compete against radio stations or other newspapers and shoppers or whatever.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: And...and how to make some extra money.

Berge: Do any of them do this?

Hatfield: Yeah. They... Mostly the winter convention is more of a learning process. The one in the summer they consider a family outing...

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: ...where they have a speaker or two.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: But, if you show up fine, it you don't that's OK, too.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: The last Kentucky Press Association summer meeting was in Tennessee.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Where they went down at...uh...Gatlinburg and played golf and took it easy.

Berge: Yeah. Yeah.

Hatfield: And, I like golf as well as anybody else, but I figure for...whenever I spend money to go to a convention I want to get something out of it.

Berge: Okey-doke. Who would you name as four or five really good newspaper people in the state?

Hatfield: Either editors or owners or whatever...?

Berge: Yeah, anything.

Hatfield: Larry Coffey from Landmark.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: He's one of the class people that I...I consider.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Al Smith from Russellville.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Uh, Al Cross who use to work for Al Smith, who now works for the Courier-Journal.

Berge: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Hatfield: He's one of...

Berge: You know, Al Smith's the one that I wrote to when I got funded to do this study.

Hatfield: Yeah. Well, I'm mad at Al Smith because I saw in the Richmond paper he was in Richmond and didn't come over to see me.

Berge: Well, I didn't know...

Hatfield: I'm going to give him a cussing the next time I see him.

Berge: Yeah. What was he doing in Richmond? I didn't read that.

Hatfield: Speaking to some journalism group or something.

Berge: On Eastern's campus?

Hatfield: Yeah.

Berge: Well, I didn't know about that.

Hatfield: He was on campus. Saw it in the Richmond paper this last week. Where he was over speaking to them.

Berge: They used to always tell me because I used to...uh... Every time somebody had a speaker I used to...uh...tape it for them. But, they didn't tell me.

Hatfield: Russ Metz. From Bath County. Uh... The lady at the Kentucky Standard in Bardstown. I don't...can't even remember her name.

Berge: Yeah, I don't either.

Hatfield: But, uh...

Berge: How about any of these old mavericks? Guys like Fred Burkhart or any of them? Do they stick in your mind?

Hatfield: I don't...I had no...I didn't even work...they were out...

Berge: They were out of it before you got into it really. Yeah.

Hatfield: Uh... I liked...uh...S.C. Van Curon.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: He was...uh...pretty sharp on newspapers.

Berge: You still didn't answer my question whether or not you'd do it again?

Hatfield: I think so. I think I would...there are things I would do differently. I...I would try very, very hard to...have bought out the other newspaper before I started this one.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Or, worked for another newspaper and gotten some experience in it.

Berge: And, then come in...

Hatfield: And, then tried to buy it.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Uh... from that angle. But, if I hadn't of started another newspaper I don't think they ever would have sold me this one. Because it would have been a money maker for them. And, I don't think they would have sold.

Berge: You had to get that paper to stop make...that had to stop making money before they'd sell it to you.

Hatfield: That's right. And, before I can expand on to other newspapers, buying other papers, I have to have a money base...

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: ...somewhere to fall back on it while that one's losing.

Berge: In other words, this paper has to be paid for, making money so you can lose...

Hatfield: That's right. Or... Or, if not paid for, making enough money that I can absorb whatever losses go into it.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Uh... I mean I don't have to make a heck of a lot of money. I've liv... Up until three months ago I lived here at the newspaper. I put me a shower right here. I've got maybe 200 square feet there. I had me a television, a bed, and a closet. I stayed here.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Uh... Since my wife died I didn't have any reason...I mean I was at the newspaper...

Berge: Sure.

Hatfield: ...most of the time anyway.

Berge: Sure.

Hatfield: Uh... And, I've got to keep this place hot in the winter and cool in the summer. So, I figured I've got to do that twenty-four hours, I'll just sack out.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Uh... So, my expenses weren't much [unclear]...I was... I got my membership to the country club paid for doing the printing for them.

Berge: Uh-huh.

Hatfield: Uh...my little hobbies were...didn't wind up costing me a heck of a lot of cash.

Berge: Do you do job printing?

Hatfield: No.

Berge: Oh.

Hatfield: We used to until we finally got a printer in town, and I send everybody to him.

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: Most printing is a...is a five percent profit markup at best, once everything is taken care of. Unless you have a hell of a lot of volume...

Berge: Yeah.

Hatfield: ...it's a lot more trouble than it's worth.

Berge: Yeah. Well, Guy, I want to thank you for letting me come over and talk with you like this. And, uh...

Hatfield: Tickled me to death.