Former Journal stringer celebrates long newspaper career

Walking into Queen City High School for registration in the summer of 1982, after moving from Waycross, Georgia, young John Bridges had no idea what lay in store. As he, his younger brother George and mother Catherine, turned a corner in the hallway they met the journalism teacher, Jean Stow.

“I had always been interested in politics, but I really thought I would be an engineer one day,” said John. “I was looking at going to Georgia Tech.”

But Mrs. Stow was persuasive and convinced John to give her journalism class a try. He already had experience on the school paper from his small private school in Georgia.

“She put me on the Bulldog Bark staff and got me hooked up with the Citizens Journal,” he stated. “I covered the seventh and eighth grade football games, and later the high school games. I bought an old Nikon from Neil Abeles, the editor at the time.”

He recalled how he first became acquainted with the “power of the press” to invoke change, and how an editorial he wrote was almost censored by school administration.

“I wrote an editorial blasting the school because they allowed students to buy their way out of class,” he said. “It was during a basketball tournament and if you had ticket you were excused from class. I went to Mr. Nickerson’s office [Principal Luke Nickerson] for a statement and he didn’t want it to run. Mrs. Stow took up for me and the story ran.” It wasn’t long before he was winning UIL awards for his work on the high school paper. “Winning at contests was validation,” he said. “It was like ‘hey, I’m good at this.’”

Almost 40 years later, John is still winning journalism awards – as the Executive Editor of the Austin American-Statesman daily newspaper, where he’s been employed since graduating from college.

After graduating as the QCHS Valedictorian in 1984, John enrolled at the University of Texas in Austin. During the summers he came home and worked at the Journal. That is, until the summer he became as intern at The Washington Post.

The student paper at UT, The Daily Texan, required prospective staffers to audition for a position. Although a migraine caused him to miss an audition one year, the next year he nailed it and won a spot as page makeup editor for news and sports.

During his junior year at UT he applied for the Dow Jones News Fund college internship program. Initially he was rejected but received another letter a few weeks later saying he was accepted. After a two-week workshop at San Jose State University in California, he found himself assigned to the National copy editor desk at The Washington Post, where he met owner Katherine Graham and famed editor Ben Bradley. It was the summer of 1987 and the Iran-Contra hearing was in full swing.

“I somehow found myself editing a story by Bob Woodward, and he stood behind me looking over my shoulder,” John recalled. “I will say he’s a better reporter than writer.”

The next summer John once again took an internship at the Post after graduating from UT. It was 1988, an election year, and the political conventions were taking place. He was asked to stick around a few extra weeks to help out.

“I stayed another month, hoping they would hire me, but nothing panned out,” he said. “So I headed back to Texas.”

After interviewing in Little Rock, Dallas and Austin, he had a choice to make – take a job at the Arkansas Gazette, or the Statesman in Austin. He took the copy editor position in Austin and hasn’t yet left the building.

“Kamela was my college sweetheart, and she was enrolled in law school in Austin, so I stayed,” he said.

That same sweetheart became his wife and has held the position of Director of Legal Research and Writing at UT Law School for 20 years.

During the 1990’s a company named Gannett started publishing a new kind of newspaper called USA Today. It redefined the industry and newspapers everywhere struggled to catch up with the new “infotainment” style of presenting the news.

John was the news copy chief for a few years before being promoted to National Editor in 1997. During 1996 he was chosen to help cover the Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, for sister-company The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Cox Newspapers owned the Constitution, as well as the Statesman and others throughout the country.

“The night of the bombing me and another Austin employee was standing outside the Constitution office and we heard a noise like something heavy being dropped,” he recalls of the incident. “Police cars with sirens came flying down the street, and people were flooding out of [Centennial] park. We started running into the crowd to find out what had happened – doing the reporter thing. We ended up gathering the facts for the Constitution team to write the story.”

John spent a few years as News Editor beginning in 1999, and was promoted to Metro Editor, where he gained experience in supervising reporters and assigning stories. From 2003-2008 he was the Sports Editor. During that time, another Cass County boy, by the name of Drew Stubbs, was taking the Longhorns to the National Championship.

“Being there to cover the glory years of the Longhorns was great,” he said. “What I like most about sports writing is that you have more opportunity for creativity – you can get away with a lot more commentary.”

In 2004, during the Presidential campaign of Texas Governor George W. Bush, the Statesman planned a huge victory party to be held in the street in front of the capitol.

“It ended up being a complete s**t-show meltdown,” he stated. “Florida’s hanging chads held up the vote and they couldn’t make a decision that night. So, no party.”

So, John came up with a new headline: “History on Hold.” It was that headline that made it’s way into the national spotlight when television cameras panned the Austin crowd holding the paper up.

His rise to the top continued with a stop at Senior Editor over Metro and State, then on to Managing Editor from 2011-2018. At the beginning of his reign, there were 220 employees at the Statesman. Now there are only 70.

“We went through a couple of buyouts and several senior employees took retirement,” he explained. “I feel fortunate to have survived all that.”

During his time in that position, the Statesman focused on their investigative reporting team and won the Best Newspaper in Texas award from the Texas Associated Press Managing

won the Best Newspaper in Texas award from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors Association. Their political reporting put them in a position of being a watchdog organization – holding politicians accountable.

Finally, John made it to the top rung of the newspaper ladder when he was named Executive Editor in 2018. For the past six months, he has worked from home, due to the pandemic. He says he looks forward to getting back in the newsroom, surrounded by his reporters.

His oldest son, Jake, recently graduated from Baylor University. Son Joe is a sophomore at UT Austin. Younger brother George – another former Journal part-timer - is a professional photographer in Austin. His mother, Catherine Bridges, recently moved to Austin from Queen City to be close to both her sons.

“John and his brother George did a great job for the Journal while in high school and both went on to outstanding careers. [Jean Stow Cotton] and I both felt they were ‘our’ boys, too, and we both knew they would do well in life because of the home they came from,” said Bill Turner, former Journal publisher. “I’ve had some great messages from their Mom expressing gratitude for them getting their start at the Citizens Journal. The pleasure was all mine!”

“I can see myself doing this forever,” John said. “The whole thing started with Jean Stow. I learned the turnkey job – from reporting, writing, editing, pasteup, proofing and printing. It was a great foundation.”