It’s quite a morning. Out of bed, feed the cats, sit down and check out what’s happening on Wall Street and what’s being said about it. The NY Times is live blogging financial news on the melt down, calling this “Lehman Monday”.
I’m sure that most of us don’t appreciate the full meaning of what’s going on in the financial markets. It’s a different world, and reporting on these foreign affairs is typically done by business desks which have been facing the same cutbacks as other parts of the news business.
Today is also the 9th anniversary of the news leak that Gannett and Rupert Phillips had agreed to shut down the Star-Bulletin. It was the beginning of the end of my career as a daily reporter. It was also the official start date of this blog, although the term wasn’t yet in general use.
Here’s what I wrote at the time (and you can click the photo for a mini-gallery of pictures taken on September 16, 1999, when the official announcement was made.
September 15, Wednesday
My first day back after a week-long trip to Chicago. The normal first day routine: clearing all that stacked up email, then the snail mail, then returning calls, getting reoriented to the stories in progress.
Routine, until mid-afternoon, probably around 4 pm, a wave of worry. Unexplained management meetings. No answers forthcoming about the subject. Finally word that “an announcement” will be made Thursday morning. We’ve been through rumors before. A month ago, some Advertiser staffers were supposedly asked to submit lists of who they would hire from the Star-Bulletin, but as far as I know this was never confirmed. But by 6 pm, all television stations are reporting the Star-Bulletin’s imminent closure.Reporters who start early in the day were gone before the flutter started, and many hear the news for the first time when it’s broadcast.
September 16, Thursday
Rupert Phillips makes his announcement in our newsroom about 8 am. I’m not there. I decided to arrive fashionably late. If the news is what we expect, then I don’t need to rush in. And if there’s some unexpected announcement, I’ll have the pleasure of a surprise. Of course, the news is as expected. Bad.
There’s confusion about basic things. Severance pay, unused vacation, we’re in shock and focusing on details. The big picture is overwhelming.
The Star-Bulletin survived. My life as a reporter didn’t. So it goes.
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You’re still a reporter. Caught in a time warp perhaps, when reporters just can’t be employed by newspapers. It may not be comforting, but you seem to have been just a bit ahead of your time.
As you flash back to the demise of the Star-Bulletin, maybe we should look ahead to whether the Advertiser will survive. With the layoffs and increased outsourcing of material, maybe we’re in danger again of becoming a one-newspaper town.
Happy (?) blog anniversary, Ian. I agree with LarryG–you’re still a reporter, and a good one at that.
Did I ever mention that my husband is in newspapers, too, as has been for about 20 years? Currently he produces five weekly papers from our spare bedroom for a couple of companies based in LA. You and he could have some interesting conversations, I’m sure, about the decline of the industry.
Kind of makes you wonder what was their criteria? Your investigative reporting was top-notch. Maybe made them uncomfortable – every is comfortable with vanilla. The newspapers are getting more irrelevant every day for those who want answers. They provide entertainment but not much more. Amazes me that Jim Dooley survives. I truly believe that 90% of what are called reporters today don’t know who Jack Burns was and have no clue why they should know our State’s history. I’m getting to be a crotchety old man but, damn it, I still want to know what is happening and more importantly, why?
And, yes, Larry, I check your website regularly too, thanks for your work.
I may not, usually do not, agree with either of you politically but I respect and value your opinions and insight. Mahalo,
Tom Pico
Ian, have you been following Doonesbury this week? Seems like Garry Trudeau is writing this week’s comic with this anniversary in mind. The protagonist even bears a passing resemblence to you!