My Last Words -- The confessions of a subjective journalist

In the spring of 2009 I jumped from the deck of the Daily Titanic and swam away from the sinking newspaper business. So far, so good.

For about 30 years I made my living, if you could call it that, as a newspaper and magazine journalist.

Everything I learned about journalism and how to write readable, accurate and persuasive news stories, features stories, commentaries and TV and book reviews I learned on the job from 1974 to 2009.

I worked with some of the best American journalists of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. They were LA Times columnists like Howard Rosenberg and Jack Smith. Or dogged investigative reporters like David Cay Johnston.

They were great photographers like George Rose of LA Times and Martha Rial of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Great feature writers. Editorial writers. Half a dozen won Pulitzers. Another half dozen should have.

I worked with some bad editors who hated the reading public and treated their staffers like the lowliest of soldiers. I worked for brilliant editors who knew that newspapers were supposed to inform and entertain their readers as well as cause trouble for the local powers — political and corporate — that deserved it.

I worked for newspapers that were still owned by families, not penny-pinching corporations that knew their industry was being destroyed by the digital revolution — the Chandlers in LA, the Blocks of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Richard Scaife of the Pittsburgh Trib.

The LA Times and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette were typical American papers — civic boosters who generally gave the local governments and biggest corporations a pass or pretended not to notice their failures and crimes.

The Times and the PG were Democrat papers — they blatantly or tacitly supported Carter, Clinton and Obama and hated Reagan, the Bushes and any Republican to the right of Nelson Rockerfeller.

The Trib was staunchly conservative-to-libertarian on its editorial pages because it was owned by the billionaire philanthropist and conservative Dick Scaife.

Pro-choice, anti-Iraq war, pro-marijuana legalization, anti-local government corruption and stupidity, he was the man America’s liberals hated and the feeling was mututal. Hillary Clinton called him the godfather of the right-wing conspiracy, deservedly, because he gave so many of his inherited millions to conservative and libertarian think tanks and Republicans pols.

Like their editorials pages, the news coverage at the LA Times and P-G — while preserving its booster DNA — was titled left-liberal by liberal editors who loved unions and government agencies and thought making a profit or developing a shopping mall was some sort of immoral act.

No hard-hitting investigations ever were mounted by the P-G or the LAT against the failing public schools, the long history of corruption by local politicians or the downsides of the local abortion mill. The reporters, editors and columnists were, with few exceptions, either partisan Democrats, Democrat lite or apolitical. Open Republicans and conservatives were rare in the lower ranks — even at the Pittsburgh Trib.

In any case, when I quit in March of 2009 I said goodbye to the newspaper world in. the last of my hundreds — actually, thousand-plus columns. And now my Internet ID says this:

In 2013 I wrote Dogging Steinbeck, which exposed the truth about the fictions and fibs in Travels With Charley and celebrated Flyover America and its people. In 2017 I wrote 30 Days a Black Man, which retells the true story of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette star reporter Ray Sprigle's undercover mission through the Jim Crow South in 1948. Sprigle's original series is reprinted in Undercover in the Land of Jim Crow. And in 2022 I published Grandpa Bear Goes to Washington, a satirical kids book for all ages that all polar bears and lovers of freedom will like.

My last words — Goodbye newspapers

March 9, 2009

No one sane ever went into journalism for the money, and neither did I -- which was a good thing. I've made my first million as a professional newspaper writer/editor but it took nearly 36 years.

Like many in my financially and technologically battered business, I went into journalism because I wanted to be a writer.

But I also felt a duty to try to right the left-liberal imbalance of the news media, which was even more lopsided in the early 1970s without talk radio, cable TV, Fox News and the Internet.

I've not won fame or big prizes. But I've had a lucky and rewarding career as a feature writer, reporter, columnist, letters editor and book/ TV reviewer.

With time out for bartending and a brief stint at CBS in Hollywood, I've worked, in order, at a suburban weekly in Cincinnati (1973-1977), the Los Angeles Times (1979-1989), the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (1989-2000) and the Pittsburgh Trib.

By my rough count, I've written at least 1,000 words a week -- nearly 2 million career words. That includes more than 1,000 newspaper opinion pieces. Only my mother has read and liked them all.

As a reporter, I've tried my best to be accurate, fair and truthful. I've always been aware of the difference between news and opinion, between balance and bias, and between being a government watchdog and a government lapdog.

And I have always known that every journalist and every editor I have ever worked with was helplessly subjective in their politics and in their definition of what news and bias were and were not.

Trust me, big-city daily newspapers don't go out of their way to achieve ideological diversity.

About 90 percent of my workmates over the years were either avowed liberal Democrats or didn't know it. Reagan Republicans were virtually nonexistent. Until I got to the Trib, I was always the staff's lonely libertarian.

I've had a long pleasure cruise on the now-listing ship of newspaper journalism.

I've had adventures only journalists can have: A trip to Peru to ride a freight train into the Andes.

Chasing tornadoes for a week at a time in Kansas -- twice.

Flying through Hurricane Bonnie in 1998 at 10,000 feet and then waking up in her eye when she came ashore in North Carolina.

Weather didn't provide my scariest moments, by the way. Nor did interviewing Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis face-to-face. Nor did spending an hour alone with actor James Woods.

It was meeting Michael Jackson's father Joe.

In 36 years, I've watched a dozen movies being made. I've spent quality time with or interviewed too many famous, important or smart people to recount -- from actor Jimmy Stewart and drug guru Timothy Leary to Tommy Lasorda and Milton Friedman.

I've shaken hands with Hillary Clinton and Karl Rove when neither knew I was a working journalist. I've eaten a bag lunch with Jane Jacobs. I’ve helped elderly John Kenneth Galbraith down a flight of stairs and I've been helped on with my raincoat by William F. Buckley Jr. Timothy Leary once gave me drugs — aspirin.

Sadly, this is my final column as an employee of the Trib. I've decided to take a modest buyout. I'm not retiring. I'm just leaving daily newspaper journalism to see what happens to me for the last third of my life.

I've tried my best to make newspaper journalism more interesting, entertaining and politically balanced. I had my fun. I afflicted my enemies and comforted my friends. I have no regrets.

Now it's time to freelance, teach a journalism class and write some books, including my memoir, which has the working title "Confessions of a Subversive Newspaper Man."

Thanks to everyone for reading my words. Especially you, Mom.

Since I retired I’ve piled on another million words or so — ghostwriting, writing commentaries, writing two books. 30 Days a Black Man (2017) retells the amazing, forgotten and true story of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette star reporter Ray Sprigle's undercover mission through the Jim Crow South in 1948. Dogging Steinbeck (2013) exposed the truth about the fictions and fibs in Travels With Charley and celebrated Flyover America and its people.