During the years 1971-1976, the Blue Mountain Rock Festival was an exciting event for Vandal students to attend, but the date was always kept confidential until a week before.
“The agreement that the ASUI made with the administration was that they could have the rock festival on campus, but they couldn’t publicize it to outside groups because they didn’t want unsavory influences,” said Kenton Bird, who was the editor of The Argonaut from 1974-1975 during his junior year at the University of Idaho.
He found it unfair that the dollars paid for the event came from students who couldn’t know about it and might miss it as a result. However, after one of his reporters ended up figuring out what the secret date was one year, Bird wanted to take the story to press earlier than usual.
The ASUI threatened to cut funding for the issue if the Argonaut went through with publishing the date in it, but Bird reacted accordingly. He called the production manager of The Idahonian (where The Argonaut was being printed), and the words “Blue Mountain Date Revealed” were plastered on the front page of the Argonaut a few days later; the entire issue being printed in blue ink instead of black.
Bird grew up in Kellogg, Idaho, where he was editor of both his high school’s newspaper and yearbook. Before arriving at the University of Idaho as a freshman in August of 1972, he had the chance to work at the Kellogg Evening News. Bird interviewed several political candidates from Idaho who were running for Congress at the time, a type of interview that requires a lot of confidence for a journalist at such a young age who’s just barely starting his professional career.
Through these political interactions, Bird was able to meet James (Jay) Shelledy who encouraged Bird to get involved in the Argonaut and to write a letter to the editor whom Shelledy had known from a campaign they had worked on together. Bird sent in a letter, hopeful, but unfortunately never heard anything back.
Keeping busy regardless, Bird decided to get involved with the marching band during his first semester at UI (playing the French horn). Then, in January of the following semester, Bird got a phone call from Rod Gramer, the new editor of The Argonaut who wasn’t the same person whom Bird had addressed his letter.
“Rod said, ‘Well you won’t believe this, but I’m the new editor of The Argonaut and when I moved into the editor’s office, I found a drawer full of unopened mail. And one of them was the letter you had written last August,’” said Bird.
Gramer asked Bird if he was still interested in writing for The Argonaut and soon enough, Bird became a staff reporter in the spring semester of ’73, his first story being a small story on the Community Development Center.
At that point in journalistic history, The Argonaut staff couldn’t rely upon digital methods as it does now to design its paper; rather, the staff had to put their papers together by hand using a method called “paste-up.”
“You would print out your stories in a long strip and then you would, using either a glue stick for small items or an electric waxer, wax the back of the pages of the paper,” described Bird. “Then you would put it on a grid sheet that was exactly sized to represent the newspaper page.”
After working in a few different reporting roles at The Argonaut, Bird became the editor from 1974-1975 and oversaw the production of a little over 60 issues during his term. He specified three different pieces that he felt most proud of publishing while serving as editor.
Aside from poking back at the ASUI with his blue-ink-bit, Bird also mentioned a time when his team did an investigation into the university’s involvement in the development of the Palouse Mall.
“There were allegations of some inside trading,” said Bird. “There wasn’t really an open call for proposals and other shopping center developers weren’t given a chance to apply.”
The third thing that stood out to Bird was a bonus issue that was dedicated primarily to photographs, titled “A Day in the Life of the University of Idaho,” which was modeled after Life magazine’s popular piece “A Day in the Life of the USA.”
“It was so popular that the Office of University Relations…ordered, with our permission, an extra thousand copies to give to campus visitors,” said Bird.
Bird enjoyed finding a sort of balance in reporting while at The Argonaut; in both exposing the hard-hitting truths and celebrating the moments of beauty that he discovered in Moscow.
However, no one of these stories Bird deems as his favorite one to have worked on. Instead, he talked of some of the editorials he wrote while being the Associate Editor in the Spring of ’74. For example, when a past ASUI President, whom Bird referred to as “not particularly dynamic,” was stepping down from his term, The Argonaut ran a very overt yet very humorous article recapping his presidency.
“We said ‘We at the Argonaut are pleased to celebrate the accomplishments of the ASUI President whose term is ending, the column below lists all of his major accomplishments,’” said Bird. “And then we just ran six inches of white space.”
By the time Bird concluded his work at The Argonaut and graduated from UI in the spring of 1976, he had already been writing full-time for The Idahonian and continued to do so until June of 1977.
However, during the summer of ‘76, he received an internship at The Washington Post and moved to DC for three months of work only two years after Richard Nixon had resigned as a result of The Post’s reporting on Watergate.
Not being a fan of the swampy DC conditions, Bird moved back to Idaho once he was finished and soon after began working at The Sandpoint Daily Bee, where he stayed for 11 months.
“I was 23 years old in the fall of ’77 and the youngest managing editor of a daily paper in Idaho,” said Bird.
Bird would soon travel to Cardiff, Wales to work on his master’s degree in journalism history, which he received in 1980. Once he finished his time abroad, Bird bounced around from paper to paper before realizing it wasn’t what he wanted.
“By the early 90s, I was burning out on daily newspapers and decided what I really wanted to do was teach journalism,” said Bird.
While teaching at Colorado State University, Bird was able to complete and receive his Ph.D. from Washington State University. In 1999, Bird came across an open position at the University of Idaho and was hired, and, shortly after, Bird became the director of the School of Communication in 2003, a position he fulfilled for 12 years.
“My goal as director was to get the school nationally accredited because, at the time, there was nothing in the state of Idaho,” said Bird. “We finally became accredited in 2013 after my 10th year as director- and that’s really meant a lot.”
In 2015, Bird shifted to a new position and became the director of general education. Then, in 2017, Bird stepped down from director status to that of a professor, a role he continues in today.
“I’ve sort of come full circle to what I originally wanted to do when I got my Ph.D., which was teach journalism, advise students, help students find internships, and make professional connections between current and past students,” said Bird.
As his retirement is fast approaching, Bird hopes his students, both past and present, will remember the significance and value that a free press offers a democracy and recognize that they, too, are capable of making a place for themselves in journalism’s broader legacy.
Although, when speaking of the legacy Bird will surely leave behind himself, it becomes difficult to describe the severity of his selflessness, steadfastness, and commitment to good and honest reporting that’s centered around helping other people.
In recognition of everything he’s done for this university and its students, The Argonaut’s newsroom has since been renamed in his honor. Now known amongst our reporters as “The Bird’s Nest,” the newsroom will forever be a testament to a man whom The Argonaut, in all of its 125 years of operation and so on, will not be close to forgetting anytime soon.
Herman Roberts can be reached at [email protected]