Ed Kemmick

Ed Kemmick has been a newspaper reporter, editor and columnist since 1980. Except for four years in his home state of Minnesota, he has spent his entire journalism career in Montana, working in Missoula, Anaconda, Butte and Billings. "The Big Sky, By and By," a collection of some of his newspaper stories and columns, plus a few essays and one short story, was published in 2011.

Recent Posts

Leader rolls out the red carpet for visiting scribe

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Leader

When I was interviewing Milt Gunderson at the Daniels County Leader in Scobey last week, for a story about his amazingly long tenure at the paper, publisher Burl Bowler told me they were going to write a story about me writing a story about Milt.

And they did, and it went out to the Leader’s 1,500 subscribers yesterday. They were kind enough to mail me a copy, too, and it arrived today, in all its yellow glory. The Leader is old-school and doesn’t use bylines, but the story was written by Mike Stebleton, who mostly covers sports. You can access the Leader’s e-edition here. It looks good, but online the newsprint is white and the photos are in color, so you lose something of its distinct flavor. Continue Reading →

Filed under: Last Best Blog, Burl Bowler, Daniels County Leader, Last Best News, Mike Stebleton, Milt Gunderson

Jimmie Rodgers show to hit the road

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Jimmie Rodgers

I think this qualifies as news: The Humanities Montana board of directors is sending me and my brother, John, on the road with our presentation, “Jimmie Rodgers: The Life and Times of the Father of Country Music.” We will be taking this around the state under the auspices of the Speakers Bureau program of Humanities Montana. We have the Western Heritage Center to thank for this. I think it was Community Historian Kevin Kooistra who came up with the idea of having a monthly series of presentations in 2013 that focused on individual musicians or musical genres. For me it was kind of a dream come true. Continue Reading →

Filed under: Last Best Blog, Humanities Montana, Jimmie Rodgers, Kevin Kooistra, Speakers Bureau, Western Heritage Center

Carpenter quits St. Louis newspaper over Lee bigwig’s bonus

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This is too good to pass up: Jim Romonesko, the media blogger who rightly gave the Billings Gazette grief for getting all squeamish about posting the affidvait in the Jason Priest assault case, is now relaying more news about Lee Enterprises bonuses. It seems that the head carpenter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, like the Gazette a Lee-owned newspaper, recently quit in disgust because of the $700,000 bonus award to CEO Mary Junck. First of all, what? A head carpenter? Continue Reading →

Filed under: Last Best Blog, Bill McClellan, Billings Gazette, Jim Romonesko, Lee Enterprises, Mary Junck, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Program will extend tech studies into grade schools

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Eli Sotherland

At a gathering of business and community leaders Tuesday, Gena Lustig, a junior at West High School, told how she attends an after-school Robotics Club at the Career Center as often as she can. “It’s a ton of fun,” she said. “It’s my favorite thing all year.” (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Billings, News, Bill Olfert, Career Center, Education Foundation, Krista Hertz, Project Lead the Way, School District 2