Webb, George

From Spearfish Lake Tales Wiki

George Webb is the editor of the Spearfish Lake Record-Herald in 1975 when he employs Mike McMahon as a junior reporter.

George was once one of the junior reporters hired in to work on the Record-Herald and one of two that mad a career out of it.^BB16 While it isn't named where he is from, it isn't likely to be too far. He was a high school friend of Ed Sloat.^SX05

After the death of the Record-Herald owner, Homer Sanderson, George and Dean Hoffman, the printing plant manager, worked an employee buyout of the paper from Homer's daughters and the two became senior partners in the arrangement. Soon Webb's duties were named Publisher while Mike McMahon became the editor.^AF13

To better gather news and gossip, George was a regular for breakfast at Rick's Cafe and had been for twenty years.^{AF28 BAR10} While being an editor, the Record-Herald was too small for George not to step in and help. "Webb had long believed that newspaper front office people -- advertising and editorial and front office people -- needed to keep a sense of perspective by doing some of the dirty work."^BAR02 George himself could sweat over the Addressograph machine^BAR49 or cover a Rotary meeting.^BAR06 After he retired, Kirsten McMahon became publisher.

George was married and the Webbs owned a big motor home^FtS40 and drove it to Florida more than once.^{BAR108 FtS08} George would also "go out deer hunting, but Mike knew that sometimes, he didn't bother to take a rifle. It was an excuse to go out into the woods for a week or two with the gang, get away from his wife, drink beer, play cards, and tell tall stories."^BAR96

George smoked a cigarette, but only on occasion. He kept a pack of cigarettes in the desk drawer for when it came time to think things out. "Greatest aid to concentration ever invented," he'd said; it was the only time he smoked.^BAR51

It is unclear what, if any, relation he might be to Kathy Webb, someone that disliked what she saw as cruelty in dogsledding.^BAR96