By Rod Dickens, Editor
Just as smartphones changed the way you do business, they altered the landscape for editors as well. Not only do they take professional-quality images, but smartphones also make busy folks like yourself available for a quick interview. Spend a few moments on your phone, have someone snap a photo of you, and the story is nearly ready to publish without the editor ever leaving his or her desk.
“Not so fast,” said Bob Walker. From the very first issue of Walker Talk, he put a premium on interviewing Walker Mower users in person and on taking real-life photos with machines working in all conditions.
He didn’t want the story subjects to dress up their operations or even spend extra time to clean up their mowers. If they used a competitive brand for an application, he advised to take a photo and talk about it. As he put it, there are applications for virtually every mower on the market, so don’t ignore them.
Hence, from time to time, a machine that wasn’t yellow appeared in a story, but that was OK. It was OK, as well, to talk with part-timers and do stories about them, even though some readers objected. But Bob Walker pointed out that even the most successful landscape contractors often started out that way.
Still, the vast majority of stories over the last 25 years were about people who make a living mowing and maintaining lawns, and they all have a story to tell. Of course, not everyone wants to be as big as Sposato Landscape Company in Delaware, or instead work to contain their business as a family enterprise like Cutzgras in Florida and Top Job in Arizona did. Retiring at an early age like the Scapes owner did in Georgia would be attractive for some readers, but less so for people like Ralph Anderson who, at age 85, is still going strong in Illinois.
Who would trade a successful banking career to mow and maintain lawns? Bob Vickery did in South Carolina. Or how many landscape contractors like Carl Polite started out by helping their sons mow lawns?
Their stories are all different, except for one common denominator, the Walker Mower. From day one, however, the Walker Manufacturing president wanted to make sure the magazine would not be viewed as a marketing piece. As he impressed upon me, “The magazine should be less about the mowers and more about the people who make a living using them, no matter how big or small their companies are or how young or old they happen to be.”
That’s real life and, from his perspective, the only way to accurately write about it is to see it and experience it in person. Hopefully, that message has come through over the past 25 years and remains consistent in this anniversary issue.
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