Poling retires as VDT editor
Published 5:00 pm Monday, September 18, 2023
VALDOSTA — Dean Poling did not set out to be a newspaperman.
Poling, who retired Sept. 1 as editor of The Valdosta Daily Times, went to college to be an artist. He took one journalism course.
“It was rare you ran across somebody who went to journalism school,” he said as he looked back at more than three decades in the newspaper business.
In fact, his English teacher urged him away from journalism. “’Poling, don’t get into newspapers,’” Poling recalled him saying. “I told him I had no plan to get into newspapers, don’t worry.”
Obviously he did anyway, and his entry came through his art. He drew a couple of political cartoons that were published by his hometown newspaper, the Bluefield, W.Va., Daily Telegraph. The editor offered him a job. Four days a week he’d lay out the pages of the Telegraph, and on the fifth day he would draw political cartoons. He did that for about two years.
One day he was cashing his check in town when he saw a fire in a nearby strip mall.
He called the Telegraph from a pay phone, but they couldn’t get a reporter free. They told him to get some basic information and call back.
Poling learned a robber had set the fire after tying the owner up inside. He called the newspaper, but there still wasn’t a reporter available.
He was told to continue getting details then bring the information back to the office and a reporter would write it up.
As Poling talked to people at the scene, the store owner’s story began to come apart. It came out that the owner had set the fire for insurance money.
“All this is happening in an hour and a half,” Poling recalled.
When Poling called the new information in, the editor agreed to send a reporter to the scene. Both that reporter’s and Poling’s names appeared on the story’s byline, and Poling thought that was pretty cool.
Over time with the Telegraph, he wrote about the West Virginia coal mine strikes and he wrote his first prison story.
“I was hooked,” he admitted.
Poling left the Bluefield Telegraph due to a simple conflict with management: The new publisher insisted he cut his hair and Poling quit rather than do it.
He worked as a janitor for four months until his former editor, Frank Sayles, called. Sayles was now the editor of The Valdosta Daily Times and wanted Poling to come join him. Poling had to make sure of two things before he agreed: (1) He wouldn’t be required to cut his hair, and (2) he’d be able to report. Sayles was on board with both and soon Poling was making his way south. He came in the door of the Times Oct. 16, 1989.
“He offered me a job and I thought I’d be here a year, maybe two years, and here it is 34 years later,” Poling said.
Over those 34 years, he’s worked with “so many great people, great reporters, great editors.” He said there’ve been hundreds of reporters working at the Times over those years, and six to eight editors.
Poling said newspapers serve the public good — and that’s nice — and they shine a spotlight on people who deserve recognition — and that’s nice too. But the reason he kept reporting for so long was the adventure of it.
He spent the night in prison to see what it’s like.
He rode with the Blue Angels, the Navy’s precision flying team.
He explored caves.
“Every day was different,” he said. “You just felt like you were alive and you never knew what you’d face each day.”
He enjoyed writing stories about people who faced adversity, whether it be a storm like the recent Hurricane Idalia, or cancer, or a house fire — “Facing adversity and the person suffering it with such courage,” he said. He liked telling how the community comes together to help those in need.
He was proud to participate in three Honor Flights. The newspaper helped to send more than 300 veterans to the World War II monument in Washington, D.C., in 2007 and 2008. Poling was able to fly along with them to tell their stories.
“Just to see the community come together to honor these men … that was very powerful,” he recalled.
Poling said he was “burned out” on crime reporting when then-Editor Steve Meadows proposed he take over the Times’ features section.
Among his contributions to the section was enhanced coverage of the local theater scene, writing previews and reviews of the plays put on by Valdosta State University and the Theatre Guild Valdosta. He even reached back to his art skills for cartoons when he didn’t have photographs to accompany some of his feature articles.
“I think the most fun I had at the newspaper was when I was features editor,” he said. “Nobody told me what to do and I didn’t have to tell anyone else what to do.”
Just a few years later, he became assistant managing editor under Editor Kay Harris. He learned management was different, and that was OK too.
“I didn’t have to cover things. I could shape reporters,” he said.
Jim Zachary followed Harris as the VDT’s editor, but he soon had national duties with the newspaper’s parent company, CNHI.
As Zachary traveled to the company’s other newspapers across the country, Poling guided the Daily Times’ coverage of local news in his absence.
When the Covid pandemic hit in 2020, the editor of the VDT’s sister newspaper, The Tifton Gazette, voluntarily left, and Poling received his duties.
As managing editor of the weekly Gazette, Poling led it to significant success, including a General Excellence award from the Georgia Press Association presented earlier this year for work published in 2022. Meanwhile, working under Zachary, Poling contributed to the VDT winning a General Excellence award as well.
In July, Zachary was promoted to CNHI’s director of newsroom standards and practices, and Poling was named editor of the Daily Times. Poling said he didn’t have specific plans for his retirement.
“I don’t think I’ll be the retired guy who says, ‘I’m done,’ but I don’t know what’s next,” he said.
Last week, Poling agreed to continue writing for the Daily Times on a freelance basis. Expect his weekly column to resume soon, and some feature stories are in the works.
He and his wife Jetty have three adult sons, Brian, Danny and Matt.