Gazette Blog Editor
The University of Kansas is located in Lawrence, which is also the home of WorldWest, the megacompany that owns the Payson Roundup. The Lawrence Journal-World daily newspaper is the flagship newspaper in the WorldWest chain, and its support of KU athletics is not only unflagging, but way over the top.
That is the backdrop for what I'm about to relate, and I ask your indulgence as we journey back in time a few years to when the Roundup fired me. Everybody has to get fired at least once in their lives. That's just the way it goes. The fact that mine came for telling the truth is something I'm proud of.
And justice has been served more than once since it happened. In that the publisher and editor who fired me and the reporter who replaced me left the Roundup unceremoniously over a journalistic snafu I would have never allowed them to commit had I been there.
Their departure accelerated an agonizingly relentless slide into mediocrity - a journey from the best little newspaper in the state to the unofficial shill for Payson Mayor Kenny Evans and the real estate community.
Which brings us back to the present and the latest blow to WorldWest. You see I went to school at the Univeristy of Michigan, and last night the fourth-seeded Wolverines knocked off top-seeded Kansas in overtime to advance to the Elite 8 in the NCAA Tournament.
Yeah, I know, it's only a basketball game. And I realize a school even more reviled than KU - Ohio State - could still lie ahead for my maize and blue. But I firmly believe that in this world we have to savor the little victories, and I'm going to revel in this one for a couple of days.
So I couldn't help going to the website of the Journal-World this morning. There, on the front page, the sister paper of the Payson Roundup had to admit that it was, indeed, a "sour day."
As I clicked out of their website, what was it I heard softly in the background? Could it be the sound of a marching band? It grew louder ... and louder still ... rising to a crescendo...
"Hail to the victors valiant,
Hail to the conquering heroes,
Hail, hail to Michigan,
The champions of the West."
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