It attracts a certain kind of person. Both editors agree that curiosity is an important thing to have as a small-town journalist. Simmons covers the Eureka City Council, and likes it very much. He is also a self-admitted curious person by nature, and loves to write. In the mid-1970s, enrollment in university journalism programs spiked up by 500,000 because of the glamour of the Watergate saga.
Reality tells a different story now, however.
Not everyone is going to become a rich and famous journalist. Many of us toil at small papers. Pay is definitely not an incentive to work for a small paper. Simmons left a very good-paying job with a waste disposal company when the position of news editor at The Business Journal, a Bay Area paper, was offered to him. The newspaper is a weekly that covers business news from Sonoma to Contra Costa counties.