At age 18, Natchez native Lewis Lord learned a lesson about telling stories — true ones, that is — that he would hang on to for the remainder of his 50-plus year career in journalism.

And he learned it at a tobacco-spitting competition in Smith County in 1955.

As a freshman at Millsaps College, Lord was sent on his first traveling assignment to Raleigh as a staff reporter for the United Press, later renamed United Press International.

His co-worker H.L. Stevenson, who would later become editor in chief of UPI’s more than 200 bureaus around the world, handed down his freshly earned wisdom to a bushy-tailed Lord. But in 1955, Stevenson was just one of the older guys, breaking Lord in and showing him the ropes, Lord said.

The big goal of UPI in those days was to “beat the AP,” Lord said, referring to the Associated Press, which remains the top news service in the country today.

“You could do that in a couple of ways,” Stevenson preached, according Lord.

“The best way (to beat the AP) is, when reporting the news, get it first — but first, get it right,” Lord recited.

“But there’s another way,” he added.

And the other way was to get people talking and telling stories to each other, Lord said.

“A good narrative story would work well, but if you just come up with a single interesting fact or a good quote…that will start conversations, (readers) may talk about it at the barber shop, a bench in the park or talk about it at the supper table,” Lord recalled his colleague’s advice.

And Lord got his first chance at feeding the dinnertime conversation of strangers the next week.

George Craft won the tobacco spitting competition for the second year in a row, eliminating any great suspense for all of the tobacco spitting fans out there.

When interviewing Craft, Lord reached for something more to beat the AP. He asked Craft where he got his talent, if he thought it was acquired or inherited, perhaps.

“(Craft) let loose long stream of chewing tobacco and said, ‘Well my Mama could always spit pretty good,’” Lord repeated.

And with that quote, Lord beat the AP with a conversation starter.

It was the late Stevenson’s advice that inspired the title of a bound copy of Lord’s cover stories printed for this week’s Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration, for which Lord is the keynote speaker at Thursday’s opening ceremonies.