If if and goodbye

posted 02:27 PM 10/02
Permanent Link.

A newspaper is lumber made malleable. It is ink made into words and pictures. It is conceived, born, grows up and dies of old age in a day.

— Jim Bishop, U.S. newspaperman

A few months after leaving college in 1983, I was getting ready for a job interview at the Monroe Monitor, a small weekly newspaper in Snohomish County. I was talking to my older brother, Eric, before I left and he told me, "If you get this job and keep it for a while, you'll be able to call yourself a newspaperman."

That had a nice ring to it. A newspaperman. It seemed a simple, direct, honest, descriptive and unadorned way to describe one's work, and I decided it was a title I'd like to have define me. And it sounded a whole lot better than my title at the time: unemployed mopey college boy.

I got the job at the Monitor and kept it for a while, 10 months to be precise. I moved on. I found another paper, and then I came to The Olympian in 1988.

Three newspapers and 25 years later, it appears my newspaper days are done. On Oct. 3, around midnight, I will become a newspaperman who doesn't work at a newspaper, joining an ever-growing roster of newspapermen and newspaperwomen who don't work for newspapers.

I was one of four people in The Olympian's newsroom to take a buyout, or "voluntary separation package," as the accountants call it. I took it without rancor or disaffection with the newspaper. I figured it was about time I stopped being the husband and father who comes home at night when my family is asleep and is asleep when my family leaves in the morning.

Of course, the "voluntary separation package" is not a real package, like the kind that has four corners and requires opening. But it is a package in the sense that somebody has been allowed to co-opt a perfectly good word and apply it to an object that shares few of the word's original attributes.

I hate the practice of manipulating the traditional meaning of words, but I was fortunate enough to find a profession that rewarded and stoked that hatred. Like the word "branding." It used to mean applying a hot poker to the hind end of cattle, but now it applies to an institution or corporation imprinting itself on your brain. When I hear someone say "branding" in its newer sense, I imagine applying a hot poker to their hind end.

I found a home in newsrooms. Newsrooms accepted me in a way other workplaces had not. I could be skeptical. I could be sarcastic. I could ask impertinent questions. I found people who shared my interest in current events, language and the question of why people do the things they do. I also could wear tennis shoes every day.

Newsrooms are overwhelmingly populated by people who weren't popular in high school. Newspaper people are the ones sitting in the back of the class, perched on the top step, standing at the edge of the crowd. They're the ones who read too much as youngsters, and got in trouble for asking too many questions.

We're a largely unsentimental lot because the imperative of our job forces us to concentrate intently on what's happening right now. Every day, we're driven by one purpose: Get the paper out. And every day we make it look simple because every day you get a newspaper. But it's not simple.

The art is in concealing the art.

Being a newspaper person is a way of seeing your place in this world. You're not of the crowd. You're apart. It leads some journalists to believe that they're better than the crowd, but the best journalists are those who can maintain a distance without ignoring the humanity that binds them to the crowd.

Journalists who can't recognize that end up working for television stations.

Journalism is a noble profession that's too often ignobly performed, but newspapers, in some form, need to survive.

Newspapers play a role in our lives that blogs can never replace. Where do you suppose bloggers most often get the base coat for their colorful edifice of indignation? Newspapers. Newspapers demand a rigor for discovering the demonstrable truth, and an insistence on taking responsibility for what you write. The fear of having a printed correction inspires a level of concentration among newspaper reporters and editors that online sources don't require. That fear remains real to me after all these years. You can't simply strike through an error that's printed in the newspaper. In newspapers, the mistake remains, sometimes in 48 point type. It mocks you.

Here's the question: Does the proper functioning of our society require its citizens to be in possession of accurate information? Or does it only require information that seems like it should be true and which people want to be true?

Newspapers are integrated into our lives beyond their daily reading. Newspapers are great for wadding up and throwing at a wall after you've read something that infuriates you. Try that with a blog. You can roll up a newspaper and swat your dog on the nose when he pees on the carpet. A rolled-up paper can be used to kill a fly. Newspapers can be used to line cupboards or as floor covering when you're painting the spare room. And how many of you have had the sublime experience of finding a yellowed newspaper in the house and catching up on what the world was like 15 years ago?

I'm not sure what I'll do next for money. I was hired at The Olympian and met my future wife in the winter of 1988, so I haven't dated or looked for a job in 20 years. They seem like similar, daunting endeavors. In both cases, you're trying to find someone who's willing to put up with you for vast stretches of time.

I already got lucky twice.

Maybe I'll take my adorable 4-year-old boy downtown and sell hugs for $1. For an extra $1, I can have him whisper "I love you" into the customer's ear. It's cheaper than a latte, and management would reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.

