I have not visited my Good, the Bad and the Ugly site for a long time and now I see the note from Sabra. If you can read this please contact me at drossowa@gmail.com about the Choraleers.
Dave
Monday, December 12, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Best Dressed
NOT BEST DRESSED
Another in a series of semi-informational treatises on life in Switzerland.
OK. Did that scare anybody off?!
Last night, Friday, March 23, 2001, I went to a FUNdraiser-auction for American Citizens Abroad. The event was held in the five-star Richemond Hotel in Geneva on an almost balmy night.
I was dressed appropriately – slacks and a short-sleeved sports shirt that almost matched the pants. All of my former wives would have been impressed. Those of you who have work with me would have considered me well-dressed. For those who have never seen me in the work environment, well, I have never subscribed to CQ.
I didn’t know too many people at this event. My friend was volunteering for the auction, so I was left pretty much on my own to mingle, introduce myself and try to blend in. Blend is something I do not do well. I made small talk with folks as white-uniformed waiters worked the room with trays of nibblies. OK, hors-d’oeuvres.
At one point, I found myself facing an elderly woman. At my age, I have to use the word elderly with discretion. She had white hair done up with a black ribbon and was dressed to show off money. She looked at me and said, “Are you an American?” I said, “Yes,” happy that I did not have to utilize my French lessons (Oui, je suis Americain. Je m’appelle Dave Rosso. Je suis journaliste).
“Where are you from,” she demanded.
“Washington, D.C.,” says I.
“Is that how they dress in Washington? Around here you wear a tie.”
“Oh, well, I don’t wear ties.”
“Well, you do here, baby. Look around you. You will never be a success if you don’t know how to dress.”
“I think, the way I dress won’t make much difference at this stage of the game for me,” I said, turning and walking away.
Shortly after that incident, the auction began. To warm up the audience, the MC-auctioneer made a few comments and introduced members of ACA and other organizations, as well as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., who made some remarks.
My friend was introduced and she took the proffered microphone and made brief remarks. Then, to my utter surprise, I was introduced as the veteran United Press International journalist who had taken over as editor of the ACA newsletter. I sat there, in the front row, directly in front of the MC, who was holding the microphone towards – for benefit of those who prefer the Brit spelling) me. I stood up, took the microphone and faced the audience and stumbled out a few words. And there I was. Standing there. In my slacks and short-sleeved sports shirt, sans tie. Never to be a success.
I was very happy when my friend introduced me to a fellow journalist who writes for the International Herald Tribune, who was dressed in jeans, open sports shirt and weather-beaten jacket, note pads, pens and papers sticking out of his pockets. My kind of man!
It’s too bad my French teacher wasn‘t in the audience when I made my impromptu speech. She would have thought, “God, he can’t speak English any better than he speaks French.”
The lessons are coming along. I have actually spoken whole sentences in French. I got a laugh out of my teacher Thursday. The entire class time is conducted in French. So, when I have a question, it has to be asked in French. OY! But I did manage to get out my question in good enough French for her to understand enough to appreciate the humor I had intended. I asked why is it that the word for “problem” is masculine while the word for “solution” is feminine. She said something to the effect of, “But of course.”
Until next time.
Dave
PS: OK. A contest. Who can come up with the best parting shot to my fashion critic?
Another in a series of semi-informational treatises on life in Switzerland.
OK. Did that scare anybody off?!
Last night, Friday, March 23, 2001, I went to a FUNdraiser-auction for American Citizens Abroad. The event was held in the five-star Richemond Hotel in Geneva on an almost balmy night.
I was dressed appropriately – slacks and a short-sleeved sports shirt that almost matched the pants. All of my former wives would have been impressed. Those of you who have work with me would have considered me well-dressed. For those who have never seen me in the work environment, well, I have never subscribed to CQ.
I didn’t know too many people at this event. My friend was volunteering for the auction, so I was left pretty much on my own to mingle, introduce myself and try to blend in. Blend is something I do not do well. I made small talk with folks as white-uniformed waiters worked the room with trays of nibblies. OK, hors-d’oeuvres.
At one point, I found myself facing an elderly woman. At my age, I have to use the word elderly with discretion. She had white hair done up with a black ribbon and was dressed to show off money. She looked at me and said, “Are you an American?” I said, “Yes,” happy that I did not have to utilize my French lessons (Oui, je suis Americain. Je m’appelle Dave Rosso. Je suis journaliste).
“Where are you from,” she demanded.
“Washington, D.C.,” says I.
“Is that how they dress in Washington? Around here you wear a tie.”
“Oh, well, I don’t wear ties.”
“Well, you do here, baby. Look around you. You will never be a success if you don’t know how to dress.”
“I think, the way I dress won’t make much difference at this stage of the game for me,” I said, turning and walking away.
Shortly after that incident, the auction began. To warm up the audience, the MC-auctioneer made a few comments and introduced members of ACA and other organizations, as well as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., who made some remarks.
My friend was introduced and she took the proffered microphone and made brief remarks. Then, to my utter surprise, I was introduced as the veteran United Press International journalist who had taken over as editor of the ACA newsletter. I sat there, in the front row, directly in front of the MC, who was holding the microphone towards – for benefit of those who prefer the Brit spelling) me. I stood up, took the microphone and faced the audience and stumbled out a few words. And there I was. Standing there. In my slacks and short-sleeved sports shirt, sans tie. Never to be a success.
I was very happy when my friend introduced me to a fellow journalist who writes for the International Herald Tribune, who was dressed in jeans, open sports shirt and weather-beaten jacket, note pads, pens and papers sticking out of his pockets. My kind of man!
It’s too bad my French teacher wasn‘t in the audience when I made my impromptu speech. She would have thought, “God, he can’t speak English any better than he speaks French.”
The lessons are coming along. I have actually spoken whole sentences in French. I got a laugh out of my teacher Thursday. The entire class time is conducted in French. So, when I have a question, it has to be asked in French. OY! But I did manage to get out my question in good enough French for her to understand enough to appreciate the humor I had intended. I asked why is it that the word for “problem” is masculine while the word for “solution” is feminine. She said something to the effect of, “But of course.”
Until next time.
Dave
PS: OK. A contest. Who can come up with the best parting shot to my fashion critic?
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Picking on the Jew
This is from my memoir from my school days at Manlius Military Academy 1956-1959. It was an eye-opener (that started with an eye-shutter)
Picking on the Jew
Interesting about ostracism. When I was a kid at military school I learned by my second year to make friends who then became part of our group. This was a natural boys school trait. There were joiners and outsiders. At that age it came down to personalities and character. A pecking order was quickly established that went beyond cadet rank that was worn on our shoulders.
My father ran the school's publicity, but he pulled no punches for me and I never went to him for special favors. I never made any rank either -- because that's the kind of guy I was.
I got in my share of fights on the hill behind the water tower. Our small group that was formed by me and my best friend consisted of other hell-raisers. None of them ever made any rank either.
Of course, when you have groups, those groups have to have others that are outside the group and, therefore, open to taunts and tricks. And I had a favorite target. Until one day another cadet came up to me and told me to leave him alone and blasted me alongside the head with a right hook that I never saw coming and the warning that he didn't like people picking on Jews.
