By Bill Spiegel, Byline Editor
At a Beck’s Hybrids field day in Effingham, Illinois a few years back, Pam Smith told me how much she loves children’s books. In an interview with her for this article, she explained why.
“I think it’s the purest form of writing that there is,” says Smith, the Senior Crops Editor at DTN/Progressive Farmer, who adds that since kids have short attention spans the writing must be crisp. “You have to get so much across with so little.”
Small wonder, then, that Smith is known to encourage other editors to give her “…the children’s book version. I want clarity,” she says.
It’s a nugget that Smith shares in an award-winning career spanning from 1977 to present day.
Like many ag journalists, the writing journey began on a diversified farm. In her case, near Palmyra, Illinois where, the oldest of five kids, Pam showed livestock, helped with the family cooking and did farm chores. She wanted to farm for a living, but instead, she was encouraged to attend college at the University of Illinois to explore other options.
Pam intended to buck the norm of what was expected of women: she wanted to be a P.E. teacher. Her guidance counselor, however, had other ideas. “Unbeknownst to me, he changed my college application, and I was accepted into the College of Agriculture to study home economics education,” she recalls.
Her third year in school, she switched to ag communications. Looking back, it seemed a natural fit. Pam had always written short stories when she was younger. She loved to read; even using her cousin’s library card in the Greenfield, Illinois library, where she discovered Nancy Drew books. She checked out books by the armful and was a voracious reader, even taking them into the hay loft of the barn, where she could soak in the words.
“My first library experience opened a whole new world of possibilities,” she says. “I’ve surrounded myself with books ever since.”
To Pam and her siblings, Pam’s mother read aloud the entire Laura Ingalls Wilder series. “That probably factored into my interest of building a story,” she recalls.
During her time at Illinois, Pam enrolled in an international ag class that offered five hours of credit, and a six-week summer study tour of the Mediterranean countries. It was another experience that shaped her life as she loved to travel. All those experiences funneled into her degree: news and editorial writing. Her perfect job post-graduation would have been to write about livestock, but when she became a field editor at Prairie Farmer in 1977, all of Illinois agriculture was her beat. From livestock to crops and even farm policy, Pam wrote about it.
At that time, most women editors at state farm magazines were writing about home economics and food. Pam was one of the first to write dirt-under-the-fingernail stories about farm practices and farm people.
“My dad was an early Pork All-American award winner, and he gave me a list of hog farmers he knew that I could call on, and they would help me,” she recalls. “I used that list thoroughly and started building a network.”
After six years at Prairie Farmer, her then-husband was sent to work in southern Illinois. At that time, most editors worked in an office; working remotely wasn’t an option. At an AAEA (the forerunner to ACN) meeting in Kansas City, she talked to Earl Ainsworth, then the editor of Farm Journal. From 1983 to 2001, she was an independent contractor, writing for both Top Producer and Farm Journal.
“I was a utility player for a long time and then our crops editor slot was open,” Smith says. That was in 2001. She became crops editor there and continued to write about crops when she moved to DTN/Progressive Farmer in 2012.
“It was almost like coming home. Marcia Taylor was there, and she and I were contemporaries and worked together at Top Producer. It put me back working with some of my favorite journalists, such as Greg Horstmeier, Gregg Hillyer, Linda Smith and Jim Patrico,” she explains. “It was a great opportunity and came at a good time in my life. It was a new challenge and has been terrific.”
At DTN/Progressive Farmer, Pam oversees crop content for the Web and the print magazine. She writes, edits, shoots photos and manages the content of four bloggers who write for DTN.
Writing now is different than it was when she began, although it still boils down to clarity.
“In this day and age, and with how things are being presented, I think it’s even more important that we get our point across in a very succinct and very accurate way,” Smith says. “How do we make sure we tell what we need to tell, and do it in a way that our readers absorb it across a variety of media?”
Granny Cole and How to Listen
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Pam’s grandmother, Mabel Cole, who was her Sunday School teacher, 4-H leader, biggest cheerleader and occasionally, her biggest critic. Granny Cole wrote jingles and essays for contests. She also was an exceptional letter writer, having pen pals all over the world.
“The mail was how we became open to the world,” Pam recalls. “We didn’t have email, and rarely called people back then.”
Pam is a frequent letter writer herself and is pen pals with a couple of young aspiring writers. It is a way to pass her love for writing to another generation.
“Finlee is like this big sponge,” she says of one of these young correspondents. “Beyond writing, we communicate about cooking, crafts and life. I just sent her a seed growing kit because we’re working on our garden skills.”
On X, Finlee’s Mom posted last month: “@PamSmithDTN played a large part in fueling the fire inside Miss Finnie G. Pam and Finlee became pen pals a few years ago and Finlee found her love for writing! Finlee is now sponsoring a 5 yo little girl in Brazil through Compassion and has her first pen pal from abroad!
The correspondence harkens back to a core principle of solid journalism: listening.
“To be good at this job, you have to be a good listener,” she says.
And that’s because people give ag journalists the privilege of telling their story.
“I am grateful for all the people who take the time to talk to us,” she adds. “It is a gift to us.”
Pam and her husband, Jay, live in Decatur, Illinois. They have five children between them, and seven grandchildren. When she’s not writing, she is working outdoors, making and sharing baked goods and has even started a couple of new hobbies: broom making and weaving. More activities, she says, to “keep herself relevant.”