Callous Treatment

The Writerly Pause at Al's last month.

When we were at Al's he said, "I write whatever I want to write about."
And of course, he could be trusted to do this. His career has spanned over fifty years, starting at the Oakland Tribune with an editor named Al Reck. He's worked every desk --from local news, national and international affairs. He garnered a Pulitzer along the way, helped multitudes of readers understand the intricacies of what was going on around them, and he helped at least one kid from the farmlands and rivers of the delta love good writing.

So he had the chops, this was a reporter who could be trusted with a biweekly column to "write about whatever he wanted."

It seems that with all the cutbacks, hard lines are being taken. If they can get it off the wire, then go ahead, cut that reporter. The weirdest example is the reporter outsourcing of city council and school board meetings to India by a Pasadena paper. Now school principals will be known as Headmasters, and for sure, children will be taken to school in putt-putts and pedi-cabs. We also know that if there's not an apparent tie-in with the selling of advertisements, such as fluff interviews with celebrities in the Calendar, then it can be cut too.

This is in contrast to the late Jack Smith in his final years. It was a long hard slog to read about his health problems. But each day he'd get up and pound out words. If you don't know, I will tell you now: stringing words together is what keeps a writer alive. Though the Times could've booted him out, they didn't. They kept Jack on staff, after all he was a part of the institution.

They also knew this: Jack Smith had fans. People who subscribed to the paper out of loyalty, not only for him, but because the LA Times stood as a point of civic pride. There were people who got the paper and the first thing they did was look for Jack's column.

It's the same with Al Martinez. He has a fan base too. He represents the Times when it was a great paper. Whether you want to think of it as a point of civic pride or just nostalgia, people like me keep our subscription even though it's painful to see this paper being treated as though it were an entrant in a demolition derby.

Frankly I can't believe that getting rid of a biweekly columnist like Al is going to make a huge dent in their bottom line. No, he got swept in with some quota that said, "X number of jobs must go." And so I think with moves like this, it becomes apparent that the paper is entrenched in the same track as the rest of society: more information, but far less critical thinking.

So who is next? Dana Parsons? Steve Lopez? Chris Erskine? Maybe they're too much to pay as well. Maybe they're going to make the trek up to the Flathead Beacon and do fishing reports, snow tire comparisons, nature stories and yeah --hard news. At least they'd know the bottom line are two wealthy off-beat journalists named Maury and Connie. As opposed to Sam Zell, who is simply wealthy.

Now that I know I'll never be selected to be designated to take over Al's column (and I'd of done a good job), maybe I'll start learning about fish.