By Carly Phaneuf, Staff Writer
He dropped out of college, was poor, and was desperate for work. Then, Wayne Phaneuf found himself at the doorstep of The Republican, a newspaper in Springfield, Massachusetts.
He started out drawing cartoons but slowly worked his way up to be a reporter and eventually an executive editor. When he began, he was the youngest in his field by at least 20 years, and he tackled over 4 stories a day. From murder, police brutality, racism, riots, to even his own “Vibes” column, Phaneuf brought the world news it not only wanted to hear, but needed to hear.
When asked how it was starting off as a young reporter in the late sixties, Phaneuf responded with, “It was very exhausting at first because, when I started, it was the height of the anti-war movement.” This was when Nixon was just elected, and Phaneuf was only 20 years of age.
Phaneuf didn’t have a “proper” education by today’s standards, but he did have one important thing: passion. The same issues that we face today — racial tension, political frustrations, and corrupt systems — flooded the papers with black ink thicker than blood.
Police brutality was especially bad during this time in Springfield at the height of the 1970s. There was a huge racial divide between the growing Puerto Rican population and the white population.
One story he remembers distinctly was a police shooting of a young Puerto Rican male. “The neighborhood erupted,” he said, as a flash of the memory ran through his eyes. Phaneuf and his fellow partner at the time, Paul Binot, were sitting in Paul’s car, listening to the police scanner for possible new stories.
Suddenly, out of the silence, they hear a call to go downtown. The protest had turned into a violent riot. Both stepped on the gas and arrived before the police did. Before their eyes was a picture of horror.
The Springfield fire department was under attack. Just as they were taking it all in, a bike tire was thrown at the car, shattering the windshield but leaving them unharmed. Motioning them to safety was a fireman.
The two, along with about five firemen, jumped in the back of a fire truck. Just as the truck was pulling away from the chaos, they heard the sound of breaking glass yet again. A molotov cocktail had been thrown through the back window.
Soon, the entire truck smelled of alcohol. Phanuef recalled that the way it’d been thrown “caused the flame to be put out. If not, there is no doubt… that we would have all been dead.”
After the whole ordeal, Wayne went back, wrote his story, and published it in the paper the next morning. That night, he “thought about the importance of [his] job. Sure, it was scary, but [he] knew [they] had to report on these types of things.”
Although it was dangerous, Wayne certainly enjoyed his job, “I appreciated that I could make a difference in the way people thought and the way people judged people,” Wayne said. He went on to explain how persuasion in the paper was extremely important. Now, over 40 years later, we are still dealing with the same types of riots and the news is still covering the same types of stories.