Besides being physically stunned, I was also mentally stunned. Until that moment, I did not know what a Jew was. I did not know that certain names were Jewish names. Nor did I know that Jews were picked on.
Another cadet named Wertheimer was someone I had a tremendous amount of respect for because as I was a hell-raiser to buck authority, he did it calmly, quietly, cerebrally, and I thought he was so cool. But I never thought he was a cool Jew. He was just a cool guy.
As the right hook shut my eye, it opened my eyes to something I had never been aware of in my pretty sheltered life.
My parents taught me and my siblings that we should not discriminate. But that lesson was directed toward blacks. We were never, ever to use the N word (so I never got to advertise Dick Gregory's book).
Of the 360 cadets at the school, none was black. And that was the case during the three years I was there. I left Mr. Lerner alone, not because he was Jewish, but because I didn't want to get whomped alongside the head again. And I continued to respect Mr. Wertheimer, because he got under the cadet leaders' skin, quietly with his brains and passed with honors. And he always had this confident smug grin on his face.
Picking on the Jew
Interesting about ostracism. When I was a kid at military school I learned by my second year to make friends who then became part of our group. This was a natural boys school trait. There were joiners and outsiders. At that age it came down to personalities and character. A pecking order was quickly established that went beyond cadet rank that was worn on our shoulders.
My father ran the school's publicity, but he pulled no punches for me and I never went to him for special favors. I never made any rank either -- because that's the kind of guy I was.
I got in my share of fights on the hill behind the water tower. Our small group that was formed by me and my best friend consisted of other hell-raisers. None of them ever made any rank either.
Of course, when you have groups, those groups have to have others that are outside the group and, therefore, open to taunts and tricks. And I had a favorite target. Until one day another cadet came up to me and told me to leave him alone and blasted me alongside the head with a right hook that I never saw coming and the warning that he didn't like people picking on Jews.
Besides being physically stunned, I was also mentally stunned. Until that moment, I did not know what a Jew was. I did not know that certain names were Jewish names. Nor did I know that Jews were picked on.
Another cadet named Wertheimer was someone I had a tremendous amount of respect for because as I was a hell-raiser to buck authority, he did it calmly, quietly, cerebrally, and I thought he was so cool. But I never thought he was a cool Jew. He was just a cool guy.
As the right hook shut my eye, it opened my eyes to something I had never been aware of in my pretty sheltered life.
My parents taught me and my siblings that we should not discriminate. But that lesson was directed toward blacks. We were never, ever to use the N word (so I never got to advertise Dick Gregory's book).
Of the 360 cadets at the school, none was black. And that was the case during the three years I was there. I left Mr. Lerner alone, not because he was Jewish, but because I didn't want to get whomped alongside the head again. And I continued to respect Mr. Wertheimer, because he got under the cadet leaders' skin, quietly with his brains and passed with honors. And he always had this confident smug grin on his face.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Good luck, John
Today was a sad, tough day. My crew of four and a half reporters had to come up with enough copy to fill four days of newspapers because of the three-day weekend. Oh, the four-and-a-half reporters. Yeah. Well, one of them left early. For good. My staff is now down to four
But that was the sad.
Because the staffer who left was so much more than just a staffer. Much more than just a reporter.
John Driscoll was a veteran of 11 years at the Times-Standard. But even that doesn’t explain my loss. John was our natural resources reporter. He knew Humboldt County and the issues that affected Humboldt County better than most of the people in the county. John easily could have worked at The New York Times or The Los Angeles Times. But John loves Humboldt County and wants to stay right here. He is staying. He is now working in the Eureka office of Rep. Mike Thompson.
But it goes even deeper than that. John could cover anything. And he did. He covered the cop beat. He filled in on the politics and elections, even while expressing his dislike of politics. He wrote a weekly column. He could write in an instance. And his copy was always clean. Almost always.
And it goes deeper than that. John could talk to anybody in the county and make them like him. He had personality. He could get the answers from the most unanswerable people. He had a phone list that covered the entire county.
But really, it goes farther than that. John was a leader. He was liked and respected by everybody in the newsroom – along both ends of the newsroom, the photographers, every reporter, the managing editors through the years, the city editors through the years, the night desk, the copy editors, the publishers.
And John left at 5 p.m. every day. Unless we really needed him. And then he came back. And he worked with us and among us and for us and beside us.
He had a great sense of humor, a great sense of news, a great way with words, a great sense of urgency, a great sense of camaraderie.
We will miss him, the newspaper will miss him, the readers will miss him. I will miss him.
Yeah, we all move on. And now John has moved on. But he left an awful lot behind.
But that was the sad.
Because the staffer who left was so much more than just a staffer. Much more than just a reporter.
John Driscoll was a veteran of 11 years at the Times-Standard. But even that doesn’t explain my loss. John was our natural resources reporter. He knew Humboldt County and the issues that affected Humboldt County better than most of the people in the county. John easily could have worked at The New York Times or The Los Angeles Times. But John loves Humboldt County and wants to stay right here. He is staying. He is now working in the Eureka office of Rep. Mike Thompson.
But it goes even deeper than that. John could cover anything. And he did. He covered the cop beat. He filled in on the politics and elections, even while expressing his dislike of politics. He wrote a weekly column. He could write in an instance. And his copy was always clean. Almost always.
And it goes deeper than that. John could talk to anybody in the county and make them like him. He had personality. He could get the answers from the most unanswerable people. He had a phone list that covered the entire county.
But really, it goes farther than that. John was a leader. He was liked and respected by everybody in the newsroom – along both ends of the newsroom, the photographers, every reporter, the managing editors through the years, the city editors through the years, the night desk, the copy editors, the publishers.
And John left at 5 p.m. every day. Unless we really needed him. And then he came back. And he worked with us and among us and for us and beside us.
He had a great sense of humor, a great sense of news, a great way with words, a great sense of urgency, a great sense of camaraderie.
We will miss him, the newspaper will miss him, the readers will miss him. I will miss him.
Yeah, we all move on. And now John has moved on. But he left an awful lot behind.
Monday, February 7, 2011
The Trench Coat Connection
The Trench Coat Connection
It was my first year in Manlius Military Academy. The school was just outside Syracuse, New York. I was 13 years old and this was another new experience.
Our first year, fall was short and we quickly found ourselves in New York’s cold, wet period when it was cold, but not cold enough for snow and the uniform of the day always included the long grey trench coats to ward off the cold and rain.
The coats buttoned up the front and were cinched at the waist with a belt. We discovered another feature — the epaulettes on each shoulder that everybody else had taken for granted because it had no use except for officers who used them to hold their lieutenant or captain bars. Until we noticed that the epaulettes had buttons.
One dark and stormy day we were in a classroom during a period that had been set aside for study. We were expected to sit at our desks and read or work on homework. We were able to move around the room quietly to check out some of the resource books along walls on the sides and back of the room.
