The
newspaper drama Spotlight won the Oscar for best picture last night.
It portrayed the reporting team at the Boston Globe, which
investigated the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. I 'm a
former Catholic and have been a newspaper junkie all my life. Without
my daily paper and cup of tea, it's not morning at my house. My first
real job was as a reporter at my hometown paper. I married a newsman,
the finest I have ever known, and count current and former
journalists among my cherished friends. So I'm stepping way out of
the garden today for a very personal blog post about the profession I still revere,
even as I know it's dying. I had to write this.
When
I was a high school senior in 1967, I was awarded a journalism
scholarship from my hometown newspaper, the Aberdeen Daily World. A
job offer came with it – part-time every day after my classes at
Grays Harbor College, where I studied for two years, before another
scholarship sent me to Italy. Every time I climbed the stairs to the
World's newsroom and breathed in the newsprint, the printer's ink and
hot type, and the lingering tobacco smoke of decades of reporters and
editors, I imagined I was Lois Lane.
My
father – brilliant, quicksilver and fatally flawed – was a
newsman for the county's leading radio station, before scandal sent
him away. When I was a little girl, I remember sitting at our kitchen
table, eating buttered soda crackers and waiting for his five o'clock
radio newscast. He had promised to use a new word for me and would
ask me later if I had heard and remembered it. His word that night
was a fancy way to say “rain:” precipitation. He didn't come to
see me for eleven years – from when I was eight to 19. His only
communication was a few letters he typed on newsprint half-sheets, on
a vintage Royal typewriter – the same brand of machine I would use
at the Daily World. During those absent years, my father worked as
managing editor at two small newspapers, jobs that sent his blood
racing and kept his demons mostly leashed. When I, at age 19, wrote
to tell him I'd been hired as a reporter for the Daily World, he
reestablished a connection with his daughter, the writer.
At
the Daily World, I found mentors and friends, people older than I,
who taught by example the importance of accuracy, integrity,
attention to facts and to detail. Some were hard-drinking and had
lived hard in other ways. Some were profane and darkly funny, who
used their wit to hide the sadness of the beats they covered. Some
had given their souls to their jobs; some dealt, alone, with personal
heartbreak after deadline. I was a girl among grownups, but they
taught me well. Sometimes they let me set free the words inside my
heart on a feature story. I adored nearly all of them. Years later,
the retiring managing editor cited me as one of the two most
brilliant writers of his long career. I thought my heart would fly
away, floating on stunned joy.
I
met my future husband, Lee Rozen, at the Daily World. He – from a
nearby town even smaller than Aberdeen – was a journalism student
at the University of Washington, home for the summer and working in
the newsroom as a wire editor. Our first date was covering the Sky
River Rock Festival, Lee as the photographer, and I as the feature
writer. We married in 1971, I, an English major with a B.A. degree,
and he, a J-major with a new reporting job at the Vancouver
Columbian. I was soon hired there, too, to cover a lengthy
fee-sharing trial, whose defendants were former San Francisco Mayor
Joseph Alioto and former Washington State Attorney John J. O'Connell,
two charmers whose personalities dominated the trial. They were
acquitted of all charges (a bit different from pure innocence,) and I
got a front-row seat to a master's class in legal maneuvers, big-city
newspapermen (both of the San Francisco papers sent reporters,) and
deadline writing.
At
The Columbian, I reported on and wrote a multi-part feature series on
the gay community in the Vancouver-Portland area. I couldn't use my
sources' real names, because, in the '70s, their jobs might have been
in danger if readers had recognized them and condemned them for being
who they were and whom they loved. I've never forgotten them and the
way they helped shape the adult I finally, slowly became. When The
Columbian's editorial board endorsed Richard Nixon for President, I
organized and collected money to pay for a quarter-page ad, headed
:These Columbian Employees Support George McGovern for President.
We signed our names, though we
knew we 'd put our job security in danger. Senator McGovern carried
one state, Massachusetts, in the national election. I wrote to him
and enclosed a copy of the ad. One of my most cherished mementos is a
personal, signed letter of thanks from the gentle, smart and good man
who abhorred the war in Vietnam.
At
The Columbian I learned lasting, hard-won lessons, about joy,
shadows, and heartbreak, while working as a reporter and editor, and a
college instructor of English and journalism. In 1983, my diagnosis
of Stage IV cancer sent Lee and me, with a young son and infant daughter, to
Seattle, where I slowly grew well again. Lee was hired and earned
promotions to editing and management jobs at the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, and became founder and manager of its website.
In
2010, Lee was named managing editor of The Moscow-Pullman Daily News
in north Idaho and is loving the chance to mentor his young staff of
reporters and to work with local owners of vision, guts and
integrity. I
stayed away from newspapers for decades, but never from writing:
Seven nationally published books, with translations in more than 20
languages. Now, in this beautiful university town, I write a weekly
Saturday column, The Impetuous Gardener, for the
Moscow-Pullman Daily News, have a blog of the same title, and write
plays for children and teenagers of the Presbyterian
church where I volunteer.
On
Oscar night, I bounced with joy when Spotlight won for best
picture. But Lee was more solemn, more reflective. He has dedicated
his adult life and given countless hours of personal time to
journalism, and has suffered serious health problems while doing his
job. And he knows newspapers are dying. They are cutting staff,
losing advertisers. My beloved Aberdeen Daily World has eliminated
several publication days each week, as have many other papers. The
profession I still think of as a calling, filled with newsmen and
-women like my husband – people of integrity, intelligence, caring
and cojones – has become “the media.” It's a phrase often used
with disdain, venom, and simplistic blame. Woodward and Bernstein
doesn't ring too many bells anymore, nor do the huge, honkin' number
of detailed, carefully researched news stories that let readers know
what's happening in their towns, at city hall, on campuses and
classrooms, in legislative meeting rooms, and in families' living
rooms.
When
Spotlight had its golden moment last night, I rewrote in my
mind the powerful line in To Kill a Mockingbird: Stand
up. An era is passing.
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