Shoreline filling up with jettisoned careers in journalism

• Published September 05, 2008

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It feels like a species die-off.

Journalism has been bumping up against the rough shores of economic and social change for quite a while. But I was unprepared for David Postman’s announcement yesterday that he’s leaving the Seattle Times for a job in private industry — Paul Allen’s Vulcan company.

His was the third announcement in a week that an important Olympia journalist is leaving the business.

Closer to home, The Olympian’s executive editor Vickie Kilgore announced she is retiring on Sept. 12 for personal reasons — ending a 10-year run as the paper’s top editor. Vickie has meant a lot to my career, giving me this job in 1999, and she’s been a fearless advocate for the First Amendment and open government.

Also, Postman’s fellow Olympia reporter Ralph Thomas said late last week he was quitting for a job in private industry, at Katz Communications Group led by former reporter Dean Katz. Ralph had been a strong and crafty government reporter at the Capitol for most of the past decade, while Postman has arguably been the best political reporter in the state.

The ongoing political conventions in Denver and St. Paul messed with my sense of reality for much of the past two weeks.

I’m feeling a different kind of unreality as I look at the dwindling press corps, which just a few months ago lost AP giant David Ammons after three decades at the Capitol.

It’s not clear which, if any, of the empty positions will be filled.

No wonder that as Austin Jenkins of public radio and I were talking in the parking lot this morning, we were greeted by Chris Mulick of the Tri-Cities Herald this way:

“Gentlemen, thanks for coming to work this morning.’’