Jim Denk creates beautiful, full-page graphics and illustrations. He’s known for it, good at it, done it for years.
But these days, he also takes photos, designs and sells ads … Oh, and he rubber bands newspaper bundles in his garage, and delivers them to the post office each Wednesday.
He’s the managing editor at The Matthews Record, the 11,000 weekly circulation paper that he and his wife Janet bought a few years ago. Janet is the editor and publisher.
Denk is a great storyteller. I worked with him way back in 1987 or so, in the art department of the Wichita Eagle. It was the first professional job for both of us. I used to go home exhausted each day, not because of the work, but because he’d made me laugh so hard with the stories he told. (Seriously, my mascara was running, because I laughed until I cried.)
A lot of people were buzzing about the stories and designs he showed at the Society for News Design convention a few weeks ago. When I tracked him down, I found myself asking about everything I’d heard: “OK, first I want to hear about the rooster, then I want to hear about the sidewalk, then, I want to hear about the Thanksgiving story and the wildlife story … oh, and the ads, too.”
Denk went on to work at the Asbury Park Press, the Detroit Free Press, Copley Chicago Newspapers and The Charlotte Observer before buying the Record.
The Record would be a remarkable paper even if it had a staff of 200, but it’s even more so because these unusual, detailed and visual approaches are conjured up each week by, um, just a couple of people (basically Jim and Janet) and served to the lucky residents of Matthews, N.C., just outside of Charlotte.
Sara Quinn: When did you first start talking about wanting to buy the paper in Matthews?
Jim Denk: Oh, almost immediately after we moved there! I’d always pick it up, and I guess because we’re in the business we’d say, “Aw, I would have done that this way!”
So, when my wife said, “Well, we’ve been asked if we want to buy the paper,” it’s not like we hadn’t thought about it.
Our first reaction was “No! We can’t do that.” But there was a tinge of “Wow, wouldn’t that be cool?”
How big is your staff?
Denk: My wife, Janet, is the editor and publisher and I’m the managing editor. Then, we hired a production person, and she’s really good. She does a lot of ads and pages. She’s working probably less than 20 hours. What she wants to do is to be there when her kids get off the bus, and that’s important.
We also have a bookkeeper who comes in the afternoon on the day we hit the button to print. We have a couple of sales people right now, maybe two and a half sales people. One person comes in every so often and brings in an ad. That really fluctuates. That’s been a big learning curve for both of us.
It sounds like you really are doing everything. So, tell me about your week.
Denk: Okay. So, let’s start with the second that I push the button to send it off to the press. We walk out as soon as we can. We’re wrapping some things up and answering a few calls. So, it’s probably about 3:30 to 4 o’clock in the afternoon. And that’s early in my day.
So, I usually make -– make –- my family go with me to this local Mexican restaurant. They know that I’m not going to let them go anywhere else. That’s become my tradition. We go there every week.
It’s sort of like a “we’ve done well, and we’ve published the paper” celebration.
Then they deliver the paper to my house, in my garage later that night. We have a table, and everything’s set up there, with my rubber bands and everything.
Tell me about some of the stories that have gotten great feedback. I heard someone say something about a sidewalk story…?
Denk: The sidewalk story was about two older ladies who live in this house in downtown Matthews. Their father was the ex-postmaster — years and years ago. The two women never got married. They’re now in their late 70s or 80s.
And they like to walk to the post office, down the sidewalk. One sister got bumped by a car on the way there. There’s so much traffic at certain times of the day on this one street. She couldn’t make it across fast enough and no one was looking out for her.
So, we did a story to show the path of the sidewalk -– that it’s there and then it’s kind of not there. We wanted to show the hazards of just going a block and a half to the post office, and what it must be like for the sisters.
I literally went out and drew the street –- just a one-dimensional little, easy graphic. And then I took a series of pictures. It was a real simple thing, but it just showed the story.
What was the reaction?
Denk: Oh, it definitely got a lot of mail. I believe the town leaders went in and started looking at all of their sidewalks and how they connect. I think it had an effect.
How would this story have been covered in the paper as it was before you took it over? Would it have been a brief?
Denk: Oh, I’m not even sure if it would have really been thought through.
What’s another story that took a visual approach?
Denk: Thanksgiving was coming. And a local woman had just published the history of Matthews. I figured it’s not like we would be able to tell a story better than she could. So I thought, what was this area like before there were any white people here?
I did some research on what the Indian culture was like. Then, I did an illustration that showed what the Waxhaw Indians were like –- what they wore, how they ate, what their wigwams looked like, how they fished and dried their meat.
Tell me about the rooster. What was that all about?
Denk: Ah, the rooster … Dumplins. He lived in a hardware store, one of those old places where you could reach in a bin and grab a bottle of pop.
It’s like a working museum, with things on the wall that are, like, 100 years old. You can go in there and buy seed and cast iron skillets and washers for things that hardly exist anymore. So, it’s a great place. You can go in there and kind of find out all of the news.
