In Charlotte and elsewhere, Joe Distelheim understood what journalism can be
A little more than 25 years ago, Joe Distelheim brought me into his office in Huntsville, Ala., and offered me a job in his newsroom. Officially, the position was news columnist, but it was like no other columnist job I knew. Joe wanted me to write all over the newspaper, especially the front page. I could write short or long, about news or whatever else the community was talking about. But there was one catch: Joe wasn’t really interested in my opinions.
“I don’t want you to tell people what you think,” he said. “I want you to write about what things mean.”
Joe died Wednesday at age 78 on Hilton Head Island, where he retired after a 38-year career that included stops in Detroit and as city editor of the Charlotte Observer. In Charlotte, his staff won a Pulitzer Prize for a series on brown lung in North Carolina’s textile mills.
He was terrific with words as both an editor and writer — his self-written obit begins: “Joe Distelheim, a retired newsman, died December 30, 2020, wondering how he’s going to get his news from now on.” He loved books and travel and his wife, Dottie, most of all, but he had a somewhat mixed relationship with golf and the Chicago Cubs. He spent his retirement teaching English as a second language to adults. He was, and Dottie is, a dear friend to my family.
Joe also leaves a legacy of reporters and editors across the country whom he challenged to stretch beyond the comfortable. He made us and the newspapers he ran better, because he understood not just what news organizations were obligated to provide, but how meaningful they could be.
Another quick story, same Huntsville office: In the summer of 1996, Joe called me in for a primo assignment. Go to Atlanta to cover the Olympic Games, he said. One column a day for two and half weeks. The former sportswriter in me was pumped.
But there was, of course, one catch. “I don’t want you to cover any of the actual events,” Joe said. He had people to do that. Write instead, he said, about what the games mean.
And so I did. I wrote about sports through the lens of the South and race. I wrote about people marching defiantly into Atlanta’s Centennial Park the day after the bomb went off. I did defy Joe and wrote about one Olympic event — women’s beach volleyball — which I pitched as a cultural story. I could feel his eyes rolling all the way back in Huntsville.
But Joe was right. The Olympics columns are some that I’m most proud of, and they gave me a direction that has guided my work since. Even now, with “opinion” in my job title, I want our pages to offer context and insight, texture and humanity, to the news and issues we cover.
Journalism also caught up to the vision that editors like Joe had. We have more substantial storytelling on our news pages than long ago. We hold up a mirror to our communities in new and innovative ways. Newspapers are struggling, yes, but the work journalists produce across all mediums is as important and insightful as ever. That was especially true in 2020, when our communities needed us most.
Joe celebrated that long after he retired, by the way. He lamented the financial struggles that threaten newspapers, but he sent notes to me and others he hired when he saw something that he liked. This week, we celebrated him, a mentor and a friend and always a newsman, someone who understood how what we do each day can improve the lives of so many. Just as he did, with ours.
This story was originally published December 31, 2020 at 7:30 AM with the headline "In Charlotte and elsewhere, Joe Distelheim understood what journalism can be."