While getting a book in the back of the room, I passed the area where the trench coats were hanging on hooks. The area resembled a long walk-in closet. Once in that area, you could not see the classroom -- and the classroom, and more importantly, the teacher, could not see you. I stood in the back and flipped through a book, my forehead deeply furrowed as though I was seriously seeking answers to the universe. And I stole glances into the closet, checking out the coats hanging side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, epaulette-to-epaulette. Epaulettes that could be unbuttoned and rebuttoned. There were 15 of them.
Nobody was paying any attention to me. The teacher, sitting at his desk in the front of the room, facing the class, had his head lowered into a book. He was monitoring the class with his ears and not his eyes. I was hoping it was a very good book as I slipped behind the wall that separated the class from the closet.
I reached the first coat and unbuttoned the left epaulette, slipped it under the right epaulette of the coat next to it and rebuttoned it, attaching the second coat to the first. Cool. That didn’t take long. I moved to the second coat and undid the left epaulette, slipped it under the right epaulette of the third coat and rebuttoned it. Down the row I worked, listening intently for any sound coming from the classroom.
I reached my coat and went on to the next one and then doubled back. Dead give-away if my coat wasn’t also sabotaged, so I connected my coat to the coats on either side of it. In very little time all the coats were attached at the epaulettes. My work was done. I walked back to the beginning of the closet and glanced around the doorway into the classroom. Nobody looking in my direction; the teacher still engrossed in his book. I held my book up to my face, took out my notebook, scribbled some notes, replaced the book back on the shelf and took my seat, studying my notes and waiting for the bell to ring signaling the end of the period. Gary shot me a quizzical look, but I only smiled and went back to pretending to read my notes.
Finally, the buzzer sounded, the teacher snapped shut his book, called us to attention and dismissed us. We all went back to the closet to retrieve our trench coats and bedlam broke loose. Gary complained with the rest, but perhaps I complained too much and too loudly as we all tried to pry our coats apart from the coats attached at the shoulders to coats on either side of them.
The teacher, dressed in a military olive-drab uniform, tried to restore order while at the same time trying to act in authority and get to the bottom of what had happened. He threatened to keep us all in detention until the culprit came forth. Gary looked at me and turned to the teacher and said, “We were all in the room. It was probably somebody from outside who came.” Good move, Gary. Finally, in frustration, the teacher barked that we had 3 minutes to get to our next class and we better get moving and left us to our own devices to straighten out the coat problem. In our haste to leave, most of us left the classroom and dashed to our next classes with our epaulettes flapping in the wind.
It was my first year in Manlius Military Academy. The school was just outside Syracuse, New York. I was 13 years old and this was another new experience.
Our first year, fall was short and we quickly found ourselves in New York’s cold, wet period when it was cold, but not cold enough for snow and the uniform of the day always included the long grey trench coats to ward off the cold and rain.
The coats buttoned up the front and were cinched at the waist with a belt. We discovered another feature — the epaulettes on each shoulder that everybody else had taken for granted because it had no use except for officers who used them to hold their lieutenant or captain bars. Until we noticed that the epaulettes had buttons.
One dark and stormy day we were in a classroom during a period that had been set aside for study. We were expected to sit at our desks and read or work on homework. We were able to move around the room quietly to check out some of the resource books along walls on the sides and back of the room.
While getting a book in the back of the room, I passed the area where the trench coats were hanging on hooks. The area resembled a long walk-in closet. Once in that area, you could not see the classroom -- and the classroom, and more importantly, the teacher, could not see you. I stood in the back and flipped through a book, my forehead deeply furrowed as though I was seriously seeking answers to the universe. And I stole glances into the closet, checking out the coats hanging side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, epaulette-to-epaulette. Epaulettes that could be unbuttoned and rebuttoned. There were 15 of them.
Nobody was paying any attention to me. The teacher, sitting at his desk in the front of the room, facing the class, had his head lowered into a book. He was monitoring the class with his ears and not his eyes. I was hoping it was a very good book as I slipped behind the wall that separated the class from the closet.
I reached the first coat and unbuttoned the left epaulette, slipped it under the right epaulette of the coat next to it and rebuttoned it, attaching the second coat to the first. Cool. That didn’t take long. I moved to the second coat and undid the left epaulette, slipped it under the right epaulette of the third coat and rebuttoned it. Down the row I worked, listening intently for any sound coming from the classroom.
I reached my coat and went on to the next one and then doubled back. Dead give-away if my coat wasn’t also sabotaged, so I connected my coat to the coats on either side of it. In very little time all the coats were attached at the epaulettes. My work was done. I walked back to the beginning of the closet and glanced around the doorway into the classroom. Nobody looking in my direction; the teacher still engrossed in his book. I held my book up to my face, took out my notebook, scribbled some notes, replaced the book back on the shelf and took my seat, studying my notes and waiting for the bell to ring signaling the end of the period. Gary shot me a quizzical look, but I only smiled and went back to pretending to read my notes.
Finally, the buzzer sounded, the teacher snapped shut his book, called us to attention and dismissed us. We all went back to the closet to retrieve our trench coats and bedlam broke loose. Gary complained with the rest, but perhaps I complained too much and too loudly as we all tried to pry our coats apart from the coats attached at the shoulders to coats on either side of them.
The teacher, dressed in a military olive-drab uniform, tried to restore order while at the same time trying to act in authority and get to the bottom of what had happened. He threatened to keep us all in detention until the culprit came forth. Gary looked at me and turned to the teacher and said, “We were all in the room. It was probably somebody from outside who came.” Good move, Gary. Finally, in frustration, the teacher barked that we had 3 minutes to get to our next class and we better get moving and left us to our own devices to straighten out the coat problem. In our haste to leave, most of us left the classroom and dashed to our next classes with our epaulettes flapping in the wind.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
All: This Is My Last Day - Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16
On June 21, 2007, United Press International celebrated its 100th anniversary. Well, "celebrated" is generous. Here is how Philip Stone, UPI Helsinki in the 1970s, put it: "Yes, there is still a UPI today, but it is not even a shell of its former self, having moved from bankruptcy to bankruptcy to new owner to new owner. And Thursday marked a rather sad anniversary – UPI – that is, what is now called UPI, turned 100 years old. Regretfully, many of those "Unipressers" no longer with us would turn in their graves at what they would see those initials representing today."
He was not alone. Many former Unipressers marked the day with sadness.
This from Emil Sveilis: "I'm sorry, but however crudely I put it, the UPI I knew is dead. Just because the logo still exists, it does not mean that it is the same UPI organization that we all worked for and toiled for. This centennial celebration is a lot of PR and puff to reunite this current outfit with the honorable name of UPI, no matter how much we bitched and groaned when it was still a viable company. I'm sorry, but I would not partake in this project."
Another, Art McGinn, weighed in with this five years earlier: for the record: there are some ex-unipressers, or at least this one, who see no legitimate connection between the current bearer of the name united press international and the news organization which the public has associated with that name. beyond that, best wishes to them all. art ex-sx
On July 11, 2007, Editor & Publisher reported:
UPI Staff Cuts Include White House Correspondent
By Joe Strupp
NEW YORK -- United Press International is cutting 11 positions from its Washington, D.C., bureau, including its lone White House correspondent, Richard Tomkins. The move marks the first time in its history that UPI will have no one on that beat.
