I’m in the history business.
No, I cannot claim the title historian. I think that title more accurately belongs to those who hold history degrees and create academic works.
I prefer the title storyteller.
I spent 35 years as a professional storyteller — a newsman.
“News is the first, rough draft of history,” is often attributed to the late Washington Post Publisher Phil Graham. I thought that when I left daily journalism to become executive director of Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area, created by Congress to tell the story of the Kansas-Missouri border, I was leaving that “first, rough draft of history” behind.
I was wrong.
Whenever I hear people today say “it’s never been this bad” or “we have never faced such challenges,” I know they haven’t listened to my stories.