Bill Simmons

‘Big toad’ for AP was one of Arkansas’ best reporters ever

By Roy Ockert Jr.

Nov. 2, 2012

“Associated Press, Bill Simmons.”

That voice at the other end of the phone was my first contact with the outside world of journalism. I had gone to work after my junior year at Hot Springs High School (1963) as a part-time reporter for The Sentinel-Record.

I’d already been involved in scholastic journalism for about four years, but this was different. I was getting paid ($1.15 a hour) and getting to work with professional journalists. My desk was only a few feet from the editor’s — which could be good or bad.

As the “rookie” less than half the age of almost everyone else, I quickly became familiar with all, and most took a personal interest in me.

The AP newsmen were something else. For more than a year they remained somewhat mysterious — guys on the phone who covered Arkansas and even national stories that went out on the wire and came back clattering into our small newsroom.

Simmons was one of those newsmen. Others included Bob Starr, later the managing editor who led the Arkansas Democrat to victory in the Little Rock newspaper war, and Harry King, now with the Arkansas News Bureau.

The Hot Springs newspaper was a member of the AP, a news gathering cooperative. Members are expected to contribute their own stories and pictures and in return receive news from all over the world. The AP has its own staff and over the years has employed the best reporters available, which benefits members greatly.

We took our member responsibility seriously so I was instructed to call in anything possibly worthy of the state wire, and that was a heady experience.

Today contributing a story or photo to AP is easy, almost automatic. Back then, though, the only way to get a story to AP was to call the bureau and dictate it to the reporter answering the phone. Speed was critical at both ends because the AP guys were covering the whole state.

That’s how I got to know Bill Simmons, but only as a voice on the phone for the first year or so. I was in awe of him and the others, and becoming an AP writer became an early ambition. Bill seemed a lot older because he was so intelligent and efficient, confident in what he was doing. I saw his bylined articles — several a day usually — going out all over the world, always clear, flawless, complete.

I didn’t meet him in person until I enrolled at Arkansas State College and joined The Jonesboro Sun as a sports writer. One night after covering a football game in North Little Rock, I had car trouble and made my way to the AP office at the Arkansas Gazette building to write and call in my story. Although quite busy, Bill helped me find someone to get the car going. I also had a chance to watch him work and learned, among other things, that he could type faster than the normal human being could think.

Bill was certainly an early role model for me, but he was actually only about five years older, just beginning his long, distinguished career. Unfortunately, it ended Monday when he died at his home from complications of diabetes. He was 71, still working as political editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

While that had been his job for the past 16 years, I’ll always remember him as a great reporter for the AP — one of best reporters Arkansas has ever produced.

As a reporter, Bill was a bulldog who went after a story with determination. He would ask tough questions and, unlike many of today’s reporters, he didn’t accept non-answers and dodges without challenge. He spent 28 years as an AP newsman, focusing mostly on politics and government, and I never heard anyone claim he was unfair.

If you read any Arkansas daily newspaper between 1962-90, you probably read many of Bill’s stories without recognizing the name of the reporter.

That ability to do the “digging,” the research, the interviews and then to write the story under the press of a deadline without injecting your own opinions is the mark of a good reporter, and Bill was the best I’ve even seen at that.

William Rockhill Nelson, the founder and longtime publisher of the Kansas City Star, once said: “... the reporter is the essential man on the newspaper. He is the big toad in the puddle. ... This is merely to say that the reporter is the essential chap in a newspaper shop. We could get along pretty well without our various sorts of editors. But we should go to smash if we had no reporters.”

Of course, almost all reporters during his time were men, and even some of those would object to being called a toad. But the message is that good journalism in every kind of news organization depends on good reporters.

Like many AP reporters, Bill was transferred early in his career to a larger bureau, but he loved Arkansas so much that he soon moved back. In 1990 he became bureau chief and after a short retirement took the Democrat-Gazette job. While he didn’t do much reporting in those positions, he became an invaluable teacher, counselor and institutional memory.

You can’t replace a guy like Bill Simmons.

Roy Ockert is editor emeritus of The Jonesboro Sun and an independent columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau. He may be reached by e-mail at royo@suddenlink.net.