On the Web: The Story in all its Dimensions

There are a lot of dimensions to the story Gene Amole is telling about his death, and The Rocky Mountain News web site is providing him with the interactivity and multi-media required to tell the story right. The site includes: • More than 2,000 messages from readers to Gene. • Audio, video, and a photo gallery. • An archive of more than 100 columns written since Amole told readers he was dying Oct. 27. • A message to readers from Editor and Publisher John Temple.

Gene Amole is a giant of Denver journalism and the heart of the Rocky Mountain News. In October, he told his readers in a front-page column that he was dying. What an incredible experience it has been.

John Temple

Gene is still writing as he approaches his 79th birthday. Death hasn't come as quickly as he had expected - even hoped. But his diary of dying has taken readers on a voyage of discovery, a journey that has shed more light on the meaning of life than on the darkness of death.

The response has been huge: A couple of thousand messages posted on a special Web site the News set up for Gene's columns. Thousands of letters and e-mails to Gene directly. And when he misses the occasional day, dozens of concerned calls to the newsroom. Gene seems to have been energized by his decision and by the love he's felt from so many. After several years of struggling to keep up with his three-columns-a-week schedule, Gene is now in the paper six times a week. (The News doesn't publish on Sunday.) His longest consecutive streak was a column in every edition for 17 weeks.

The whole thing was Gene's idea.

"The idea came to me during one of my long hospital nights while I was cursing away at the pain," he wrote in the Oct. 26 column informing readers he was dying. "How many other folks were feeling what I felt, not knowing or understanding what the hell was happening to us?" I immediately agreed with his idea.

My only concern was how long he could keep it up. Would we be promising something to readers that he couldn't deliver? He has more than answered that question. What we didn't know was how the community would react. There have been a few who've said they just didn't want to read about something so depressing.

But the overwhelming majority have been positive, even grateful.

"Your column will help thousands, such as my own father," one person wrote. "I shall miss you, but I sure as hell am going to enjoy your last ride."

Wherever I go, people thank me for supporting Gene and letting him write his final columns. I explain that it really wasn't much of a decision. How could anyone say no to such a proposal from a person like Gene? He has an extraordinary and unique relationship with Denver, having started in radio here before World War II. He is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning television journalist who was on the air in the first week Denver had a TV station. He's run his own jazz and classical radio stations where his morning show was the talk of the town. And he's written a newspaper column for the News for 24 years.

The biggest surprise for me has been how a man who was struggling with his health and frequently talking about quitting has been in a sense liberated by his decision not to keep fighting his ailments. Gene seems more connected today, after making the decision to go into home hospice care, than he was when he was trying to recover. He's able to enjoy life more, to appreciate his family and friends. He even took a two-week vacation in Maui - with his laptop, of course - where he savored the rainbows and whales. It was heaven on earth and even this old man who had trouble walking could enjoy it - and share the experience with his readers.

Gene will occasionally ask me whether the column is still OK, whether people are still interested. My sense is that because of his unusual ability to communicate simply and directly about his own personal experience, readers will not tire of it. The question will be whether Gene loses the strength or the mental acuity to keep writing. We have an agreement that I will tell him when I believe he's lost it and he will listen to me.

The experience of working with Gene and his editor, Jim Trotter, on this diary has taught me again the importance of the personal in journalism. Readers respond to honest writing about life's basic experiences, about things that we're all going to go through. The human contact he provides is a reason people value their newspaper and come back to it day after day. How do you know when it might be appropriate for a journalist to tell such a personal story?

Obviously there's no easy answer. But I would advise editors to err on the side of publishing. You need to know whether the writer is skillful enough to share the experience. You also need to know that this kind of column takes a different kind of editing. It's not an opinion column in the traditional sense. Where are you going to draw the line? There have been topics that we've realized would not have wide interest, even if they're important to Gene. Bodily functions, for example.

But with someone so experienced in making columns out of his life, achieving this balance has not been a struggle. Ultimately, the hardest thing has been the knowledge that it has to end. I am sharing something very intimate with a friend I've come to love. Our readers are doing the same. "You will live forever in so many hearts and so many stories," one colleague wrote him. Sounds like a pretty good ending to me.

John Temple is editor and publisher of The Rocky Mountain News.