News
Retiring after 41 years as a correspondent
Scott Wagar
01/02/2013
After spending the last 41 years being a special correspondent for the Bottineau Courant Shirley Bullinger has made the decision to retire from the newspaper.
“I’ve really enjoyed writing for the Courant,” Bullinger said. “But, there comes a time and the time is now.”
Bullinger has written the Gardena News for the Courant since the early 1970s.
“My byline in the newspaper started in 1971,” Bullinger said. “Lillian Luke wrote the Gardena News for years. She ran the post office and a store there for years. Well, she didn’t want to do it anymore and she asked me to start writing for Gardena and I did.”
For most jobs in the newspaper industry, they have changed with time and technology. However, for Bullinger she has conducted her job in the same manner for all 41 years of her career with the county newspaper.
“I have a routine, even to this day, that I have followed,” Bullinger said. “I spend one evening for a couple of hours calling different people. Depending of how much news I receive it normally takes me an hour or so to write the news.”
Another tradition Bullinger has conducted for over four decades is that she writes out the Gardena News in longhand. There has been no typewriter, computer, laptop or i-pad assisting her with her work. Once a week, she sits down and writes all the news out by hand and then personally delivers Gardena’s news to the Courant, where the newspaper’s typesetter sets the type for her stories.
Her method in gaining the news route wise has also stayed the same. She starts south of Gardena, works her way around and into Gardena and finishes her scoop north of the community.
Bullinger stated that she has enjoyed writing for the Courant.
“It’s been great,” she said. “I’ve been able to talk to all my friends and neighbors; and, I have one person on my route I always allowed an extra half an hour because we always have to chat about life for a while each week.”
Over the 41 years Bullinger has written the Gardena News, she has worked under four typesetters, six general mangers and a number of editors.
As Bullinger retires from the Bottineau Courant, she has one wish for the community news section of the paper which is becoming a lost art in local, weekly newspapers. Bullinger wishes that someone will take her place in the paper and continue to write the news she loves the most, the Gardena News.
“I want someone to take my place and take over the job,” she said with sincerity in her voice.