Living on Coffee and Scoops

This is my favorite picture of Frank (far left). It was the fall of 1970 and Frank Gibson was the Editor-in-Chief of the UT Daily Beacon, the student newspaper of the University of Tennessee. He was leading the daily meeting of editors. I see the Managing Editor, the News Editor, the Features Editor, the Make Up Editor, the Wire Editor, the Associate Editor. And me, the once-a-week columnist.

Every afternoon this group gathered in Frank’s office to plan the next day’s edition of the Beacon. Every afternoon. The Beacon was a daily published by students, all of whom were publishing a daily newspaper while also carrying a full load of classes.

This gang of undergraduates put out a 13,000-circulation daily, the 14^th largest circulation daily in the state of Tennessee.

And Frank was the leader.

For $50 a week.

It was an idyllic time: we would knock the Chancellor and criticize the University President on weekdays then party together at Frank’s apartment on weekends.

Frank and I went to every UT football home game, meeting at the Make Up Editor’s apartment for a little pregame fortification – it could get cold in the upper deck - then walking over to the stadium, occasionally making it in time for kick-off. Very occasionally.

I had this naïve idea that in a few years we would all get back together at some newspaper or other – most likely Frank’s beloved Nashville Tennessean – and publish the best damned newspaper in the country. So little did I know.

Before the decade was out the Tennessean would be purchased by Gannett. And we would all be scattered to the winds and whims of newspapering.

I was at the Louisville paper, the managing editor was at the Austin paper, the Make Up Editor was at the Charlotte paper. But Frank was at the Tennessean, the newspaper that had hired him right out of high school as a copy boy, later insisting he go to college, employing him as their Knoxville stringer while he took his studies, and then hiring him back when he graduated from UT.

He was at the Tennessean for the next thirty years, as a reporter and as an editor, but always a newspaperman.

There was a time when that was a compliment: “He’s a newspaperman.” It meant dedication in a world of long hours and low wage, surviving on coffee and scoops, chasing stories about things people wanted to read, needed to read, had a right to read.

But that was Frank. Starting with his stint at the Daily Beacon for $50 a week, about half the prevailing minimum wage, even less if you considered Frank spent more than 40 hours a week at the Beacon, he was a newspaperman.

Frank died Sunday.

It hurt all of us who were in that tiny editor’s office back in 1970. It hurt everyone who ever knew and worked with him at the Tennessean, his newspaper, or worked with him when he was national president of Sigma Delta Chi, Society of Professional Journalists, or worked with him later at the non-profit he founded, the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government.

Over his career he won awards and fellowships (Michigan’s prestigious Knight Fellowship) and they even gave him a dinner – the peak of recognition, according to comedian Red Buttons – in 2023, in honor of his work creating TCOG 20 years earlier.  

But you can’t fit all that in an obit headline.

But you can fit this: Frank Gibson, A Great Newspaperman.

My second favorite picture of Frank, far left, top, at 1997 Daily Beacon reunion.

 (Which was also the 50th anniversary of the UT School of Journalism)

L-R Frank, Debbie Bowditch, Susan Lorance, Professor (and founder of the School) Willis Tucker, Dan Pomeroy. Front row: Marcia McDonald, Vince Staten. 

When Frank Gibson married Kathy Holcomb on May 14, 1977, Frank's best man was Vince Staten.