We learned on the following days that the United Nations beat, run by veteran Unipresser Bill Reilly, would also be discontinued -- also for the first time in UPI's history.
The official word:
Changes at UPI
Yesterday we started implementing changes at UPI that have been the subject of rumor for some time. I want to explain what those changes are and why we are making them. It has been clear for many years going back to earlier owners that UPI could no longer compete in the market as a general news agency. When News World Communications bought UPI it sought to control costs and improve revenue and has succeeded in both in recent years. In addition, current management has diversified and refocused UPI content in order to find a new market niche where we could once again be successful. That was why the specialized segments in Health, Energy, Security, and International Intelligence were created two years ago.
They were designed to combine existing expertise at UPI with market possibilities that research had identified. Of course, there were no guarantees and the segments themselves were always considered as active tests of the market.
Unfortunately, while the segments have earned money, the gap between revenue and costs remained significant and was not closing quickly enough to justify continued investment in them in their existing form by News World. As a result, from July 31, we will be changing our product lineup. We will focus our global intelligence coverage more tightly, concentrating on defense intelligence, with an emphasis on emerging security threats, defense strategy and security technology, and resource wars. Our health coverage will continue in the form of Consumer Health Tips. NewsTrack will continue to publish as will News Pictures. As a result of the changes, eleven editorial positions will be eliminated.
Looking to the future, UPI will actively explore possibilities in new media and interactive forms of journalism to capitalize on the opportunities offered by emerging digital technologies.
Everyone whose job is affected by these changes has been informed. I want to stress that none of this is any reflection on the quality of work or the commitment of any of UPI’s outstanding editorial staff.
They are the unhappy but unavoidable result of market imperatives. I want to offer my thanks to everybody for your loyalty and a job well done. To those who are leaving you go with our gratitude and best wishes for the future. To those who remain, let’s make the most of the opportunities before us.
Warm regards,
Michael Marshall
Here's what UPI provided to the Illinois secretary of state for publication in a book that office published every two years. What's quoted comes from the 1963-64 and the 1965-66 editions:
United Press International serves more than 150 daily newspapers, radio and television stations in Illinois. These subscribers are among more than 6,000 throughout the world served directly by the manifold facilities of UPI. ... available to subscribers in 111 nations. UPI maintains 264 bureaus in 62 nations, and employs more than 10,000 full- and part-time reporters, telegraphers, photographers, editors, and technicians. UPI dispatches are translated into 48 languages and are fed out over a communications network of 500,000 miles of leased land and underwater circuits and a series of intercontinental radio teleprinter channels.
In 1982, UPI employed 1,737 people in more than 800 newspaper subscribers and more than 4,000 broadcast clients around the world. In 1989 -- only seven years later -- UPI employees numbered about 650.
When Marshall announced the company's changes in July 2007, the joke among former Unipressers was: "They are eliminating 11 positions. Does that take their personnel to minus 5?"
In a release, UPI stated that the change in focus was needed for "increased competitiveness and profitability among consumers of news and analysis in a 21st century media marketplace."
It continued:
“UPI provides news, video and photo content worldwide in English, Spanish, and Arabic to traditional and online media outlets, governments, businesses, policy groups, and academic institutions, according to company officials.
"UPI is taking initial steps to strengthen our coverage of international hot spots seeking on-the-ground coverage from our international network of journalists," Nicholas Chiaia, UPI's chief operating officer, said in a statement. "We are also exploring various options for training aspiring journalists in international news coverage.”
On Oct. 13, 2007, Billy Joe McFarland, who worked in the Portland, Ore., bureau, said the “beginning of the end for UPI came for me in February of 1982, shortly after Publisher Fred Stickel of The Oregonian told me as we exited the building together that UPI was up for sale for $1. That devaluation spelled sinking ship of UPI with its Oregon clients and after Bobbie Ulrich left for The Oregonian's sister paper -- the Oregon Journal earlier -- I said hello The Oregonian -- "I accept your fourth and final offer to come through your doors to continue my journalism future as your new Regional Editor ... beginning Feb. 2, 1982. From the floor below I saw the beloved UPI slowly sink into near oblivion.”
Vin Crosbie, a professor at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University, who had worked sales for UPI in Albany and New York City, said: “To UPI's sales people (most of whom had news backgrounds), UPI's end was perceptible by the late 1970s.
"It had become apparent by the close of the 1970s that American newspapers didn't need two full-service wire services. Note the verb that I use is need. Most of the 1,450 dailies in the U.S. no longer had local competitors; less than 30 U.S. cities had more than one local newspaper. The few dailies with local competition found that they could publish quite well, thank you, with one full-service wire plus one or two brand name supplementals or their own corporate chain's supplementals. They began to see that having a second full-service wire (one that delivered fewer stories) as a luxury, not a necessity. Meanwhile, more and more of the 1,420 other dailies that had no local competition chose to use the bigger full-service wire, the AP.
“Nails were added to that coffin when in the 1980s President Reagan 'deregulated' the FCC, dropping the requirement that radio station licensees must have news operations. Both the AP and UPI lose huge amounts of broadcast business due to that.”
As the year 2007 was drawing to an end, the Associated Press was hearing at least the beginnings of the death knell. On Nov. 2, 2007, Rich Ord, CEO of iEntry Inc., who could have had a vested interest, wrote in WebProNews.com that "AP is dead ... killed by blogs and aggregation."
According to Ord: "Blogs are the new AP." Journalists and aggregation services, which started with NewsLinx.com in 1996 (founded by me!) and which now include Google News, Topix, Techmeme, WebProWire and the new Blogrunner have made the AP much less relevant. There are now tens of thousands of bloggers around the world providing coverage and analysis of current events too! It comes down to why pay when you can get the news for free."
Advertising Age reported in 2008 that one of every 12 media industry jobs had disappeared since May 2002.
"The U.S. Media industry lost nearly 20,000 jobs over the past year and nearly 8,000 since a post-recession ad recovery began in May 2002.
“Newspapers get the blame; staffing at papers has tumbled 30 percent since its 1990 peak. Internet media companies and search portals are media's biggest job creators, but digital job gains are just a fraction of overall media losses."
Steven A. Smith retired as editor of The Spokesman-Review in October 2008. He had served as editor of The Statesman-Journal in Salem, Ore., and The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo.
On July 31, 2008, Smith posted something he called Still a Newspaperman, reprinted here with his permission:
I am a newspaperman.
For some unexplainable reason, I am compelled to say that tonight.
Something is coming, some turn in the media universe, a turn in the future of my newspaper. A turn that will mean the end of me, of us.
There will be reporters. Editors. Something called online producers and multi-media coordinators. Mojos. Slojos and Nojos. Bloggers, froggers and twitters.
But there won't be newspapermen. At 58, I am among the last of a dying race.
And what a race it was. An American archetype.
A newspaperman was a writer. An author. The true, first voice of history. A newspaperman chronicled the life of his times on old Remingtons with faded ribbons. A newspaperman wrote on copy paper, one story in one take. If he wanted a copy, he used carbon paper. If it didn't sing, it was spiked.
