Longtime columnist for the Courier Journal, Bob Hill, spoke with LPM's Bill Burton about his newest book and a lifetime pursuing what he loves.
This transcript was edited for clarity.
Bill Burton: Bob Hill was a longtime columnist for the Courier Journal, and is a voice familiar to longtime WFPL listeners as a co host of our gardening show "Homegrown." His latest book is his autobiography. It is called "Out Here." Welcome, Bob.
Bob Hill: Thank you. Good to be here.
BB: Your book is a combination of telling people about your story, of course, but it also includes some of your old columns. How'd you go about choosing which columns you wanted to be in your book?
BH: Well, happily, I've gotten two previous books just of my columns, and I just sat down one day and marked them A, A minus, B. There were no C columns, ever. I went back through and picked the A ones I liked the most, and the good news was they stood the test of time. I think they're still pretty valid as they were 30, 40 years ago.
BB: Over the years, you've had all sorts of opportunities to move to larger media markets, bigger newspapers. But one of the points of your book is to talk about just simply finding happiness, finding a place where you feel like you belong. And you found that here in the Louisville area, didn't you?
BH: Absolutely. I found out what I like to do for a living in a place I love to do it, and I'm living in eight acres of land, eight miles from work. It couldn't be any better. I did have a job offer from the Kansas City newspapers to become their sports columnist. I'm an ex jock. I could have been covering the World Series, NBA, Super Bowl, but the guy that did that traveled 200 days a year. And I wanted to watch my kids grow up and play ball, not somebody else's kids, and I made a decision just to stay here. And I've never regretted it, although I would like to spend two years doing that, just see what it was like. But I never regretted it. I love it.
BB: Was it simply the job that drew you here in the first place, to Louisville?
BH: Yeah, long story short, I had no journalism background, no writing courses in my life. I started writing in long hand with a pencil and working my way up to two finger typing. And I was working in Rockford, Illinois, and I wanted to try a little deeper water, but not the big cities, and Louisville's a perfect fit for that. You know, it's a great, nice sized town. You can come and go as you please, and I would just love living here, and the kids like living here. And that was it. We're staying.
BB: Journalism has changed quite a lot since you started writing for the Courier Journal, but what has changed even more is people's perception of journalism, and journalists. From your point of view, what can be done to rebuild the trust with people that currently don't trust journalism?
BH: Well, we just have to keep pushing. I mean, a lot of the right wing media now is kind of overwhelming the old school media. We just have to keep pushing. And I fear it's going to lead. It's going to take a disaster to get people back to reading and writing what they should be reading. I mean, things are going to have to go wrong before we can get them right again. That's pretty grim outlook, but that's kind of where I'm at on this.
BB: As you were in the process of putting this book together and searching your memory and all of your files for information you could put in your autobiography, what came back to you? First and foremost, that you wanted to get across to people?
BH: The first thing was, I was amazed. Columns I wrote 30 and 40 years ago still work. You know, I think they're still readable. They're still relevant, because people, you know, people come and go, but the things they live for, things they want to do, the things they want to see, are still here. And the other one is just stay where you're happy. I was happy here. I chanced to go to big cities. I could have done a lot of other things. A lot of my friends did. I wanted to be I understood that being happy - was happiness is inside out, and I had the happiness here. We've been married 62 years, two very successful children. Why would I leave that? For what?
BB: That's Bob Hill, the longtime CJ columnist and voice of "Homegrown" here on WFPL for quite a few years, talking about his autobiography titled simply "Out Here." Bob, such a pleasure to talk with you. Thanks so much for your time.
BH: Thank you very much.
