I can’t tell you how many times I’ve avoided putting Jim Wright on the front page of this newspaper over the years. I’ve probably cropped him out of a dozen photographs as he lurked in the background shot of a fire scene, murder trial or government meeting. Jim was the “enemy,” after all, working for the Press & Sun-Bulletin, our chief competitors down in Binghamton.

But on Wednesday, I put his picture on the front page with singular purpose. Above the fold. Jim’s untimely death struck a chord in all his journalistic brethren, but his life as a ubiquitous icon of Chenango life merited front page treatment – even from a rival newspaper. In an instant, he was no longer the competition, but a great reporter, community volunteer, colleague and friend.

I first met Jim when I was a wee cub reporter for The Evening Sun back in 1990. Like many reporters before and since, Jim taught me the ropes of local reporting – even if he didn’t mean to directly. Our newspaper’s training program has long been of the trial by fire variety – a few coarse words of warning from the editor, and out into the great unknown you go. That’s where I, and many of my reporters who followed, found a friend in Jim Wright. Yes, he worked for the “evil empire.” Yes, he frequently had his nose in the news long before we did. But Jim was never aloof or proprietary when it came to dealing with newbie reporters from another newspaper. Instead, he’d readily share the who’s who of a news scene, even layering in some choice background information if he felt like it – saving, of course, the juiciest details for his own story. He was cooperative and amiable with his colleagues, but never stupid.