A newspaperman edited with pencils and always had a ready stack, freshly sharpened, at the start of every shift. A newspaperman smoked at his desk. And if the managing editor wasn't paying too much attention, he might steal a drink, too. A newspaperman knew how to eat well and finish off the meal with a stiff drink and a fine cigar -- all on the company dime.
A newspaperman wore black slacks, a bit worn. A short-sleeved white shirt and a thin black necktie. A newspaperman owned one pair of black wingtips for his entire career.
A newspaperman had nicknames, raunchy, rude and unashamedly affectionate nicknames, for all of the linotype operators in the basement. A newspaperman reveled in the composing room heat, the smells of melted lead and oily black ink.
But the newspaperman was most at home in the newsroom. A loud, smoky, smelly place. Wire machines. Real phones with loud rings. The morning news meeting held in the men's room, the last two stalls on the right, each editor doing his business while conducting business.
The newsroom was a place of boisterous rough housing, crude jokes and tough insults, none taken too seriously, unless they were taken seriously, in which case there might be a bit of a ruckus, maybe a swing or two.
And the characters. The copy editor who barked like a dog. The old city editor who ate reheated fish for lunch. The former war correspondent, hobbling around on one leg, the other lost to drink not combat.
The newsroom was no place for the meek. The young newspaperman knew that when the managing editor threw a coffee cup at his head, the proper recourse was to duck. There was no HR department ready to take a complaint.
The older newspapermen had their heroes. Ben Franklin. John Peter Zenger. Horace Greeley. William Randolph Hearst. Joseph Pulitzer, maybe. William Allen White certainly. And because he had the heart of a newspaperman, Edward R. Murrow and, later, maybe Walter Cronkite.
For the aspiring newspaperman, heroes were the veterans who welcomed him into the newsroom, all the while expecting he would stay quiet, pay his dues and eventually prove himself under fire. The brightest, most ambitious, most talented young newspapermen were grateful for every day they were able to work next to these great, principled and talented men.
Of course, they were not all men. And in this politically correct world, there are some who think the term "newspaperman" is inherently sexist. But the greatest newspaperman with whom I ever worked was Deborah Howell. Don't ever tell me Deborah Howell isn't a newspaperman. In our world, it was the newspaper that defined us, not gender.
A newspaperman knew the meaning of a deadline. He felt a chill when the presses rumbled at midnight and would look for a reason to be in the press room, slipping an early run paper from the conveyor to give the front page a quick look and maybe also to see his byline in print.
Newspapermen worked hard and played hard. The bartender at the dive across the street knew how many beers each reporter could consume between editions. And after the last edition went to press, the bar lights would be turned up just enough to let the newspapermen read those papers pulled fresh from the press.
The newspaperman was respected in the community. There was a mystique, a glamour that really didn't exist but which the newspaperman happily cultivated. In the movies, the editors were Cary Grant. Or Clark Gable. Or Jack Webb. Or Humphrey Bogart, the greatest of all.
The young newspaperman wanted to be Bogie, standing in the press room, screaming into the phone, "That's the sound of the press, baby." The young newspaperman aspired to challenge authority, defend the defenseless and right wrongs. If he was a Don Quixote with a pen, his windmills were politicians, bureaucrats, crooks and thugs. He thought of his job as a calling and truth was his holy grail.
The old newspapermen have died or are dying. One of my great mentors, Dan Wyant, passed away just a week or two ago. The younger, my generation, are fading, too, facing a future in which journalists serve products and platforms not communities and their newspapers.
The young Turks have become the old farts. We pray at the old altars.
We worship the old gods. The new media moguls have their shiny new religion. And our passing is seen by them as both timely and just.
But there is more to be lost than warm, rosy recollections. It's not all about nostalgia.
No instrument will ever serve the public interest so relentlessly as the daily newspaper. New media will successfully distribute data and information. "Communities of interest" will develop around niche products. And while print newspapers will survive to serve a small, elite audience, they never again will serve the larger geographic communities that gave them life and purpose. Democracy will have to find a new public square.
Even as I try to articulate a coherent and meaningful future for my newspaper and my craft, even as I struggle to innovate, to experiment, to manage a frightened workforce, I weep for what is lost. Oh, I still hang on to the trappings. The fedora. The rumpled raincoat. I have the aging wingtips and 25-year-old ties. My battered old typewriter can still churn out memos. But the life I aspired to, that has defined me for nearly 40 years, is going, is mostly gone.
It is a sad thing. And tonight, I find myself mourning the fading, disappearing American newspaperman, the bison of the information age.
The wooly mammoth and, bless us, the dodo.
Tomorrow I'll try to think again about what happens next.
Steve
On June 21, 2007, United Press International celebrated its 100th anniversary. Well, "celebrated" is generous. Here is how Philip Stone, UPI Helsinki in the 1970s, put it: "Yes, there is still a UPI today, but it is not even a shell of its former self, having moved from bankruptcy to bankruptcy to new owner to new owner. And Thursday marked a rather sad anniversary – UPI – that is, what is now called UPI, turned 100 years old. Regretfully, many of those "Unipressers" no longer with us would turn in their graves at what they would see those initials representing today."
He was not alone. Many former Unipressers marked the day with sadness.
This from Emil Sveilis: "I'm sorry, but however crudely I put it, the UPI I knew is dead. Just because the logo still exists, it does not mean that it is the same UPI organization that we all worked for and toiled for. This centennial celebration is a lot of PR and puff to reunite this current outfit with the honorable name of UPI, no matter how much we bitched and groaned when it was still a viable company. I'm sorry, but I would not partake in this project."
Another, Art McGinn, weighed in with this five years earlier: for the record: there are some ex-unipressers, or at least this one, who see no legitimate connection between the current bearer of the name united press international and the news organization which the public has associated with that name. beyond that, best wishes to them all. art ex-sx
On July 11, 2007, Editor & Publisher reported:
UPI Staff Cuts Include White House Correspondent
By Joe Strupp
NEW YORK -- United Press International is cutting 11 positions from its Washington, D.C., bureau, including its lone White House correspondent, Richard Tomkins. The move marks the first time in its history that UPI will have no one on that beat.
We learned on the following days that the United Nations beat, run by veteran Unipresser Bill Reilly, would also be discontinued -- also for the first time in UPI's history.
The official word:
Changes at UPI
Yesterday we started implementing changes at UPI that have been the subject of rumor for some time. I want to explain what those changes are and why we are making them. It has been clear for many years going back to earlier owners that UPI could no longer compete in the market as a general news agency. When News World Communications bought UPI it sought to control costs and improve revenue and has succeeded in both in recent years. In addition, current management has diversified and refocused UPI content in order to find a new market niche where we could once again be successful. That was why the specialized segments in Health, Energy, Security, and International Intelligence were created two years ago.
They were designed to combine existing expertise at UPI with market possibilities that research had identified. Of course, there were no guarantees and the segments themselves were always considered as active tests of the market.
