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Adam Wilson expounds on Washington state government, workers and politics. Wilson began covering those issues for the Olympian in 2004. He can be reached at: awilson@theolympian.com.

Who's going to end our press conferences?

• Published April 25, 2008

Today is a day for writing about a writer, Dave Ammons of the Associated Press, the 37-year veteran of the capital press corps. This is his last day on the question side of things before he begins answering them as a spokesman for Secretary of State Sam Reed.

You can read the recollections of his colleagues from the Tri-Cities Herald, the Seattle Times, the Spokesman Review and, indeed The Olympian, all posted today.

To understand his place here, know that the first question at governors’ press conferences always went to Ammons, and he called the sessions to an end by saying "Thank you, governor." To quote Ernest Hemingway on press conferences in The Sun Also Rises:

At eleven o’clock I went over to the Quai d’Orsay in a taxi and went in and sat with about a dozen correspondents, while the foreign-office mouthpiece, a young Nouvelle-Revue-Francaise diplomat in horn-rimmed spectacles, talked and answered questions for half an hour. The President of the Council was in Lyons making a speech, or, rather he was on his way back. Several people asked questions to hear themselves talk and there were a couple of questions asked by news service men who wanted to know the answers. There was no news.

Of Ammons I will say this: he only asked the question if he wanted to know the answer.

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