50 years ago tomorrow: The first edition of the Independent Herald
The Independent Herald's first edition printed on Thursday, June 17, 1976
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Fifty years ago: The Independent Herald’s first edition
Paul Roy was never particularly comfortable with accolades.
If he were still with us today, a couple of things would probably be true:
One, the Independent Herald would still be publishing print editions each week; he would’ve been too stubborn to have abandoned print, and too good a salesman to not allow print to be profitable — or, at least, pay the bills, which has always been the economic reality for small-town newspapers in the United States.
And, two, he would’ve been immensely proud to have accomplished 50 years of publication, but you would’ve never known it. It would’ve been business as usual.
Roy — a Vietnam War veteran who was just as much a historian as he was a journalist — never accepted praise. In fact, he shied away from it. When someone tried to commend him for starting and running a hometown newspaper, he’d often say, “I’m just a paper boy.”
Roy always knew he wanted to be a “paper boy” — from the days when he actually was a “paper boy,” walking a daily delivery route to sell Grit newspapers door-to-door, to his high school years when he started an Oneida High School newspaper that lasted exactly one issue before it was shut down by school administrators as an unauthorized activity.
It was during his days in the U.S. Navy that Roy — who was raised in Scott County and studied journalism at Tennessee Tech University — decided to return to his hometown and start his own paper. He later said that his shipmates would poke fun at the hometown paper that he received in the mail, pointing out that big news was the installation of a new traffic light in town. (“All these years later,” Roy said late in his life, “a new traffic light is often the biggest news of the week.”)
After stints with the Cookeville Herald-Citizen newspaper, the Cleveland Daily Banner and The Morning Sun, Roy returned to Oneida in 1976 and started the Independent Herald. He later said that it was during his tenure at The Morning Sun, a Cleveland start-up newspaper, that he learned how not to run a paper.
When Roy began soliciting investors to join his effort to establish a second newspaper, three of them signed on board: John Litton, owner of Big John’s Foodette; Jack M. Lay, manager of Lay’s Oneida Furniture Co.; and Bill R. Duncan, owner of Duncan & Sons Insurance. Jan Jeffers, who would later establish Mrs. Winner’s Chicken & Biscuits, became an early stockholder, as well.
The investors founded Liberty Press Inc., and the first edition of the Independent Herald was printed on June 17, 1976. America was in the midst of celebrating its bicentennial — which led to the newspaper’s tag line, “Founded in America’s 200th Year, in the Spirit of ‘76.”
“Our cause will not be to crusade, but to act as a means of furthering the people’s right to know,” Roy wrote in that first edition. As an explanation of the newspaper’s name, he said: “It is our desire to stand alone in an attempt to be as objective in our reporting as possible.”
For more than 39 years, until his health forced him to take a step back, Roy never missed an issue of the newspaper. He worked on more than 2,000 consecutive issues of the Independent Herald, writing news and feature stories, photographing events within the community, and compiling advertising. He often worked 24 hours and even 36 hours straight to meet the newspaper’s weekly press deadlines.
It’s easy to forget just how good a journalist Roy was. He was viewed as controversial in some circles — which is precisely because he was a good journalist. One of the first issues he tackled was illegal roadside dump sites, which doesn’t seem too controversial today but actually was then because it was such a common practice. He also exposed illegal cock fighting that was taking place in Scott County, which earned him a bullet through the window of the Independent Herald'‘s first office downtown. No one was ever charged.
The Independent Herald quickly became recognized as an award-winning newspaper. Through the years, the newspaper was a frequent winner in the annual Tennessee newspaper awards contest co-sponsored by the Tennessee Press Association and the University of Tennessee, and earned several first place awards for the best education reporting in the state. The awards culminated with the newspaper winning the prestigious “General Excellence” award as the state’s best newspaper in its circulation class in 2015.
Roy was a newspaper publisher through a tidal wave of changes within the industry. When he began publishing the Independent Herald in 1976, newspapers were composed using typewriters, wax machines and paste-up boards. By the time he oversaw his final issue of the newspaper, the production process had transformed to digital pagination, eliminating the need to drive an hour or more through the pre-dawn darkness to deliver the paper to the printing press.
Through the years, Roy remained true to the guiding principles that led to the establishment of the newspaper. He developed a reputation of unwavering impartiality: stubborn, but fair. With his wife, Debbie, working alongside him — and often with at least some of their three kids in the office — more than 2,000 issues of the Independent Herald were churned out, one page at a time and one story at a time.
Besides being a “paper boy,” Roy was also a student of history. Perhaps his biggest accomplishments were his contributions to the Scott County Historical Society. He didn’t start the historical society; in fact, he never served as its president. But without him, the historical society would likely have folded. He was instrumental in the reactivation of the society in the early 1980s. He spent years documenting Scott County’s families and historical events, devoting thousands of hours to work on projects, including typesetting books and compiling a quarterly newsletter. Later, he served on the board of directors for the Museum of Scott County.
He had a special interest in Scott County’s military veterans. He collected photos and wrote hundreds of articles about military veterans, maintaining a database of thousands of Scott Countians who served in the armed forces through the years. He spent several years researching Scott County’s Civil War veterans, and wrote an exhaustive book entitled “Scott County in the Civil War,” which he donated to the historical society to be published in 2001. The book remains the foremost source of information about Scott County’s involvement in the Civil War.
Roy earned the respect and admiration of U.S. Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr., who was a native of Huntsville. Baker invited Roy to the White House during his tenure as President Ronald Reagan’s Chief of Staff, and many years later encouraged Roy to take over the lead role at the historical society following the death of his cousin-in-law, Irene Sobodoski Baker. Roy declined, choosing instead to continue his life’s work at the Independent Herald.
Roy was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2014. He died at his Huntsville home on Oct. 6, 2015, at the age of 67. He was interred at Mossop Cemetery in Huntsville — the same cemetery where Sen. Baker, who he greatly admired, is buried.
Roy was inducted into the Scott County Hall of Fame in September 2015, just one week before his death. Months later, he was recognized for his life’s work and accomplishments by the Tennessee General Assembly. A resolution honoring him was authorized by state Sen. Ken Yager and signed by Gov. Bill Haslam.
Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!
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Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)