About Dunwoody reporter. (Sandy Springs, GA) 20??-current | View Entire Issue (March 2, 2021)
MARCH 2021 ■ www.ReporterNewspapers.net Community | 15 Veteran journalist has seen the changes in Georgia politics up close BY MARKWOOLSEY It’s more and more unusual for a print journalist to make almost an en tire career from working at one publica tion, but Jim Galloway is that rare bird. The 1977 Universi ty of Georgia graduate spent about 18 months at a South Carolina paper before jump ing to the AJC and has been there ever since. Galloway was hired as ed itor for the Atlanta paper’s North Fulton Extra, a week ly suburban edition. He next jumped to the Journal to cov er religion. Stints at Atlanta City Hall, the Georgia Legis lature and as a foreign cor respondent - among oth ers - followed. He became a political columnist about 20 years ago, a position he planned to retire from af ter the Jan. 5 runoffs for the U.S. Senate seats represent ing Georgia.. Q. What influences drew you to jour nalism? A. I would guess probably reading the pa per when I was growing up. We took the Journal, the evening paper. Then there’s this: Remember the movie “Teachers Pet” with Clark Gable and Doris Day? He was a feisty old city editor. Also, Art Bu- chwald, the humor columnist of the day, influenced me. Q. How has covering politics changed? A. My first presidential candidate is an example. He was Florida Governor Ru ben Askew. I think it was 1984. At that point you were assigned to a specific candidate. I remember he had this inter esting tic. Every so often his voice would stop and his eyes would roll to the back of his head. Nobody ever wrote about it. Fast forward to today, can you imagine that happening? Then, there’s the immediacy. The rhythm of the business has changed so much. Usually I finish the Sunday col umn at around 5 p.m. on Thursday. It goes up at about 6 p.m. and then into the Sunday paper. So, the internet presence gets priority over print. And you’re com peting with all these social media out lets, trying to combat all the disinforma tion that’s out there. Q. What were highlights of your ca reer? A. I thought my stuff out of Beijing dur ing all the [Tiananmen Square] unrest was pretty good. I have spent about the last 20 years as a political columnist and that has gotten more and more interest ing every year. The other big one I did was in 2006, when Ralph Reed was mak ing a play for governor of Georgia, and that’s when the [Jack] Abramoff scandal was breaking. It turned out that Reed had taken a good bit of money that had been laundered through another organi zation to stop the state of Alabama from establishing a lottery and [halt] gam bling initiatives in other states. It was one of those cases where it paid to have covered religion for a while. Q. What will you miss? A. It’s something I already miss: Talk ing to people face to face. I always did my best stuff when I could look some one in the eye. Now you don’t see their faces...everybody is masked up. The oth er thing is that I have gone through life half deaf and you don’t realize in a situ ation like that how much you depend on lip reading, Q. What’s ahead for politics in Georgia? A. I don’t know if it will happen this cy cle or the cycle after that or the cycle after that, but Georgia is changing de- mographically, and by 2030 we’ll be a majority-minority state. White voters will be outnumbered by everybody else. The question is how are we going to re act to that? The arc has been coming to grips with the progression of the US into a multiracial democracy. Q, Were you surprised by the recent election and runoff? A. November surprised me in that Dem ocrats did well at the top of the ticket - in the presidential, Senate and con gressional contests, but not down-tick et. They made minimal gains in the state Legislature, which bodes ill for them during a special session to redraw polit ical boundaries later this year. The results of the two Senate run offs on Jan. 5 surprised me less and less as we moved closer to final voting. With Trump insisting that he won, against all evidence, he made sure that the election was about him, and not about putting a check on Democrats. In essence, he asked Georgia whether we were really sure about how we voted on Nov. 3. And on Jan. 5, we said yes. Q. What’s next for you? A. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do next. I have a lot of woodworking tools I want to play with. I’ll have to buy a new laptop. I don’t know what I’ll write but I’ll keep writing. Q. The great American novel perhaps? A. Naw, I don’t know how I’d write fic tion. T>J BEE R LINING IS HERE. New Funding and Flexibility in SBA Lending fe Small Business Administration for ts Sure to Benefit Small Businesses. 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