One of Billings only online publications Last Best News announced that they will cease publication as of July 1, 2018. This was the story that ran on their website. (courtesy image Ed Kemmick from Last Best News)
Originally published in the 6/29/17 print edition of Yellowstone County News.
BILLINGS — Veteran reporter Ed Kemmick is retiring from reporting because he wants to write better.
It’s a paradox the veteran newspaperman wants to explore — if he has time, while he’s exploring Montana and the rest of the country, which is another reason he’s leaving Last Best News, the online newspaper he founded in 2014.
He’s hoping someone will either take on Last Best News or start a similar online venture, but he’s leaving with little regret.
For one thing, he wants to see his family, which includes grown children and grandchildren, more often. He wants to see more scenery. And he wants to play more music.
But he’s not leaving the news behind completely. He intends to write on a freelance basis, an area where he already has experience.
“I want to write a lot less often and write a lot better stories,” he said.
The absence of deadlines carries strong appeal.
For one thing, running the Last Best News website offered little, if any, downtime, essential for recharging.
When he worked for the Gazette, especially in his time as an editor, “I would just go on vacation and not really think about anything,” Kemmick said. “Vacation” from Last Best News meant still spending time every day reading and answering emails, updating the website and thinking about what he should do next, all “very strangely unproductive in terms of reducing my stress.”
Entering his 60s, he decided to step back.
Logo of Last Best News that announced publication coming to an end and last call on July 1, 2018.
When he launched Last Best News in January 2014, Kemmick cited inspiration from Peggy Kuhr, who at the time was the dean of the School of Journalism at the University of Montana. During a tour of the state, Kuhr said the school’s intent was to give students skills they needed to reinvent journalism as newspapers evolved away from print.
“I liked her answer,” Kemmick wrote at the time, “and later, when I started thinking about this venture, I suddenly realized that it wasn’t just the 20-somethings who had to reinvent journalism. Why not someone like me, with decades of experience in the business?”
He saw starting Last Best News partly as a chance to reinvent his career, he wrote at the time. You could say newspapers were in his blood; Kemmick’s father and grandfather were newspaper printers and he worked almost 25 years at the Billings Gazette, reporting, editing and writing columns. He’s worked for newspapers since 1980, in Missoula, Anaconda and Butte as well as in Minnesota.
Now, in a column written this week, he said a good opportunity exists for someone who is willing to take on an independent online newspaper like Last Best News, and he believes the region needs more, and better, news coverage.
“I think the time is ripe and the opportunities are abundant,” he wrote. In reference to emerging technology, he said, “let someone else, someone younger than me and much more at home in this brave new world, pick up the reins. I’ll do all I can to make sure they succeed.”
