To be honest, many newspaper stories, editorials and columns are
routine. Get the report or news release, make a few phone calls, and
write up a dozen or so coherent paragraphs. Home for dinner by 6.
Larry Oakes wrote hundreds of those everyday stories
during his 30-year career as a reporter with the Duluth News Tribune and
the Star Tribune, and he did them well.
But we should remember Oakes, who took his own life this
weekend in the hills outside Duluth, for his ability to give voice to
the vulnerable and marginalized. That's what drove Oakes, 52, and that
will be his legacy in journalism.
