Topeka Capital-Journal, Sioux Falls Argus Leader, Fort Collins Coloradoan, 1982-93
Topeka Capital-Journal, Sioux Falls Argus Leader, Fort Collins Coloradoan, 1982-93
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Learning the Craft
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 Stan Swagerty 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 Wal-Mart 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 photomart.
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 learned the picture wasn't rotated in the right direction when it printed. No one called to complain.
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 planned the second extra edition of his career. The newsroom also found ambitious ways to cover less conventional 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.
Reporter Bob Davis was a master at gaining access. Because of his background as a paramedic and his powers of persuasion, he was able to get the medical staff to agree to him and photojournalist Kent Meireis documenting 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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