From the NFL to Op-Ed

By: Erin Olson Within 15 years, Rich Camp-bell was the sixth overall draft pick by the Green Bay Packers in Wisconsin and an award-winning opinion page editor of The Hattiesburg American in Mississippi, with a stop as a minister in between. "With each [career], I felt at the time I was attempting to make the most of the abilities that I felt I'd been given," Campbell explains.

As opinion page editor at the American, Campbell is frequently asked if he ever considered sportswriting, but says he prefers his current job. "I think I could probably be a pretty good sportswriter," he admits, "but I think I almost had my fill of that when I was playing. I wanted my writing to reflect a broader approach to society than just simply sports."

When his pro football career quickly went south after starring at the University of California at Berkeley, Campbell decided to attend a seminary in Portland, Ore., drawing on his religious-studies degree. Then he spent six years in ministry at a church in Little Rock, Ark.

"The last year or two of that is when I started writing," Campbell recalls. "I wrote for the monthly church letter and had people tell me I was good at it. The more writing I did, the more I enjoyed it and the more reinforcement I got, so at that point I decided to pursue a career in journalism."

Campbell contacted a former parishioner who had become publisher of the American. "Everyone in the profession will understand when I say it's always good to know the publisher," he remarks. When the paper's opinion editor resigned shortly after, the publisher told Campbell to send a resume and clips. Some of his clips were nothing more than letters to the editor. He interviewed for the job and was hired in August of 1996.

The Berkeley alum ? surprisingly ? says conservative Mississippi is a good fit for him. "The truth is, I'm maybe one of the few conservatives that graduated from Berkeley," he confesses. "For me, living in Mississippi, at least politically and socially, really hasn't been much of a transition that way."

He says he's done a lot of on-the-job training since submitting those first clips. Still, though Campbell received no formal schooling in journalism, he finds that writing comes easily. One of his columns, about the birth mother of his adopted son, won a Best of Gannett yearly award in 1996 just a few months after Campbell joined the American's staff, which he says "really confirmed my decision to move into this field."

Campbell won two more Best of Gannett awards in 1998: one for editorials, and a second as part of a statewide service project he and other American staffers worked on. For that project, he spearheaded a successful write-in campaign to the Mississippi Legislature, urging them to mandate wire mesh cages in sheriff deputies' cars. That year, several deputies had been overpowered and killed by suspects they were transporting in the back seats of their cars.

With or without the awards, though, Campbell says he enjoys his job, especially the constant change. "I like the challenge of having to understand a variety of issues and relate to a variety of people, both at the local and state levels," he says. "I like coming in each day and knowing that I'm going to write on something different."