Unfortunately, while the segments have earned money, the gap between revenue and costs remained significant and was not closing quickly enough to justify continued investment in them in their existing form by News World. As a result, from July 31, we will be changing our product lineup. We will focus our global intelligence coverage more tightly, concentrating on defense intelligence, with an emphasis on emerging security threats, defense strategy and security technology, and resource wars. Our health coverage will continue in the form of Consumer Health Tips. NewsTrack will continue to publish as will News Pictures. As a result of the changes, eleven editorial positions will be eliminated.
Looking to the future, UPI will actively explore possibilities in new media and interactive forms of journalism to capitalize on the opportunities offered by emerging digital technologies.
Everyone whose job is affected by these changes has been informed. I want to stress that none of this is any reflection on the quality of work or the commitment of any of UPI’s outstanding editorial staff.
They are the unhappy but unavoidable result of market imperatives. I want to offer my thanks to everybody for your loyalty and a job well done. To those who are leaving you go with our gratitude and best wishes for the future. To those who remain, let’s make the most of the opportunities before us.
Warm regards,
Michael Marshall
Here's what UPI provided to the Illinois secretary of state for publication in a book that office published every two years. What's quoted comes from the 1963-64 and the 1965-66 editions:
United Press International serves more than 150 daily newspapers, radio and television stations in Illinois. These subscribers are among more than 6,000 throughout the world served directly by the manifold facilities of UPI. ... available to subscribers in 111 nations. UPI maintains 264 bureaus in 62 nations, and employs more than 10,000 full- and part-time reporters, telegraphers, photographers, editors, and technicians. UPI dispatches are translated into 48 languages and are fed out over a communications network of 500,000 miles of leased land and underwater circuits and a series of intercontinental radio teleprinter channels.
In 1982, UPI employed 1,737 people in more than 800 newspaper subscribers and more than 4,000 broadcast clients around the world. In 1989 -- only seven years later -- UPI employees numbered about 650.
When Marshall announced the company's changes in July 2007, the joke among former Unipressers was: "They are eliminating 11 positions. Does that take their personnel to minus 5?"
In a release, UPI stated that the change in focus was needed for "increased competitiveness and profitability among consumers of news and analysis in a 21st century media marketplace."
It continued:
“UPI provides news, video and photo content worldwide in English, Spanish, and Arabic to traditional and online media outlets, governments, businesses, policy groups, and academic institutions, according to company officials.
"UPI is taking initial steps to strengthen our coverage of international hot spots seeking on-the-ground coverage from our international network of journalists," Nicholas Chiaia, UPI's chief operating officer, said in a statement. "We are also exploring various options for training aspiring journalists in international news coverage.”
On Oct. 13, 2007, Billy Joe McFarland, who worked in the Portland, Ore., bureau, said the “beginning of the end for UPI came for me in February of 1982, shortly after Publisher Fred Stickel of The Oregonian told me as we exited the building together that UPI was up for sale for $1. That devaluation spelled sinking ship of UPI with its Oregon clients and after Bobbie Ulrich left for The Oregonian's sister paper -- the Oregon Journal earlier -- I said hello The Oregonian -- "I accept your fourth and final offer to come through your doors to continue my journalism future as your new Regional Editor ... beginning Feb. 2, 1982. From the floor below I saw the beloved UPI slowly sink into near oblivion.”
Vin Crosbie, a professor at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University, who had worked sales for UPI in Albany and New York City, said: “To UPI's sales people (most of whom had news backgrounds), UPI's end was perceptible by the late 1970s.
"It had become apparent by the close of the 1970s that American newspapers didn't need two full-service wire services. Note the verb that I use is need. Most of the 1,450 dailies in the U.S. no longer had local competitors; less than 30 U.S. cities had more than one local newspaper. The few dailies with local competition found that they could publish quite well, thank you, with one full-service wire plus one or two brand name supplementals or their own corporate chain's supplementals. They began to see that having a second full-service wire (one that delivered fewer stories) as a luxury, not a necessity. Meanwhile, more and more of the 1,420 other dailies that had no local competition chose to use the bigger full-service wire, the AP.
“Nails were added to that coffin when in the 1980s President Reagan 'deregulated' the FCC, dropping the requirement that radio station licensees must have news operations. Both the AP and UPI lose huge amounts of broadcast business due to that.”
As the year 2007 was drawing to an end, the Associated Press was hearing at least the beginnings of the death knell. On Nov. 2, 2007, Rich Ord, CEO of iEntry Inc., who could have had a vested interest, wrote in WebProNews.com that "AP is dead ... killed by blogs and aggregation."
According to Ord: "Blogs are the new AP." Journalists and aggregation services, which started with NewsLinx.com in 1996 (founded by me!) and which now include Google News, Topix, Techmeme, WebProWire and the new Blogrunner have made the AP much less relevant. There are now tens of thousands of bloggers around the world providing coverage and analysis of current events too! It comes down to why pay when you can get the news for free."
Advertising Age reported in 2008 that one of every 12 media industry jobs had disappeared since May 2002.
"The U.S. Media industry lost nearly 20,000 jobs over the past year and nearly 8,000 since a post-recession ad recovery began in May 2002.
“Newspapers get the blame; staffing at papers has tumbled 30 percent since its 1990 peak. Internet media companies and search portals are media's biggest job creators, but digital job gains are just a fraction of overall media losses."
Steven A. Smith retired as editor of The Spokesman-Review in October 2008. He had served as editor of The Statesman-Journal in Salem, Ore., and The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo.
On July 31, 2008, Smith posted something he called Still a Newspaperman, reprinted here with his permission:
I am a newspaperman.
For some unexplainable reason, I am compelled to say that tonight.
Something is coming, some turn in the media universe, a turn in the future of my newspaper. A turn that will mean the end of me, of us.
There will be reporters. Editors. Something called online producers and multi-media coordinators. Mojos. Slojos and Nojos. Bloggers, froggers and twitters.
But there won't be newspapermen. At 58, I am among the last of a dying race.
And what a race it was. An American archetype.
A newspaperman was a writer. An author. The true, first voice of history. A newspaperman chronicled the life of his times on old Remingtons with faded ribbons. A newspaperman wrote on copy paper, one story in one take. If he wanted a copy, he used carbon paper. If it didn't sing, it was spiked.
A newspaperman edited with pencils and always had a ready stack, freshly sharpened, at the start of every shift. A newspaperman smoked at his desk. And if the managing editor wasn't paying too much attention, he might steal a drink, too. A newspaperman knew how to eat well and finish off the meal with a stiff drink and a fine cigar -- all on the company dime.
A newspaperman wore black slacks, a bit worn. A short-sleeved white shirt and a thin black necktie. A newspaperman owned one pair of black wingtips for his entire career.
A newspaperman had nicknames, raunchy, rude and unashamedly affectionate nicknames, for all of the linotype operators in the basement. A newspaperman reveled in the composing room heat, the smells of melted lead and oily black ink.
But the newspaperman was most at home in the newsroom. A loud, smoky, smelly place. Wire machines. Real phones with loud rings. The morning news meeting held in the men's room, the last two stalls on the right, each editor doing his business while conducting business.
