By Bill Spiegel, Byline Editor
If all had gone according to plan, Kevin Schulz would be farming.
That’s what the Amboy, Minnesota native had planned to do after high school. But it was also the 1980s, and the farm economy was too harsh for another generation to join his family’s operation.
So after attending a nearby technical college, Kevin attended South Dakota State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in agricultural journalism. Writing was not his first choice, however.
“I thought I wanted to be an ag teacher, but never got to the point of actual student teaching. I remembered what we did to our ag teacher in high school and I didn’t want anyone doing that to me,” Schultz jokes. In reality, in the late 1980s, and Minnesota high schools were cutting ag programs. The job prospects for new ag teachers were not keen.
“So I started going through the class schedule and subjects and looked up ag journalism. I thought I could still graduate on my timeline,” he says.
Since 2022, Schultz has been editor of The Farmer, a Farm Progress publication covering Minnesota. But he worked his way up through the journalism circuit before landing his current role.
“My first job was at the Cherokee Times in Cherokee, Iowa. I was there six weeks,” Schulz recalls. “And no, I didn’t get fired.”
As it turns out, a newspaper for which he interned back in college had an opening, and he jumped at the chance to take a reporter’s job there. It was also closer to his fiancée, Carol, to whom he has been married nearly 40 years.
Back then, reporter jobs in small town newspapers were a revolving door. Long hours, low pay and high job turnover were the norm, although the experience and connections often led to better gigs, Schultz says. His beat was agriculture – Martin County, Minnesota is the “hog capital of the world” – plus school boards, county commissions and city councils.
Schulz moved to other newspapers, and then a farm publication called “The Land,” where he spent 24 years as assistant editor and editor, before joining National Hog Farmer. When that publication ceased, he was offered a job writing for Dakota Farmer and Nebraska Farmer. Within a few years, The Farmer editor job opened, and Schulz, who lived in Minnesota his entire career (except those first six weeks in Cherokee) was a natural choice.
“I just enjoy telling people’s stories. Everyone has a story, even though they may not think they do. Being able to have people open their lives to me, and then indirectly to our readership, is pretty powerful.”
To say the journalism industry has changed is an understatement. When Schulz started his newspaper career, reporters had to “count characters” to see how many letters would fit in a newspaper headline. Though there were computers, they were archaic compared to today’s technology. Most newspapers at that time had “cut and paste” makeup.
“Back then, when I went off to do a story I had a camera and a notebook and that was it,” he recalls. “Now we bring our smartphones and record the audio. Thank goodness for Temi and Otter that transcribe our notes. But we also take video and splice that together. And we can do all that in the palm of our hands.”
While the tools have changed, the mission persists: telling people’s stories.
“Being at anything this long, I have never changed the reason I do what I do,” he says. “It goes back to telling stories. Informing, educating and hopefully entertaining readers.”