I like to think journalism runs in my blood. No matter how annoying that phrase might be, I think as the daughter of two journalists, I have reason to believe it. A mere five days after giving birth, my mom, Linda Barber, announced my arrival to the world in her weekly column in the Lee’s Summit Journal. Clearly, she is partly responsible for my work ethic.
A work ethic that, in combination with a good deal of luck, recently landed me a news editor position at Essex Media Group at the age of 23. I am both humbled and honored to take on the mantle from the many hard-working editors in the Item’s 146-year history.
The job offer came with another exciting inheritance: this biweekly column. To be honest, my background is in news. I’ve tried to stay clear of columns since I started working in newsrooms seven years ago. Not because I don’t like columns (I actually love reading them), but because I never felt my writing could quite live up to the famous-within-my-family columns that my mom and my great-grandmother wrote.
Yes, that’s right. My great-grandmother on my dad’s side wrote for the Liberty Tribune. In fact, she was the first female writer ever published in the Missouri newspaper. Knowing I didn’t have many of her stories saved, and in preparation for this column, I called my nana, who still lives in Missouri, and asked her to dig up some of her mom’s old articles for me. She did.
One included a lede, written in 1962 by my great-grandmother Dorothy C. Owens, that described the year as a time “when people pause in their daily activities to hear and feel the sonic boom.”
During our phone call, my nana explained that my great-grandmother had been interested in journalism since she began writing for her high school newspaper, but that she only started writing for the Liberty Tribune later in life as a way to compensate for her and her husband’s financial troubles in retirement. Again, clearly my work ethic must be partly inherited from the women in my family.
My mom first worked at KMIZ, a TV station in Columbia, Mo., as a production intern. She ran the cameras and teleprompter in 1987. Behind the camera and reading the teleprompter? My father, Dan Barber, who was the station’s weekend news anchor.
They dated, then married, and had me. She landed a new gig writing a family entertainment column for the Lee’s Summit Journal, and then the Kansas City Star. Over the years, she wrote about taking the family to drive-in movies, our rescue poodle who was born in the back of a semitruck, and the world’s largest McDonald’s. Her writing memorializes much of my early childhood — something for which I am forever grateful.
However, the battle to maintain her health soon took center stage. My family unfortunately lost this fight when she passed away from stage-four cancer in 2016.
I now often find myself going back to read her columns when I am in need of a laugh, a memory I was too young to remember, or some motherly advice. They are the best reminders of who she was, what she cared about, and — because she wrote a family entertainment column — her relationship with me.
In each piece, her kind and curious personality shines through. I aim to develop that kind of strong, fun, and interesting voice in my columns going forward. I can also guarantee that they will be well-researched and fact-checked given my regular home is in the news department.
As my mom, my great-grandma, and Item writers before me knew, any good journalist requests feedback. So, I encourage you to contact me. Tell me your ideas, and what interests you. I’m curious about you, too.
Rachel Barber is The Item‘s news editor. Her column will appear every other week.