The newsroom was a place of boisterous rough housing, crude jokes and tough insults, none taken too seriously, unless they were taken seriously, in which case there might be a bit of a ruckus, maybe a swing or two.
And the characters. The copy editor who barked like a dog. The old city editor who ate reheated fish for lunch. The former war correspondent, hobbling around on one leg, the other lost to drink not combat.
The newsroom was no place for the meek. The young newspaperman knew that when the managing editor threw a coffee cup at his head, the proper recourse was to duck. There was no HR department ready to take a complaint.
The older newspapermen had their heroes. Ben Franklin. John Peter Zenger. Horace Greeley. William Randolph Hearst. Joseph Pulitzer, maybe. William Allen White certainly. And because he had the heart of a newspaperman, Edward R. Murrow and, later, maybe Walter Cronkite.
For the aspiring newspaperman, heroes were the veterans who welcomed him into the newsroom, all the while expecting he would stay quiet, pay his dues and eventually prove himself under fire. The brightest, most ambitious, most talented young newspapermen were grateful for every day they were able to work next to these great, principled and talented men.
Of course, they were not all men. And in this politically correct world, there are some who think the term "newspaperman" is inherently sexist. But the greatest newspaperman with whom I ever worked was Deborah Howell. Don't ever tell me Deborah Howell isn't a newspaperman. In our world, it was the newspaper that defined us, not gender.
A newspaperman knew the meaning of a deadline. He felt a chill when the presses rumbled at midnight and would look for a reason to be in the press room, slipping an early run paper from the conveyor to give the front page a quick look and maybe also to see his byline in print.
Newspapermen worked hard and played hard. The bartender at the dive across the street knew how many beers each reporter could consume between editions. And after the last edition went to press, the bar lights would be turned up just enough to let the newspapermen read those papers pulled fresh from the press.
The newspaperman was respected in the community. There was a mystique, a glamour that really didn't exist but which the newspaperman happily cultivated. In the movies, the editors were Cary Grant. Or Clark Gable. Or Jack Webb. Or Humphrey Bogart, the greatest of all.
The young newspaperman wanted to be Bogie, standing in the press room, screaming into the phone, "That's the sound of the press, baby." The young newspaperman aspired to challenge authority, defend the defenseless and right wrongs. If he was a Don Quixote with a pen, his windmills were politicians, bureaucrats, crooks and thugs. He thought of his job as a calling and truth was his holy grail.
The old newspapermen have died or are dying. One of my great mentors, Dan Wyant, passed away just a week or two ago. The younger, my generation, are fading, too, facing a future in which journalists serve products and platforms not communities and their newspapers.
The young Turks have become the old farts. We pray at the old altars.
We worship the old gods. The new media moguls have their shiny new religion. And our passing is seen by them as both timely and just.
But there is more to be lost than warm, rosy recollections. It's not all about nostalgia.
No instrument will ever serve the public interest so relentlessly as the daily newspaper. New media will successfully distribute data and information. "Communities of interest" will develop around niche products. And while print newspapers will survive to serve a small, elite audience, they never again will serve the larger geographic communities that gave them life and purpose. Democracy will have to find a new public square.
Even as I try to articulate a coherent and meaningful future for my newspaper and my craft, even as I struggle to innovate, to experiment, to manage a frightened workforce, I weep for what is lost. Oh, I still hang on to the trappings. The fedora. The rumpled raincoat. I have the aging wingtips and 25-year-old ties. My battered old typewriter can still churn out memos. But the life I aspired to, that has defined me for nearly 40 years, is going, is mostly gone.
It is a sad thing. And tonight, I find myself mourning the fading, disappearing American newspaperman, the bison of the information age.
The wooly mammoth and, bless us, the dodo.
Tomorrow I'll try to think again about what happens next.
Steve
Saturday, January 15, 2011
All: This Is My Last Day - Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15
In 2000, UPI was bought by News World Communications Inc., founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. It was the final blow for veteran UPI White House correspondent and Bureau Chief Helen Thomas. She said her good bye quietly and without fanfare – that was done by those who knew her.
Helen's departure came amid quite a bit of speculation and false claims. Arnaud de Borchgrave had been quoted as saying she would stay no matter who bought the service.
He had told the Associated Press, "She told me 48 hours ago that if I stayed, she was staying." On the following day, de Borchgrave was quoted in The Washington Post as saying of Helen: "It's a sad day. The whole country knows Helen Thomas. Those are terribly big shoes to fill. But, I'll have to move on. Everyone is dispensable.”
Grant Dillman, former Washington bureau chief and the man who hired me 31 years earlier, had this to say: "Gwen and I had Helen to dinner Wednesday night and she said flatly that she made no such statement to de Borchgrave or anyone else. In substantiation, she also said she cleaned out her White House desk five days before the announcement of the acquisition. Moreover, she said Lori Santos and her other UPI colleagues at the White House could verify it. And Helen Thomas does not lie."
Lee Katz, UPI International editor, also resigned, saying, "I simply could not work for the new ownership for a single day. Those types of affiliation should not be part of a mainstream news organization. It was hard to leave a job where you travel with the president and secretary of state, work with a legend like Helen Thomas and guide a dedicated staff. But it would be harder to stay under the circumstances."
Nice words, but I don't know who that dedicated staff was that Katz guided. The desk team of editors did everything they could to rein him in and point him in the right direction.
After much back and forth on the subject, Jennifer Brooks, who had occupied a seat very close to Helen in the UPI booth in the White House, had had enough. She sent the following on May 25, 2000:
All right! That does it! To settle, once and for all, Arnaud de Borchgrave's claim the Helen promised to go skipping hand-in-hand with him into the merger with the Moonies:
I got the word two weeks before the sale that Helen would quit if UPI sold out to the Unification Church. ... I spent seven glorious months squashed in the UPI White House booth with Helen Thomas, Lori Santos and Paul Basken. This I observed: Helen never lies. Helen never made any secret of her low opinion of the Washington Times. And Helen would never, ever embarrass UPI by resigning without good and sufficient warning (that she had good and sufficient cause goes without saying). If I knew two weeks ahead of time, Arnaud knew two weeks ahead of time.
Arnaud's broad hints that Helen had hitched her wagon to his star left me rolling on the floor in hysterics. There is no such thing as a private phone conversation in the White House booth, so I know that Arnaud's heart-to-hearts with Helen were limited mainly to efforts to scam invitations to White House galas.
His interaction with me was limited to efforts to describe a non-Helen future in which nanocomputers will be woven into our clothes so we can all read the newspaper on our sleeves. ... I never met anyone who loved her job as much as Helen did. She got to work first thing in the morning because she couldn't stand to stay away a moment longer. Some mornings she'd get there before the front gate guards and just plop down against the White House fence until someone came along to let her in. "Always remember," she'd tell me. "We have the best job in the world."
Do you have any idea what it must have cost her to give it up? Still, when her 57-year relationship with UPI turned abusive, she had the stones to walk away. You drove her away, Arnaud. Just like you drove away Lori and Paul and Dave Rosso and Don Folsum and Lisa Vandusen and Karen Byrne and Joe Warminsky and Pye Chamberlayne and every other reporter and copy editor who worked so heartbreakingly hard to keep UPI afloat for the two thankless years of your tenure. …
Jennifer, sometimes UPI White House and Capitol Hill reporter.
