Heart for his community and students

Tim Hennagir, managing editor of Milaca and Princeton Union-Times, still loves perfecting AP style after decades in the news business.

By Emma Eidsvoog

Tim Hennagir’s weekly AP Style quizzes at SCSU prepared him for his current role as a managing editor at the Milaca and Princeton Union-Times. He studied Public Relations at St. Cloud State University, where he now teaches as a mass communications adjunct professor. He also advises the University Chronicle at SCSU, where he was once the editor-in-chief during his time in college. Hennagir has more than 30 years of experience working in mass communication and perfecting his AP Style skills.

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Q: What are your responsibilities as an editor?

A: I wear a lot of different hats, design the paper, write stories and shoot photos. I interact with the public, manage two reporters and work with our advertising staff. I do a lot of things as a managing editor at a community paper. I have to prepare everything, so it’s prepared to be laid out. If it isn’t styled or formatted correctly, I have to make all those corrections.

I do just about everything you could imagine. My job is making decisions about what stories go, when they go, how they’re put together, and what might be the key issue you have to jump on next.

Q: What is the most challenging part about being an editor?

A: Dealing with the public and having to explain why a free press and the first amendment is important and why we still do what we do. On the periphery of where we’re at is the social media’s lack of ability to have checks and balances on anything. For us, we have hard objectivity when we interview sources. If we interview four people on one side, we interview four people on the other side.

With social media, what they believe to them is a tool, sometimes can be detrimental, especially when there’s an accident. We’ll talk to the superintendent, the police chief, the fire chief, the sheriff, and they’ll be the ones to tell us what the official information is.

Q: What is your favorite part about being an editor?

A: When I get to meet somebody new and they come into the office and I get to hear their story. Like if they’re doing something different in the community or how they’ve overcome a challenge in their life. Whether it’s the people who have lost their dog up by Milaca or someone who’s been in the community 80 years and they’re going to retire, they all have stories.

Being able to interact with them and tell their story and do it in a way that benefits someone. And they say, “You did a nice job on that story” or “You were accurate” or “You treated my family with sensitivity.” I have said this for all the time that I’ve taught: we need to be human beings first and journalists second.

Q: What did your career path look like?

A: I’ve been doing this for 30 years in different forms. I’ve worked in magazines a couple of times, I’ve worked on conference work, but it’s all been tied to mass communication. I started at a little community called New York Mills, Minn. in June of 1989. Then I worked for Minnesota Newspaper Foundation. I did some things with magazine, and then I came back and worked at newspapers.

I’ve worked as a managing editor, an editor, reporter and a photographer. The path has taken me to different size newsrooms. The largest newsroom I managed had six people in it. The smallest is right now with two people. I’ve managed a group of newspapers. You have different responsibilities, different territories, different things you think about, and the people and the areas that you serve.

Q: What advice would you give to an aspiring editor?

A: Get your stylebook down. Get your English and grammar skills perfected. Listen to your reporters. Ask them a lot of questions like, “What do you mean?” “Clarify this.” You have to ask just as many questions as an editor to a reporter as you did when you were an active reporter.

You have to put people to the test and say, “Where are you getting this from?” “Is that quote accurate?” “Is that background information accurate?” “Are you confident with your sources?” “Can it be improved?” These are all things the editors have to make decisions on. You’re always questioning what they’re doing and how they’re going about it.

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Hennagir enjoys working with people in the newsroom, the community and the classroom. One of his favorite things is to see students graduate and enter into their future or their “undiscovered country.” Whether it’s his University Chronicle staff, his journalism classes or his summer interns, he wants people to succeed in this field.

“As a journalism educator, to touch somebody’s life and then to say they’re out and they’ve done well and they’re learning, and I just touched their lives for two seconds and that was it.”