Rheta Grimsley Johnson Discusses Change: From Print Journalism to the New Media

by Shana Thornton

Working as a columnist and reporter since the 1970s, Rheta Grimsley Johnson has witnessed the reshaping of the newspaper industry. From issues of nepotism, the inclusion of women in the newsroom, to the ultimate dwindling of print journalism in the face of new media giants, Johnson covers many sides of the newsprint in her most recent memoir, Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming: a memoir (New South Books, 2010). And, in spite of the new virtual media, she remains loyal to the tangible—to the ink on her fingers created by print journalism.

“I’m finished with memoirs,” Johnson says, while laughing. Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming is an unlikely title for a journalist who lives in the self-titled Fishtrap Hollow, but Johnson isn’t interested in presenting you with a glossy magazine image of Barbie and her world of Dream Houses. Johnson has a soft voice but is straightforward, like her writing style. She gazes into your eyes, a direct look.

As she writes in her memoir, “We weren’t ever going to dress, look, or live like Barbie. Our Dream House would come with utility bills…. Ken might take the Dream Car and run off with Midge…. A Country Picnic always had rain and ants. An Enchanted Evening could end in an unwanted pregnancy. (…) There should be a Barbie outfit for that. Disenchanted Evening.”

Given her tongue-in-cheek style, Johnson’s next revelation about promoting her memoir is surprising. Johnson says, “This has all been bizarre… surreal. Women have shown up to readings and signings dressed as Barbie. They’ve obviously not read the book. They think it’s about Barbie dolls. I don’t know what’s going on,” she says bewildered. She goes on to say that she’ll write about it later, and I suspect that she isn’t quite finished with writing memoirs.

Johnson and I have met in a hotel restaurant and are seated at a small round table. She is a guest speaker at the Clarksville Writers’ Conference in Tennessee. I place a small mp3 player in the center of the table and Johnson gives it a sideways stare. I press record, explaining that I’m uncertain of how this one works—it’s new, another type of technology. For back-up, I have a notebook and pen that I also place on the table and we begin discussing what it has been like for Johnson to watch the newspaper industry change rapidly over the course of three decades. She started her writing career on a manual typewriter and says that she was “damn proud” of being labeled a feminist, first while writing for her college newspaper, The Auburn Plainsman, and later as a columnist. To be a liberal feminist in the South could be a case of double profanity, depending on the town. Johnson is also a humorist, a third obstacle, and one that she slightly altered and even delineated from. She admits that the rural South was behind the progressive cities and towns of the US, and that’s why her work as a journalist, for many newspapers throughout the South but especially for Memphis’ The Commercial Appeal and Atlanta’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution two of the South’s oldest daily newspapers, is even more intriguing.

In the memoir, she is at once proud of the feminist label and questioning of it, and that duality shows her remarkable honesty. At the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Johnson took over a famous column written by Lewis Grizzard, who died in 1994. He was a beloved humorist in Georgia, and Johnson received “hate mail” for her liberal slant. Of course, she toned herself down considerably and was eventually restricted to only news within Georgia.

So, she reached out to Americans living below the poverty line, dusted off their “whatnot” shelves, and became a voice for people who wouldn’t have otherwise told their stories. She’s known for her objectivity and compassion, and was one of three finalists for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in commentary. Her curiosity embodies not only the momentum of chasing previously unheard stories, but also the challenge of working hard for ideals that often fail to live up to our expectations.

Johnson searched for journalistic gems before she had even finished college at Auburn. Rheta and her first husband Jimmy Johnson pursued the idyllic dream of starting a weekly newspaper on St. Simons Island. There, she used “antique type-setting equipment, cantankerous machines called Justowriters.” After their relentless pursuit of journalistic ownership fell flat, Rheta and Jimmy settled into full time jobs at The Monroe Journal in Monroeville, AL, where they overlooked the nepotism policy at the time—that spouses could not work together, and often the woman in the pair was asked to resign. Eventually, the couple did face the problem at another newspaper; fortunately, Jimmy created the cartoon strip Arlo and Janis, while Rheta traveled as a reporter and columnist throughout the South and often abroad.

Aside from her journalism career, Rheta’s story has many unexpected turns for the reader—a bewildering divorce, the unexpected tragedy of her friend and lover Barry’s suicide in her driveway, and finally discovering love and companionship with her second husband Don Grierson, a retired journalism professor. She had intended to write a funny book, one that chronicled her Christmas celebrations. However, she had only written three chapters when Grierson died, and the book changed. It continues to carry the initial humor, but took on an unexpectedly serious tone. Finishing the memoir helped Johnson to process some of her grief.

“I was in some kind of zone, I’ll tell you,” she says about writing the memoir. “I was grieving, and it is honest. I had done thirty years of columns and always held back a little, and all of a sudden it seemed like it didn’t matter about being diplomatic or pretending to be something that I wasn’t.”

She is disappointed to see the dwindling of print journalism and calls herself, “an old newspaper hack” and says, “That’s okay. I’ve had a nice run. I’m just not interested in recreating myself for the new media. I know it’s legit. I know it could be done…. I’ll write for newspapers as long as they exist, and then I won’t write.”

“Everyone has to find their place, what they’re good at whether that’s longer novels or short stories,” Johnson says. “I’ve been at it long enough that I know my niche and do it well, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Indeed, not only has the medium of journalism shifted into the virtual realm, but in the memoir, Johnson also reminds us that the subject matter of “news” has altered into an obsession with celebrity culture, in print media as well. She tells a story of having lunch with several new reporters in Atlanta, fresh on the presses graduates, who are discussing celebrities that they’re covering and one particular celebrity becomes the focus of the conversation. At some point during the lunch, Johnson realizes that she’s the only reporter who doesn’t personally know the celebrity.

“On anything that’s been written about me, the bottom line is that I am a newspaper person,” Johnson says. “That’s what I’ve done everyday of my life for 35-years. These books have gotten a lot of attention, but I guess they’re not as defining to me as what I’ve done. Anna Quindlen had that great title, Thinking Out Loud, and that’s important to me. And, people discount that. They think if something’s not between hard covers, then it’s not writing. Well, I beg to differ. If you give it your all and roll out of bed everyday to write… that’s been my life’s work. I enjoy being able to be more expansive, but the 750-word essays that I would do four times a week in Memphis and later in Atlanta, that has defined me and kept me going. It’s still what I do, not four times a week anymore,” she laughs. Before we leave the restaurant, Johnson reminds me to press stop on the mp3 recording of our interview and to save it. I suspect that she’s more technologically curious and adept than she desires.

Johnson has won numerous awards in journalism, from the Ernie Pyle Memorial Award in human interest reporting to an induction into the Scripps Howard Newspapers Editorial Hall of Fame. Johnson has written three other nonfiction books. Her first memoir is Poor Man’s Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana (New South Books, 2008). America’s Faces (St. Luke’s Press, 1987) contains a collection of human-interest stories and articles. Johnson also wrote the authorized biography of Charles Schulz, Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz (Pharos Books, 1989).

Currently, Johnson is a syndicated columnist for King Features of New York and her columns appear in newspapers across the US.

Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming: a memoir, published by New South Books, is available now.

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Shana Thornton serves as Managing Editor for Her Circle Ezine’s Books and Literature section. In addition, she writes interviews, features and fiction. She also teaches composition and literature courses, chases her husband and daughter, and runs trails with her dog Mojo.

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