In between The Cobler News and the Topeka Sporting Weekly, Cobler worked on his junior high and high school newspapers. While sports editor at the Washburn Rural High Blue Streak, he was stunned to get a response to his typewritten request from a kind Kansas City Royals public relations director, Dean Vogelaar, who agreed to let the boy interview star player George Brett. The one-on-one conversation in the clubhouse served as a lifelong reminder that you can't get the story if you don't try. Click here for the story and a photo of the author at age 16.

Topeka Capital-Journal, Sioux Falls Argus Leader, Fort Collins Coloradoan, 1982-93

Learning the Craft

Long before he ran newsrooms, Cobler was trying to make newspapers.

As a child, he produced the Cobler News, recruited his younger sister Kathy as his only employee and sold copies to relatives for a nickel. At 19, he took a more serious shot at publishing with the Topeka Sporting Weekly, created with his brother-in-law and sister Sharen. Cobler edited its first and only edition. The three quickly discovered that enthusiasm for journalism was not the same thing as having a workable business model.

Professional journalism began in earnest at the Topeka Capital-Journal in 1982. Cobler gravitated toward stories that captured a sense of place: small towns confronting economic change, the revival of an old downtown theater, and the culture and traditions of communities across northeast Kansas. A feature on Potawatomi bingo and a story examining what the arrival of Walmart meant for the town of Holton reflected the kind of reporting he most enjoyed: learning how a community worked and then trying to explain it to readers.

At the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph from 1983 to 1985, his work became harder edged. As a police reporter, Cobler covered crime and public safety and learned the importance of holding powerful institutions accountable. His most significant reporting exposed Manitou Springs police officers' use of excessive force against a homeless man during a public event. The reporting eventually drew the attention of the FBI, which opened an investigation into the incident. Onlookers at the Manitou run reported the abuse and took photos the old-fashioned way, leading to the young reporter nervously waiting for the prints to be developed at the local photo-finishing lab.

A move to the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls in 1985 began Cobler's transition from reporter to editor. Working as a weekend city editor and copy editor gave him a broader view of how a newsroom functioned—reporting, editing, production, photography and deadline coordination. When the space shuttle Challenger exploded in January 1986, he helped produce the first extra edition of his career.

After publication, editors realized the photo had printed in the wrong orientation. No one called to complain. The Argus Leader was recognized as the Best of Gannett during Cobler's time on the team.

Getting a chance to write for the Sunday Midway section was a coup for the cub reporter at the Topeka Capital-Journal.

In 1982, Walmart was early in its national expansion when Holton downtown merchants sounded the alarm. Reporting for the state desk allowed the new University of Kansas grad to learn a lot about his home state. To read the story, click here.

The young reporter learned about the power of the press through ongoing coverage of a Manitou Springs police assault case. Police initially denied the witness accounts about the arrest of a homeless man, but the reporting led the FBI to open an investigation into the department.
Some of his strongest accountability reporting revealed the arrest of the superintendent of the wealthy Broadmoor school district. Colorado Springs police would not release the full report, but Cobler managed to get the arresting officer on the phone and emphasized the department's unusual handling of public records.

In 1984, amid the controversy over Vanessa Williams losing her Miss America title, the youngest reporter on the staff was assigned to spend an evening with Nina Lee, a former Miss San Diego who had posed as a Penthouse Pet. It was one of several participatory stories he wrote for the Gazette Telegraph, including rock climbing at Garden of the Gods and horseback riding in the Pikes Peak Range Ride.
(Story at right:) Even Tina Turner couldn't save the historic Grand Theatre in Topeka. Within two years of this story, the building was gone and turned into a parking lot.

Topeka readers told Cobler they loved the quiet profiles he wrote while working features.

Big stories, bigger responsibilities

At the Fort Collins Coloradoan, where he worked from 1987 through 1993 as news editor, city editor and assistant managing editor, that education accelerated. Cobler increasingly moved from producing his own journalism to helping other journalists do their best work. He planned major daily coverage, directed enterprise projects and worked closely with reporters and photographers on stories ranging from a troubling rise in suicides to emergency medical care and pioneering transplant surgery.

When Colorado State University professor Tom Sutherland was freed in 1991 after more than six years as a hostage in Lebanon, Cobler worked on the second extra edition of his career, planning this one from start to finish. The newsroom also found ambitious ways to cover other events. When rising radio celebrity Rush Limbaugh brought tens of thousands of people to downtown Fort Collins for "Dan's Bake Sale" in 1993, the Coloradoan treated the spectacle as both breaking news and a revealing cultural event. Cobler had never listened to Limbaugh before the visit, but the experience gave him an early education in the intensity with which some readers connected politics, media personalities and their expectations of news coverage.

Across those first dozen professional years, the jobs changed from reporter to editor and the responsibilities grew, but the underlying lessons remained remarkably consistent: know the community, ask uncomfortable questions, take breaking news seriously, give talented journalists room to do ambitious work and never assume a local newspaper has to think small.

Cobler had never listened to emerging conservative star Rush Limbaugh until Fort Collins lit up in 1993 over Dan's Bake Sale. From then on, Cobler listened regularly to better understand conservative audiences in the communities he served.

Reporter Bob Davis was a master at gaining access. Because of his background as a paramedic and his powers of persuasion, he persuaded the medical staff to allow him and photojournalist Kent Meireis to document the heart-lung transplant surgery. This was part of a multipart series in which Bob became close to the transplant recipient and his wife, even driving them from Fort Collins to Denver for the surgery.

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