I'm kidding.

I wouldn't turn my boy out like that. It would have to be at least $3 per hug and $2 for an added whisper. And I wouldn't refuse service to anyone.

Back in March 1988, I had a tryout at The Olympian. It was a normal thing in those days. You work for a couple of hours and show what you can do. The news editor at the time, Jerre Redecker, sent me a story that included an "if if" that she had written into the last sentence of the last paragraph of the story. I caught the double if and shipped the story to Jerre. She immediately went to the last paragraph and said, "Oh good. You caught the double if."

I knew then that I had vastly improved my chances of landing a job. And as I was leaving after my tryout, another copy editor, Bettz Pitcher, grabbed my tie, pulled me close to her face, looked me dead in the eye and said, "They better hire you."

I knew that with Jerre and Bettz backing me, I would get the job.

And I did.

Life turns on trifles like that. My life would have been vastly different if I hadn't caught the double if or if Bettz hadn't liked me. And that it turned on the word "if" seems especially poetic.

Thank you for reading what I've written this past year. I've heard from a lot of folks, including many who resurrected themselves from my past. I especially enjoyed having people come up to me on the street and say to me, "I saw your picture in the paper!"

I'd then ask whether they read what I wrote, and they'd say, "Nah."

That's funny.

I need to wrap this up, but it's hard. An ending is always more poignant than a beginning, and poignancy comes hard to me.

I have this feeling that it will turn out OK, and that feeling exists because of this: I'm not sure God exists, but I am sure God has a plan.

So long.

I gotta go.

Comments

$699,999,999,999.99

posted 07:05 AM 09/30

If something is priced at $24.99, do you think the price is $24 or do you think it's $25?

When I see $24.99, I see $24. I'm a sucker for the wisdom of professional marketeers in killer clothes and expensive shoes. And I'm clearly not the sole resident of Suckerdom because marketeers have been pricing items just short of the next dollar for years. The price of a gallon of gasoline, for instance, is carried out to nine-tenths of a cent.

Girls spit too

posted 03:41 PM 09/25

You used to not see girls spit in public, but now you do.

Fluff No. 6

posted 09:34 AM 09/23

Eternity won't last as long as you think.

The Dirty Diaper Doctrine

posted 11:37 PM 09/17

When you're changing a baby's diaper — especially one of those diapers that make you wonder why you became a parent — you shouldn't mess around.

It's diaper changing, not a tea party.

Playing ball with Obama

posted 10:53 PM 09/15

Let's say you're a basketball buddy of Barack Obama. Let's say you play in the pickup games that the Democratic nominee reportedly plays on the campaign trail. You're an aide, a campaign worker or a fellow politician and you're on the court with the person who could be the next president of the United States.

The will of Denise

posted 10:57 PM 09/15

I've got an idea for a new religion, but I won't retain any financial or self-interest in the establishment or spread of this religion. I'm not offering this idea to get rich or powerful. I don't have a messiah complex, thank God. I simply wish to introduce something new into the marketplace of ideas.

Tra-la-la-la-la

posted 10:13 PM 09/20

The 4-year-old has taken a turn for the lyrical.

Ryan's been singing a lot lately, mostly simple melodies that are scored with repeated words and an occasional non sequitur.

Working the working class

posted 11:25 PM 09/03

Working class is in.

Every four years, politicians of every ideological stripe drape themselves in the values of the working class. It's been going on for years, and it goes on all around the world.

When ideas come

posted 11:35 PM 09/01

According to what many people consider to be true, Archimedes discovered that the volume of water displaced is equal to the volume of the object that's placed in the water. He realized that after he stepped into his bathtub and noticed the water level rise in his big, fat Greek tub.

The profile

posted 02:21 PM 08/31

The man sitting next to me in the window seat of the plane bound for Phoenix was olive-skinned. He had short-cropped black hair, and when he asked the flight attendant for a Coke, I detected an accent. Maybe it was Middle Eastern, but it was hard to tell from the short exchange.

Nose jobs

posted 11:36 PM 08/27

Have you ever thought about which senses are necessary to do your job?

Sound?

Sight?

Smell?

Touch?

Taste?

About us

posted 11:47 PM 08/25

Here are some survey questions I'd like to ask the residents of our nation: QUESTION ONE: What language do you think Jesus spoke?

Exit, stage right

posted 11:38 PM 08/21

"How do you think you're going to die?"

"I don't know," I answered. "Maybe cancer. Maybe heart disease."

Happy birthday, Irma

posted 02:58 PM 08/25

My older son and Irma Tranum had birthdays last week. Alexander turned 14. Irma turned 100. One has a lifetime ahead, the other has a lifetime behind. They're at opposite ends of a boat on a one-way trip.