Was thinking of Paul on my walk this morning.  From a column in 2010:

'I'm an S.O.B., but I'm your S.O.B.'

During my journalism career I've been lucky to have worked for two remarkable and strong-willed editors - in the late '80s for Jim Michaels, the longtime editor of Forbes magazine, and in the late '60s, as a cub reporter, for Paul Bodenhamer, founding editor of the paper that became the Record Searchlight.


 was the voice of the paper from 1938 to his retirement in 1972. He was just 28 when he took the helm of the Redding Record. In those days, when Shasta Dam was being built, there were four dailies and one weekly paper in Redding (a town of about 8,000).

The upstart Record (3 cents a copy) was an almost immediate hit. Within two years its daily circulation reached 4,098, surpassing the combined circulation of its biggest rivals, the Searchlight and the Courier-Free Press.


's name was synonymous with the newspaper. He stood by his sometimes crusading editors and reporters, but he was also a community booster - getting behind such projects as the Redding Civic Auditorium. He also liked highlighting folks in the community who were making a difference. "The ten most useful citizens" was an annual project.

Three things I remember about Bodenhamer - him bounding into the newsroom to check on what was going on, his meticulous style of dress (I never saw him without a suit and tie) and the incredibly messy desk in his office (off limits even to his secretary).

To give you a sense of Bodenhamer, I quote from a 1972 profile written by former Chamber of Commerce President Vern Speer. AtBodenhamer's retirement party, the old editor crustily remembered: "Over the years I have aggravated many of those present, but many of you have also aggravated me. To many I am an S.O.B., but I'm your S.O.B."

The fact that people have a love-hate relationship with the newspaper is a sign that it's doing its job, Bodenhamer believed. Speer quotes Bodenhamer as saying: "Many people write angry letters to the paper threatening to quit and cancel their subscriptions, but curiosity forced them to buy the paper from the newsstand and eventually they come back. One man has done so time and again."

And, finally, this: "Our obligation (was) to call attention to public officials who were rascals and to call them just that and do so while belonging to the same service club or civic group ... it often led to touchy situations."

Amen, Paul.

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