In 50-plus years of working in journalism, my relationships with bosses were almost always…well, let's say "fraught." But the news that my very first one, Hodding Carter III, died last week broke my heart a little.
I worked for Hodding at the Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville, Mississippi, in 1975 and '76—my first job out of college. He was the editor-in-chief, a position he took over when his civil-rights crusading father died a couple of years earlier. As a manager, Hodding had some peculiar traits. He hired me sight unseen about six weeks before I graduated from Stanford. When I told him I had already accepted a post-grad journalism fellowship that would keep me from joining his staff until around the first of August, he was unconcerned. "That'll give you the chance to come see the place," he told me. "Small Mississippi Delta towns aren't for everybody."