OK, when Dumplins died, my wife wrote a great little story.
Dumplins had about five hens in this little cage back there. He lived the life. He would just strut around back there. When he died, Janet wrote this great story; it was well-written. You know, “Matthews’ most-talked-about bachelor has died.” People loved it.
We actually had one older guy who said, “You know I kind of teared up when I read about Dumplins.” They had all known him for so long.
How long does a rooster live?
Denk: I think they’re only supposed to live a little while, but he just defied the odds and lived about five years longer than he was supposed to.
The story is posted right on their counter in the hardware store now.
That’s a real slice of life story. Not what you’d see in every paper. What else?
Denk: So, the wildlife stuff is really important to the people in Matthews. We have a hawk group … habitat and wildlife keepers and there’s all of this stuff going on.
Sometimes, in my backyard, I look out and there’s a lot of deer, or raccoons. It’s kind of forest-y behind my house. I put up a birdcage, we have possums sometimes. It sort of blows me away because I grew up in a place where, if you saw a deer … it was a big deal.
Hill City, Kansas? I get it, I’m a Kansan, too.
Denk: Yep. Now, the deer are coming in deep in my flowers.
So, for the paper, I just took a “wildlife in my backyard” approach. But I created an illustration of a forest, the way it looks in North Carolina. I put everything in it that I’ve ever seen there. Like salamanders to frogs. I did the research on the frogs, what kind they were. Turtles to deer to barred owls. That was fun.
So, what are people saying about all of this crazy visual storytelling? When you go to the Mexican restaurant, do people say, “What’s in the paper today?”
Denk: Yeah. We get that. I don’t know. It’s just sort of fun.
You told me a little about what your week was like. But I can’t imagine what it would feel like to wake up in the morning and say, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we did this for our neighbors?”
Denk: It really is the community. I wanted to make sure we had photos of parents and grandparents sitting in lawn chairs for a little league tournament we had in Matthews, for example. They came in from, like eight states.
Well, I spent enough time with them that, when a team from Georgia went into a restaurant, I just kind of followed them and took a picture. Well, that meant a lot to the community. These people are coming in to Matthews and spending a lot of money in your town.
What do you hear from readers?
Denk: Here’s one I got recently. A woman said, “I look forward to your paper every week.” She said, “No, really, I mean I wait for it. I get my coffee and I sit down and read it from cover to cover.” She said, “I really mean it. I look at the ads and everything.”
So, I have a feeling that people really are reading it. We’ve made it kind of a quick thing. It’s a 45-minute or less kind of read.
How many pages, on average?
Denk: Anywhere from 16 to 30 pages. Probably 20 pages is an average.
Because I design the ads myself and sell some of them, it doesn’t look cluttered. I get to use this really nice, modular news hole. It makes it look so, kind of amazing, on some of the inside pages. I have ads that don’t overwhelm the content. I look at it holistically.
Tell me about the ads you design for the paper.
Denk: At first, I thought creating the ads would be just one more production thing to do. But, I’m already looking at it like it’s the next challenge for me.
In the beginning, we didn’t have any credibility — the paper had been really struggling before we took it over. So, we had an identity crisis. So, I really did spend some time in the beginning, to show what we were capable of. And, it didn’t take long. We were able to create some very high-level ads. We gave them great customer service. That was an essential part of our goal: customer service.
Did some of the local companies start to use the artwork you created?
Denk: Yeah, it became their company logo; they used it on business cards. Sometimes, I see it on the sides of their cars.
Somewhere down the line, that might become something that we can make money on, but honestly, that’s just become part of it all. Nobody is giving them that type of ad in The (Charlotte) Observer.
You really know the people that you cover, the community.
Denk: I will say that there’s more love going around. Every once in a while, someone will have some criticism. That’s the beauty of community like this. You get the feedback right then and there. You go get a coffee in the morning and somebody’s going to say something.
Would you ever consider going back to a big paper?
Denk: Sure. I think anytime you’re doing something else — any creative person would look at what else is out there and say, “There were good things about that.”
I thought maybe you’d say “No.”
Denk: I am very happy where I am. Probably when I would say that I’d go back, it’s all about how hard I have to work.
When do you take time off?
Denk: Well, it’s Wednesday, but that’s when I’m delivering the paper.
My dad was like that. He owned a small business and he worked seven days a week. That’s kind of what you have to do for a while. (He) owned the business for 35 years and he had the same person working for him. He just didn’t have the time off. And he really didn’t like to be gone for more than a week.
There’s been a lot of sacrifice. I’m not gonna lie about that — a lot of work. But I think there would have been that if I owned a hot dog stand, too.
When we were considering buying it, eventually the price just got to a point where we took it. We thought, “What about our retirement?” But then we realized that, if we do this right, this will be our retirement. The investment will be worth it.
When I look back at my time in larger papers, I’m humbled by what I didn’t know. I shudder at what I thought was important.