There was also a lot of debate over the influence the Unification Church would or would not have over UPI. At the time of the purchase, we were directed to an April 15, 1987, article in The Washington Post, which said, in part:
Washington Times editorial page editor William P. Chesire and four of his staff members resigned April 14, charging that Times editor-in-chief Arnaud de Borchgrave had allowed an executive of the Unification Church to dictate editorial policy. The Times is owned by News World Communications Inc., a corporation affiliated with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's church.
"It is no longer possible, in my judgment, for the Times to maintain independence from the Unification Church under the editorship of Mr. de Borchgrave, if it is indeed at all," said Chesire.
I weighed in with a lengthy e-mail to my colleagues in which I brought up some of the complaints that drove a wedge between me and upper management under de Borchgrave.
"Editorial judgment at UPI died a long time ago. It especially died when ADB came in and dictated what the desk would pick up. It died when he surrounded himself with such a group of incompetents that he had full control over what went out over the wire. I and my team of dedicated editors fought to keep crap off the wire. It was an uphill and losing battle, especially when ADB's hires wrote much of the crap and pretended to be reporters. ADB would call Susan Older who trembled down to the desk and said why haven't you picked up the Washington Times story on such and such. Because we had it, it needed checking, we still have a reporter in that department who can check it and get a better story if one is warranted."
I added that reporting had died at UPI and noted that the new hires at UPI, the so-called special international editors, left a lot to be desired. One of those special correspondents, I said, "was the one who screamed at our stringer overseas and told the desk to pick up a TASS story about Yeltsin bolting a meeting under his nose. That same editor/reporter sat at the State Department and finally matched a story, quoting a State Department spokesman, when every other news organization was quoting Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at a news briefing at the State Department."
In 2000, UPI was bought by News World Communications Inc., founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. It was the final blow for veteran UPI White House correspondent and Bureau Chief Helen Thomas. She said her good bye quietly and without fanfare – that was done by those who knew her.
Helen's departure came amid quite a bit of speculation and false claims. Arnaud de Borchgrave had been quoted as saying she would stay no matter who bought the service.
He had told the Associated Press, "She told me 48 hours ago that if I stayed, she was staying." On the following day, de Borchgrave was quoted in The Washington Post as saying of Helen: "It's a sad day. The whole country knows Helen Thomas. Those are terribly big shoes to fill. But, I'll have to move on. Everyone is dispensable.”
Grant Dillman, former Washington bureau chief and the man who hired me 31 years earlier, had this to say: "Gwen and I had Helen to dinner Wednesday night and she said flatly that she made no such statement to de Borchgrave or anyone else. In substantiation, she also said she cleaned out her White House desk five days before the announcement of the acquisition. Moreover, she said Lori Santos and her other UPI colleagues at the White House could verify it. And Helen Thomas does not lie."
Lee Katz, UPI International editor, also resigned, saying, "I simply could not work for the new ownership for a single day. Those types of affiliation should not be part of a mainstream news organization. It was hard to leave a job where you travel with the president and secretary of state, work with a legend like Helen Thomas and guide a dedicated staff. But it would be harder to stay under the circumstances."
Nice words, but I don't know who that dedicated staff was that Katz guided. The desk team of editors did everything they could to rein him in and point him in the right direction.
After much back and forth on the subject, Jennifer Brooks, who had occupied a seat very close to Helen in the UPI booth in the White House, had had enough. She sent the following on May 25, 2000:
All right! That does it! To settle, once and for all, Arnaud de Borchgrave's claim the Helen promised to go skipping hand-in-hand with him into the merger with the Moonies:
I got the word two weeks before the sale that Helen would quit if UPI sold out to the Unification Church. ... I spent seven glorious months squashed in the UPI White House booth with Helen Thomas, Lori Santos and Paul Basken. This I observed: Helen never lies. Helen never made any secret of her low opinion of the Washington Times. And Helen would never, ever embarrass UPI by resigning without good and sufficient warning (that she had good and sufficient cause goes without saying). If I knew two weeks ahead of time, Arnaud knew two weeks ahead of time.
Arnaud's broad hints that Helen had hitched her wagon to his star left me rolling on the floor in hysterics. There is no such thing as a private phone conversation in the White House booth, so I know that Arnaud's heart-to-hearts with Helen were limited mainly to efforts to scam invitations to White House galas.
His interaction with me was limited to efforts to describe a non-Helen future in which nanocomputers will be woven into our clothes so we can all read the newspaper on our sleeves. ... I never met anyone who loved her job as much as Helen did. She got to work first thing in the morning because she couldn't stand to stay away a moment longer. Some mornings she'd get there before the front gate guards and just plop down against the White House fence until someone came along to let her in. "Always remember," she'd tell me. "We have the best job in the world."
Do you have any idea what it must have cost her to give it up? Still, when her 57-year relationship with UPI turned abusive, she had the stones to walk away. You drove her away, Arnaud. Just like you drove away Lori and Paul and Dave Rosso and Don Folsum and Lisa Vandusen and Karen Byrne and Joe Warminsky and Pye Chamberlayne and every other reporter and copy editor who worked so heartbreakingly hard to keep UPI afloat for the two thankless years of your tenure. …
Jennifer, sometimes UPI White House and Capitol Hill reporter.
There was also a lot of debate over the influence the Unification Church would or would not have over UPI. At the time of the purchase, we were directed to an April 15, 1987, article in The Washington Post, which said, in part:
Washington Times editorial page editor William P. Chesire and four of his staff members resigned April 14, charging that Times editor-in-chief Arnaud de Borchgrave had allowed an executive of the Unification Church to dictate editorial policy. The Times is owned by News World Communications Inc., a corporation affiliated with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's church.
"It is no longer possible, in my judgment, for the Times to maintain independence from the Unification Church under the editorship of Mr. de Borchgrave, if it is indeed at all," said Chesire.
I weighed in with a lengthy e-mail to my colleagues in which I brought up some of the complaints that drove a wedge between me and upper management under de Borchgrave.
"Editorial judgment at UPI died a long time ago. It especially died when ADB came in and dictated what the desk would pick up. It died when he surrounded himself with such a group of incompetents that he had full control over what went out over the wire. I and my team of dedicated editors fought to keep crap off the wire. It was an uphill and losing battle, especially when ADB's hires wrote much of the crap and pretended to be reporters. ADB would call Susan Older who trembled down to the desk and said why haven't you picked up the Washington Times story on such and such. Because we had it, it needed checking, we still have a reporter in that department who can check it and get a better story if one is warranted."
I added that reporting had died at UPI and noted that the new hires at UPI, the so-called special international editors, left a lot to be desired. One of those special correspondents, I said, "was the one who screamed at our stringer overseas and told the desk to pick up a TASS story about Yeltsin bolting a meeting under his nose. That same editor/reporter sat at the State Department and finally matched a story, quoting a State Department spokesman, when every other news organization was quoting Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at a news briefing at the State Department."
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