The State of Journalism Today – A Retired Newspaperman’s Perspective

Reg Henry, a former editor of the Monterey Herald and the son of a Reuters correspondent, has lived and breathed journalism almost his entire life with a career spanning three continents. He has seen the profession at its peak and witnessed its startling decline, which can be measured not only in falling readership and viewership but also in the denigration of those who carry on the craft. How did the once proud Fourth Estate fall so low? Was it inevitable? Can journalism be revised to serve the mission that Thomas Jefferson believed was vital to the health of a democratic republic? Henry will try to provide answers informed by his long experience.
Reg Henry was born in Singapore and grew up in Australia. His mother was Australian and his father was an Englishman who worked for the Reuters news agency, including a stint as a war correspondent during World War II. Reg spent 45 years as a journalist working for newspapers in Australia, Britain and the United States. From 1988-1993, he was the editor of The Herald in Monterey.
He began his career at the Courier-Mail in Brisbane, Australia. After serving with the Australian army in Vietnam as an army reporter, he moved to England in 1973 and worked five years on the sports desk of The Times of London. He moved to the United States in 1978 and spent most of his career at the Post-Gazette in Pittsburgh, PA, then a sister paper of The Herald. He retired in Pittsburgh at the end of 2014 as deputy editorial page editor and a nationally syndicated columnist and moved back to Monterey County. In retirement, he is the editor of the Point Lobos Foundation Magazine and has written a novel titled Love in the Late Edition.