Don Shrubshell’s newspaper career began in high school when he signed up for a vocational program that landed him a job as a custodian and then as a mailroom and print shop worker at the Maryville Daily Forum.After some time working in the process camera room shooting negatives of newspaper gallies, he was invited to become a photographer. When he accepted the gig, he also took a 50-cent-an-hour pay cut. Since then, he’s spent 41 years performing and honing his craft – for nine years at the Arkansas City (Kansas) Traveler, a short time at the Hutchinson (Kansas) News, eight years at the Southeast Missourian in Cape Girardeau and 24 years at the Columbia Daily Tribune.His ability to cover spot news, and a commitment to doing it right, has been the hallmark of Don’s photojournalism career. In one instance, he had been assigned to photograph a woman who got a hole-in-one on a local golf outing when an item on the police scanner caught his attention. Don was convinced that a shooting death in the tiny town of Skidmore 14 miles away would make a great story, so he and a reporter drove to the scene of the crime. Don and the reporter were the only journalists on the scene after the murder of Ken Rex McElroy, the town bully whose unsolved murder is still legendary. Don’s iconic photos of the scene, including McElroy’s bullet-ridden truck, have been published nationwide.