Jack Conley, Gentleman Editor

CDA Update news item:

Sacramento, Calif. -- Jack F. Conley, DDS, MEd, editor of the Journal of the California Dental Association, will be honored at the Fall Scientific Session in San Francisco for his 17 years of service.

Conley, who began his CDA career as a member of the Council on Dental Education in 1972, has been editor since 1983. CDA President Kent Farnsworth, DDS, chose to dedicate the Session to Conley because of his long personal dedication to the profession.

"Dr. Conley personifies why CDA is the leading constituent association in the nation," Farnsworth said. "He is truly the voice of CDA, in the same league as Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite."

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We want you should nip down to your nearest Blockbuster and rent the following: "The Front Page," both the original 1931 version with Adolphe Menjou and the 1974 remake with Walter Matthau. While you’re at it, pick up a copy of "His Girl Friday" with Cary Grant, which is a remake of the remake.

These films are supposed to be comedies, but for our purposes they are a factual study of what constitutes an editor. Menjou, Matthau and Grant do sterling jobs of portraying the public’s idea of how an editor should behave. Without exception, they are hard-nosed, abrasive, overbearing, obnoxious, underhanded, and not very nice tyrants. Hard-drinking, cigar-chomping, irascible and a pain in the posterior to their staffs, these three thespians epitomized editors to the cinema-going world -- martinets to the core.

The message is: If you’re going to put out a publication that has any more pizzazz than the Pennysaver, you’ve got to have the person in charge exercise all the authority of a free-range dictator, else the little people under you will monumentally screw things up.

With that stereotype firmly in mind, we invite you to consider an editor who is so far off the other end of the scale, he makes Mr. Rogers come off like Jack the Ripper. He is so incredibly patient, he has to have "road rage" explained to him. So humble and self-effacing, casting directors would laugh him off the lot when the editor’s role in "The Front Page" is recycled once more. Think Gregory Peck in "To Kill a Mockingbird," Jimmy Stewart in "Harvey," Bob Newhart in anything. That pretty well encapsulates our vision of Jack F. Conley, editor of the Journal of the California Dental Association since 1983.

Jack never met an organization he didn’t like and that didn’t instantly embrace him. Because he is the perfect choice for every task -- from emptying the wastebaskets to chairing every committee corporate minds can concoct -- Jack has been welcomed and honored in more organizations than can be listed here. That he accomplishes all this without breaking a sweat or tarnishing his Mr. Nice Guy image is commendable, even though it confuses the heck out of people who thought Ed Asner playing Lou Grant was an accurate depiction of the genre.

October 1992 -- In a freshet of impetuosity, we agree to accompany Jack to Orlando, Fla., where he is to be honored as incoming president of the American Association of Dental Editors. Somewhere in the list of Conley’s accolades is one for being the best inexhaustible nonstop talker and explainer-of-complex-issues this side of a Senate filibuster. In this instance, though, he defers to me and Charlie Hayward, Journal cartoonist and cover designer. He wants us to explain to the assembled dental editors why we think we can get away with a monthly humor column inserted into an otherwise outstanding scientific publication.

Our own ADA Journal is notoriously strait-laced. If you were looking for laughs, the New England Journal of Medicine would not be your first choice. Conley is on his own here as a dental editor, neck out, marching to a different percussionist.

Not for nothing have we knelt at the feet of the Master. Our explanation and justification for leavening the heavy-duty technical Journal agenda has Conley beaming paternally in the background. After a short pause for stupefaction, the assemblage comes to the unanimous conclusion, "Only in California!" The meeting concludes with at least 10 more organizations pleading with Jack to join them. Our work here is done.

Eight years later -- The International College of Dentists concludes that Editor Conley’s Journal deserves to "receive a Special Citation in the Year 2000 USA Section of the International College of Dentists Journalism Awards Competition [because it] in such a graphic way recognizes a face of dentistry (humor) not usually seen in a publication." Jack’s commitment is justified; it’s good to be the King.

What’s his secret? We have no idea. Staffers who work closely with him say he’s as close to a true gentleman as they’ve ever met. He doesn’t gossip, he doesn’t talk out of school, he works a political minefield and hasn’t lost a limb yet. It is Jack’s idée fixe to make his baby the best dental journal in the entire universe.

You call that an editor? We do!