Chapter 82.6: Rocky Mountains Crash to Earth

I've never lived in Colorado, so it doesn't affect me as much as it does the people out there, but as a journalist, I can't help but feel sad for the death of yet another newspaper. The Rocky Mountain News published its final edition today, just a few weeks short of its 150th anniversary.

I don't have personal stories to share about what that paper meant to me, but I'm sure they exist, and I'd be happy to have people share them here in comments.

Journalism remains popular with college students. I see news of new fellowships and grants for journalists all the time, and I hear from college students that they want to get into journalism. So I know the interest is out there. What isn't out there right now is a viable business model that would allow many of the old papers to continue to exist. The old model isn't working anymore.

Papers have gone online, and that's good. I suspect many of them eventually will only exist online. And that isn't as good, because not everyone has access to the Internet. That's a discussion for another time.

If nothing else, I'll reflect on the death of a grand old paper, what it means for the hundreds of people who worked there and their families, and look forward to the future of journalism, because people remain unchanged in their desire to have access to objectively presented information.

Chapter 76.9: Tim Russert -30-

No, that's not a typo. It's a journalistic symbol that denotes the end of a wire service story.

But Tim Russert, who died today at the all too young age of 58, was no wire service reporter, though if he had been one he would have excelled. Russert was perhaps the premier American TV journalist of his generation. How fitting, then, that Tom Brokaw, who will forever be associated with The Greatest Generation, shoud announce Russert's unexpected death. Indeed, how appropriate for Russert to die on a Friday afternoon, the slowest time in traditional news, when the Saturday edition has basically been put to bed and the editors are starting on their desk stash of scotch in the office before hitting the bar.

Russert wouldn't want to have become the story, but by the same token, he'd want the story out -- and accurate -- as soon as possible.

From what I've heard, Russert was passionate about politics and public policy. He was perfect for Meet the Press. I had hoped to meet him one day.

I can't help but wonder who will succeed him. I wonder if Brokaw might serve as the moderator for Meet the Press on Sunday, though he retired a few years ago. Whoever is the next host of that show will have much to aspire to.

-30-

Chapter 71.3: Changing the Ink

Anyone who loves newspapers will want to take a look at this. It's written by Paul Steiger, and it appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, one of this country's greatest newspapers -- I say that even though I'm clearly not a conservative.

Steiger, who worked for many years at the Journal, writes lovingly about an industry that is struggling. He's about to embark on a new veture at the nonprofit ProPublica, which is funded primarily by Herbert and Marion Sandler, who made billions from the sale of Golden West Financial. But he also recognizes that journalism is at a transition point.

I wasn't aware of the state of the newspaper industry fifty-some years ago. He describes a moment where a newspaper photographer kept a dead bird in his car to use as a prop for photos. "The bird," he writes, "was for feature shots on holidays like Memorial Day. He'd perch it on a gravestone or tree limb in a veterans' cemetery to get the right mood. Nowadays such a trick would get him fired, but in the 1950s, this guy said, there was no time to wait for a live bird to flutter into the frame."

I spent ten years working as a reporter for a trade journal. There are times when working there resembled a scene from The Office, but I enjoyed it for the most part. The "non-most" part, however, included dealing with dwindling advertising dollars and moments when I recognized that my paycheck was supplied by advertisers that I wanted little to do with.

I encourage anyone with an interest in the newspaper industry and the communication of important information to average Americans -- and anyone, really -- to read or at least skim Steiger's article. The United States needs a strong cadre of journalists who aren't afraid that their jobs will evaporate like water on Mars. The kids coming out of college know this already. Let's do more than just hope there are readers for them when they're ready.

Chapter 60.4: David Halberstam

Another writer whose work I admired has passed. David Halberstam, who seemed as comfortable writing about baseball as he was writing about history and politics (especially war), was killed in a car crash outside San Francisco.

When I heard about this unexpected tragedy, I couldn't help but think of his book 1964, which discusses the changing mores of major league baseball as civil rights issues rose to the forefront of American consciousness. He contrasts the lily-white Yankees, whose aging, almost exclusively white players were on their descent, with the St. Louis Cardinals, who were a far more diverse team than the Yankees with black stars and a more exciting brand of baseball, playing in what was still a southern-style city.

As that particular nonfiction work is about much more than baseball, Halberstam was more than a simple scribbler. He was a true journalist in all the best meanings of the term. I had hoped to meet him, interview him, perhaps have a beer and talk about the game with him. Instead, I'll have to read more of his books to get to know a bit more about the man and the times in which he lived.