Former BSC student newspaperman, now successful state columnist, Kyle Whitmire ’01 shares his thoughts 

By Hannah Scofield '19

When we heard that Kyle Whitmire ’01 was coming to campus to speak, we asked Hannah Scofield ’19 to interview him and write this story. Whitmire launched his career as editor of The Hilltop News, BSC’s student newspaper; Scofield is the editor of Bagheera, the newspaper’s current incarnation.

At first glance, Kyle Whitmire’s career seems to follow a clean, straight path to success. After graduating from BSC in 2001 as the editor of the student newspaper, he pursued his passion for writing and editing at publications including The Birmingham Weekly, The New York Times, and al.com. Today, he’s a political columnist for the Alabama Media Group and one of Alabama’s most listened-to voices.

In reality, when Whitmire first came to BSC, he planned to become a lawyer.

“I got about halfway through my college career and decided that my passion, my calling, was really in journalism,” Whitmire recalled. “I had been pursuing law because I heard my father tell me once that he’d pay for me to be anything but a lawyer. I was being defiant. Journalism was what I really wanted to do.”

That might not have been a big surprise. He worked as a sports writer for his local newspaper in Thomasville, Ala., while he was still in high school. Around the same time, he knew someone who owned a linotype machine, which was used to print newspapers. Whitmire became accustomed to putting plates on the machine for print. In school he won a bet with a friend of his because he could tell the difference between The Birmingham News, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times and USA Today by how they smelled.

“I really thought I was going to be an ink and paper guy for a long time,” Whitmire said. “But things changed pretty drastically.”

While working as editor-in-chief of The Hilltop News, the student newspaper that preceded the current newsmagazine Bagheera, Whitmire spent long hours conducting investigative journalism and trying to keep at least one out of three groups happy.

“I learned that of those three constituencies -- administration, students, and staff -- you could have one angry at you all the time, you could have two angry at you some of the time, but you had to be careful about all three being angry at you at the same time,” laughed Whitmire.

Writing under pressure prepared him to practice journalism in the larger community. At one point when he was about to begin a publication, Whitmire had friends at a law firm who offered to pay for him to attend law school rather than to continue his journalism career.

While Whitmire refused the offer, he says he did give it a moment’s thought. But he was determined to stick with his plan.

“I really got into this thinking that I was going to be a newspaperman for the rest of my life,” said Whitmire.

While at Birmingham-Southern, Whitmire worked at The Western Star, a paper in Bessemer. After graduation, he went to work for The Birmingham Weekly with his fellow Hilltop News friend Glenny Brock ’99, who is now an adjunct professor of English at BSC. He didn’t plan to stay for more than two years, but Whitmire enjoyed the luxury of selecting at his own assignments and stayed with the alternative newsweekly for eight years, while also freelancing for The New York Times. In 2008 and 2009, his state political column, “War on Dumb,” received first place from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies and the Medill School of Journalism.

In 2011, Whitmire co-founded a new Birmingham publication called Weld. Fellow BSC alumni Brock and Madison Underwood ’08 also worked there. After about year and half, Whitmire became aware of a change going on at AL.com, then the online version of The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times, and The Mobile Press-Register and now one of the biggest media outlets in the state.

“AL.com really reinvented the company. It was a painful transition, but they basically made it a digital-first company,” says Whitmire. “I had a skill set that was perfect for a digital-first company, so I said, ‘Hey, can I join your team?’”

He’s been at AL.com ever since.

While Whitmire is renowned throughout the country (and even has a verified Twitter account to prove it), he credits BSC with giving him skills he applies daily.

“A lot of students approach higher learning thinking, ‘What is my job going to be when I get out of school?’” Whitmire said. His advice to incoming students is to change perspective and think of all the knowledge they will acquire that will help them in multiple areas.

“What you want to do your sophomore year, junior year, and senior year might be very different than what you want coming into your freshman year,” said Whitmire. “A liberal arts college like Birmingham-Southern is a great place to find those other avenues and opportunities.”

He said that the term “liberal arts” shouldn’t scare prospective students because of the current politically charged environment.

“From the classical sense it means ‘free,’” he said. The freedom he had to learn from various disciplines helped him above and beyond his role in the workforce.

He does regret one thing about his time at Birmingham-Southern. He lowered political science to a minor and changed his major to English when he saw his friends leaving statistics classes crying. While Whitmire preferred his English writing courses, he wishes he hadn’t been so scared by statistics.

“[Skipping statistics] may be one of the dumbest mistakes I’ve ever made because journalists who also know a lot about statistics are going to get a job,” Whitmire said.