Before becoming editor of the paper, Locher was a photographer at the State Journal-Register. Barry Locher was plenty smart, but not the smartest. He was funny, but not the funniest. He was one of the best photojournalists in the state. Others, also, took great pictures.
Barry was genuine, and on that point, he had no rival. He rose from photography intern to editor of the State Journal-Register, running the newsroom from 1999 until 2007. After his death from cancer, his wife Debra says that she received cards from people Barry photographed years after he stopped taking pictures to become a boss.
“He was just a down-to-earth person who could relate to people with no effort at all, and that always showed up in the pictures he ended up with,” says Rich Saal, former SJ-R photo editor. “People respond to the person who’s taking their picture – you can tell a person’s manner by the pictures they take.”