On September 15 Herald Managing Editor Jamie Patterson will be one of the featured speakers at Millsaps College in a forum featuring five of the state’s top award-winning journalists.
She was chosen to speak at this event because she won the Bill Minor Award for general new reporting, which is the top award in the state in that category. She also won the Bill Minor Award for Investigative Reporting in 2011.
I’d be proud of that fact if this were someone working for our newspaper who I barely knew, but of course the fact that she’s my wife makes it all the more rewarding.
I’m going to send this column to press without letting Jamie see it first (and that may mean some dumb errors get by), but she would protest if she knew that I was dedicating this space to praising her work.
That’s what I’m going to do, however, because I think a small community like Yazoo should take pride in the fact that a journalist of Jamie’s caliber is leading the newsroom of the hometown newspaper.
More importantly, I think our readers should know just how dedicated Jamie is to the work she does.
One of the best examples I can think of is when Jamie recently battled an eye infection that turned into a rather serious issue. She had a problem that kept getting worse, and the night before our deadline day for the Saturday edition I could tell that it was really bothering her.
The next morning when we woke up she told me that if it wasn’t better by the weekend she was going to go to the doctor.
I took one look at her eye and said, “No, you’re going to the doctor as soon as the doors open this morning.”
She argued that she had too much work to do, but I wasn’t taking no for an answer so she went to see Dr. Parker that morning. He immediately sent her to a specialist in Jackson.
I couldn’t go with her because the paper had to get to press on time, and kids had to be picked up from school.
But while I was only worried about her, Jamie was mostly worried about the paper. After all, she had a couple of stories that weren’t finished, and she hadn’t even started on her column.
I assured her that I had everything under control, even though I probably really didn’t, but I knew could find a way to make it work.
A few hours later Jamie arrived in the news room with a patch taped over one eye and obviously feeling some pain. She proceeded to finish all of her stories, and write her weekly column, with me arguing the entire time that she needed to go home and just let us handle it.
“No way,” she told me. “These stories I’m working on are important to our readers.”
And they were.
Just like the stories that won her the Bill Minor Award, those stories might not mean much to someone outside of Yazoo County, but they were of vital importance to many of our readers.
Jamie has never let adversity stand in the way of her doing the job – and I’m confident that she never will.
