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It has been an honor

• Published July 02, 2009

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I wanted to wait until I finished my last story before I said goodbye to this blog. As you may have already read, I'm moving down the street, as Gov. Chris Gregoire's speechwriter. Don't worry this post isn't about how to save journalism. I don't know how, unlike everyone else, apparently.

Colleague Brad Shannon was working furiously when I rolled up to the press house in Olympia in 2004. He has not stopped or slowed as we shared five years of news, three owners of the newspaper, and seismic upheaval in the reporting world. Follow his blog and you will be well read.

I also thank Jerry Wakefield, who first greeted me in The Olympian’s lobby with a warning: “Stay hydrated, it’s going to be 94 degrees today.” I don’t think I told him that it was 108 degrees in Lewiston, Idaho, when I got on the plane that day. Since then, he has backed his paper (and me) with confidence and determination. He’s also the guy who can sharpen your story to a saber point.

And of course there is the entire editorial staff of The Olympian, who deserve credit for doing their jobs so well, a team never represented in one writer's byline.

This is it for me and reporting.

When I was 12 and going off on my first no-parent vacation, my dad handed me a novel he picked up with his unlimited line of used-bookstore credit, Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World.”

It’s fantastic – literally. The guy in there works for newspaper, and he goes to the Amazon, and he finds dinosaurs. How cool is that? I was hooked.

I still have that book, worn and repaired with electrical tape. There’s a moment in there that has guided me. It wasn’t finding dinosaurs, although that turns out to be awesome. It wasn’t becoming a reporter; the guy already was one. What it was, he decided to seize opportunity: