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One Friday night in the early 1950s, Richard Hine sat in his Ohio dining room, gazing at a blank piece of paper. Pencil in hand, he picked up an issue of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
“I drew on the blank paper an alternative layout for the pictures, captions, headlines and stories,” Hine later recalled. “How did I know that I was rehearsing for The Almanac, where I did this on Friday nights for nearly 30 years.”
Around the same time, Hine, who was about 12, bought a toy printing press so he could cover his neighborhood’s news. The Coit Road Post, all four pages of it, was born.
“One of my biggest stories was when a big snowstorm arrived, and I blasted a Page One banner headline, something like BLIZZARD HITS COIT ROAD,” he said.
Community news is in Richard Hine’s blood. When The Almanac hired him in 1988, the staff gained not only a top journalist but a leader and mentor who would shape countless careers – and shape the paper for decades to come.
In honor of The Almanac’s 60th anniversary, a reporter chatted with Hine and his cohorts about his career as The Almanac’s longest serving editor, which ended with his retirement in 2018. From typewriters to tech bros, Little League to high-speed rail, Hine has seen it all.
From copy boy to newsroom leader
Anyone who spent time in the Almanac newsroom with Hine could expect to hear a Cleveland Press anecdote. His connection with the paper went back to toddlerhood.
“When I was 2 years old and my mom was in the hospital and the caretaker wasn’t paying attention, I wandered away from home,” he recalled. “The police were called and I was found at a home about a block away. A picture of me appeared at the top of Page 3 of that day’s Press.”
When he got older, Hine became a copy boy at The Press, under legendary editor Louie Seltzer. Seltzer was known for covering “every inch of the community.” Hine took that approach to heart.
After graduating from Ohio University in journalism, he served in the Air Force in San Antonio, where he was head of the news service for base newspapers. On weekends, he covered stories for the San Antonio Express. Memorable interviews included Senate candidate George H.W. Bush, and Texas Gov. John Connally, his arm still in a sling from the bullet wounds he received when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Later, Hine wrote for the Dayton Daily News and Business Week before turning to corporate communications. But journalism called, and in 1983 he became editor of the San Francisco legal newspaper The Recorder. He moved to The Almanac five years later.
‘Run it through the typewriter again’
When Hine joined The Almanac, typewriters were still the norm. It wasn’t for another few years that publisher and owner Mort Levine bought a bunch of Macs (“I think he went to a swap meet”) and computerized the newsroom.
Hine found the Internet revolution fascinating. Still, he would famously complain that newsrooms were too quiet without the collegial clattering of typewriters.
He even waxed nostalgic about an early device with a particular quirk: If you quit a file, it would automatically erase everything below the cursor. Once, Hine had to rewrite a whole story from scratch in 15 minutes. But then, he said: “The second version I wrote was far better. Sometimes you want to throw away the first version of a story and then sit down again and think, ‘What’s really important?’”
That perspective served Hine well, and in turn served his writers well. Sean Howell, the Menlo Park beat reporter from 2008 to 2010, found Hine to be a fantastic mentor.
“What made Richard such a great editor was his ability to convey in just a few words how a story should be rewritten,” Howell said. “He would home in on a structural issue that needed to be fixed or something you hadn’t explained well, and the issues he put his finger on would unlock a better article.
“My favorite Richardism was ‘run it through the typewriter again’ – his way of conveying that an article wasn’t working and that he trusted you to fix it.”
Hine and his writers covered news large and small. He could find a story in the dullest press release or driest school board meeting. Reporters once teased him for turning a roadside pile of mulch into an entertaining photo caption.
Major news broke on his watch, of course. In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck when he was driving home to watch the World Series. For a weekly newspaper in those days, there was no way to swiftly report about the quake’s local impact. “We had an entire week to write our stories,” Hine said with a laugh.
A top local story in 2005 was the closure – and rocky reopening – of Kepler’s Books & Magazines. Rory Brown, the Menlo Park reporter at the time, said he loved working under Hine’s guidance.
“I was such a young reporter, and I felt very supported. Richard was so willing to give the time and effort to make sure I got this right, but also the confidence-boosting words of experience,” he said.
Brown also extensively covered the efforts to bring high-speed rail to the area. There, Hine played a key role: He asked Brown to justify why each story was necessary.
“Richard was really good about going back to: ‘Why do people care? What’s different about this train story from the last train story?'” Brown said. “His expectations were really high, but also the willingness to trust his reporters.”
From cover to cover
For Hine, high expectations go hand-in-hand with high standards. He has respect not only for the community, but for the role of journalism in the community.
That was clear to news editor Renee Batti, who worked with Hine for 27 years before retiring. The two of them made a powerful team, focused on details and deadlines, but quick to laugh together.
“Do you remember how he spoke so often, and with such high affection, about his early days training with professionals who insisted on high standards and integrity?” Batti said. “Those high journalistic standards were embedded in him, and when difficult decisions had to be made, his careful deliberation and concern for making the right call were apparent.
“Another observation I can offer after all those years of working with him: He cared deeply about the community The Almanac served. And that really mattered.”
Hine also had affection for the staffers who made the paper what it was. Over the years, he worked closely with journalists who had been around for decades, including writers Marion Softky, Jane Knoerle and Marjorie Mader, and photographer Carol Ivie, all of whom were familiar faces throughout Almanac country. It’s a painful part of the paper’s lore that the very day that photographer Carol Ivie died in 2005, she had been on a photo assignment. “They were really out in the community,” Hine said.
“When I met people, they would routinely say that they read the paper from cover to cover,” he said. “I remember one guy saying, ‘If I had to cancel the New York Times or The Almanac, I can’t decide which one.'”
The Almanac is also the place where Hine met his wife, Jennifer Brown Hine, who worked in real estate advertising. Today, the pair are happily retired in Southern California.
But Hine still keeps up with The Almanac, and counts a number of his former reporters among his friends. When there’s breaking news in West Menlo Park or Lindenwood or Ladera, that first text pinging on their phone just may be from their former editor, eager to talk about the story.
