John Markoff, a college friend from years ago who has been a tech writer for the New York Times for 28 years, just retired.
His remarks at a retirement gathering at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism were just published by Backchannel.com, and are worth taking a few minutes to read (“I Covered Tech for the Times for 28 Years, And Now My Time Is Over“).
Yes, I’m retiring from the New York Times. This is obviously bittersweet, but it’s also very weird. Whenever I tell someone I’m leaving the paper they immediately say “congratulations.”
What the hell? Congratulate me for bailing on one of the best jobs in the world?
The simple fact is that I lasted longer than a lot of my friends. But until I changed my mind last summer and took the buyout, I was sure I was going to go out like those guys at the Examiner?—?the copy editors who worked at night in their t-shirts. And then keeled over on their CRTs and were taken out feet first.
But what the heck.
He goes on to share observations on the changing world of journalism, and confesses to still being a print journalist, despite decades on the digital beat.
We’ve been friends a long time. We met John when we were all students at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, back in the 1960s. His family lived in Palo Alto, not far from my sister’s home at the time, and we spent time at their house enjoying his parents and sisters. One summer we crashed their family vacation on the beach on Kauai, and spent several days gathering sun tans and puka shells with the Markoff crowd. When Meda and I got married in Palo Alto in the summer of 1969, John was one of just two friends who attended our small celebration that followed. That’s John on the left in the photo.
He deserves congratulations on a great career with the Times. We’re looking forward to what’s next.
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The closing is priceless.
I want to end by reading something Bertolt Brecht wrote that I stumbled across in my twenties:
Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgement to select in whose hands it will be effective, and the cunning to spread the truth among such persons.
“The way I had it is all gone now. The bars are gone, the drinkers, gone. There remain the smartest, healthiest newspeople in the history of the business. And they are so boring that they kill the business right in front of you.” Jimmy Breslin, newspaper columnist, in a Sept. 1996 interview with Joan Smith for the San Francisco Examiner