By Todd Milbourn
The Sacramento Bee
Published: 11/24/2006
Excerpt:
Dorris-Ruth Huffman began one of her recent columns with a disclaimer:
"If I repeat what I've written before," she wrote in May, "please remember I was born in 1902."
Surely, readers of Siskiyou County's Pioneer Press were happy to indulge Huffman, a writer who has documented life in this logging town pretty much every week for more than three decades.
These days, Huffman -- born just as the typewriter became popular -- expounds on her personal history: For example, what it was like to attend a one-room school in the early 1900s or find work during the Depression. The column is titled "Reminiscing with Ruth Huffman." ...
... "In a small community, readers don't just see someone as a columnist in the newspaper like they do in Sacramento or wherever. They're also a neighbor and a friend," said Daniel Webster, editor of the Pioneer Press, which has 7,000 subscribers.
"Folks read Ruth Huffman because they want her to know they're reading."
Webster said he doesn't know of an older columnist in the United States. Journalism professor
Bob Steele surveyed colleagues at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in Florida.
"We've heard of people still writing part time into their 90s, but nobody over the century mark," Steele said.
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