- Geezernotes: Chronicle

The Tardy Times

GEEZERNOTES: THE CHRONICLE

Joe Shea's postcards: 'Once again,
I'm doing everything bass ackwards'
. . .and other scribbles

Codger News

N.B. Expiration dates should have sent some of these newsnotes to the trash file, but it wasn't their fault that Scribbles had begun to wither with age. Keep in mind that living people, unlike the colleagues in Thirty, may have moved on since we collected these items about colleagues from the good old days at the Voice of the West. See also: Chronicle layoff report and several other pages in the Gazoot.

JOE SHEA celebrated D-Day by crossing the English Channel in the opposite

direction, landing in Blighty instead of Utah Beach. No surprise. “Once again,” he noted, “I am doing everything bass ackwards.”
His three-month journey, one of the many perks of retirement, took the Gongoozler and his camera from Hanoi, Laos, and Thailand to southern India, thence to Italy, Stuttgart, Rheims and Paris; thence to London, Ireland and Arguello Street. “This trip has been fabulous, brilliant,” he wrote from London, “perhaps my most enjoyable ever.”
For excerpts from his more recent journals, see the sidebar aptly entitled "Joe Shea." Look for his adventures this fall in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. He wisely refrained in his postcard from saying "Lets Go." Instead: "The Baltic states' leg went well." Legs may also have been a feature of the next stop on his odd itinerary: Tel Aviv. "It was 'shabbat,' so I didn't drive, work, etc., but instead went to the beach with a book and an eye for lovely Israeli women."
It wasn't always thus. Leah Garchik had this report on the world traveler's adventures at home after the Big Storm in January 2008. “Joe Shea had to abandon the warmth and coziness of his Arguello Street apartment during Friday's storm to rescue his Mazda from a prowling portable toilet,” she wrote. “Wind had propelled the flying facility from its post outside a nearby remodeling job. Watching from a window, he watched it move from about 6 feet away to 1 1/2 feet from his car, upon which he raced downstairs and moved the car. Although parking is always a challenge, moving the car instead of pushing the careening commode seemed a more genteel solution.”

WHEN JOE returns from his travels, he'll hear more details about the withering of the Chronicle staff he once knew.
Departures this fall include reporters Carrie Sturrock (to Portland), Erin McCormick, Ilana DeBare and news editor Chris O'Connell (to law school).
Gone is Dick Rogers, the Readers Representative, and formerly the managing editor of the Hayward Review and city editor of the pre-Fang Examiner. He chose in his last column to announce that he would be henceforth a representative reader.
   "I am leaving the paper to try my hand at a few projects, to learn new things and to demonstrate to myself, if not to others, that life begins at 62 and that nothing so inconsequential as heart surgery can keep me down," he wrote.
    It's understandable.
   "I long ago lost count of how many telephone calls, e-mails, faxes and letters I exchanged with readers. By late 2003, I was up to 20,000-plus. I began to feel like a one-person focus group, coming to understand that for most topics, there were readers who knew as much as or more than the paper."
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FORMER deskman Merrill Collett, once the Chron's funnel for foreign news, has jumped the fence. At a youthful 60, he finished his Peace Corps training in Philadelphia last summer and soon arrived Uganda as a health volunteer with an NGO called REAP (a non-government agency with a tortured acronym, Renewed Efforts to End Poverty). He's stationed in Masaka, a city of 65,000 "in the rolling green hills of the Lake Victoria hinterlands." He survived a crash course in Luganda, the Bantu language, and quickly learned that he is a "muzungo" – a white person. Read his journal entries: http://merrill-runawayson.blogspot.com.
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FOR 35 YEARS Pat Luchak edited stories by Chronicle writers, some good, some bad. She put in for a buyout two summers ago. She was refused, presumably because she was too valuable an editor. “It wasn't fun any more,” she says. “The newspaper industry is undergoing many changes again, and it was hard to watch what I considered many, many corporate mistakes.” So she ignored the buyout, took early retirement and began to volunteer with the Oakland SPCA and Bad Rap (Bay Area Doglovers Responsible About Pitbulls). Instead of working with writers, she plans to begin her own business, a “dog adoption assistance program.”
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THE MOTHER of former copy clerk Diahann Christie told Dorothy Kantor in October that her daughter is “incarcerated,” but no details were forthcoming. (For news of Dorothy, consult the Examiner Scribbles) . . . “And the brain drain of major metro paper continues,” said the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club's online newsletter, when the Chron's veteran technology writer Ben Pimentel (along with the Merc's Therese Poletti) was hired by MarketWatch.com. . . . It's old news now, like most of these scribbles, but the sendoff for 40-year Chronicle photographer Jerry Telfer in February 2006 surprised a few newcomers with mention of the Stanford graduate's multilingual skills (German, Spanish and Thai), his NEH fellowship in Asian studies at the University of Michigan, his work as a docent at the Robert Fergusan Observatory near Kenwood and his long career as a baritone lead in musicals, most recently with Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond.

BILL WORKMAN greeted Examiner retiree Bill Boldenweck and a Gazoot reporter in San Mateo. He is recovering slowly from the devastating stroke that hit him in December while he was on the operating table for heart surgery. It left him in a coma for the better part of a month. His wife, Marla Lowenthal, hovers over him when she can get away from her job as head of the mass communications program at Menlo College. Bill, a former president of the Peninsula Press Club, taught a class at Menlo (Contemporary Issues in American Journalism) after he ended in 2002 his 33-year career at the Chronicle. For Bill, it's a frustrating regimen of occupational and physical therapy to counteract the “left neglect” condition that messed up his eyesight and sense of balance. Call him at (650) 312-8721. And yes, he still wears his wide-brimmed hat while in his wheelchair.

PATI POBLETE lasted two years as deputy editorial editor at the Honolulu Advertiser, which lured her away from her seven-year stint as an editorial writer, copy editor and columnist at the Chron. In January 2008 she was back in California, named “media advocacy director” for the governmental relations office of the American Cancer Society in Sacramento . . . It's hello to Washington, D.C., for retiree Mike Harris, the cerebral reporter who was robbed of a Pulitzer when he uncovered the corruption of county assessors. The scandal eventually sent San Francisco's assessor to San Quentin. Mike and his wife, who is said to be afflicted with Alzheimer's, wanted to be closer to their children. . . . We hear that 80-year-old retiree Sandy Zane, who long ago discarded "Maitland" except for his byline, has successfully recovered from surgery for "abdominable blockages." Does the term relate to frustrations of reporters?

THE DECK CHAIRS were moved around last September, when executive foreign-national editor Andrew S. Ross (not the Andrew Ross of the Matier & Ross political column) vanished from the daily news budget meetings. Now he's the columnist for squibs and corporate news items in The Bottom Line, a heading that could be misconstrued. ... Heidi Swillinger, the tireless “community editor” of Two Cents and other chores, decided to pencil herself out. She landed as special projects at the San Francisco Study Center, where her byline now appears on the well-edited pages of its Central City Express... Heidi's name also appears along with that of former Chronicle executive assistant Sarah Bessie David on the lineup of the California Media Cooperative. It was founded last year by former Chronicle columnist and Insight writer Louis Freedberg... Heather Jones is copy editing at Capitol Weekly (part-time) and volunteering at the UC Davis Arboretum “and of course at my kid’s school.” ...Sam Zuckerman, the go-to reporter on banking and finance, has joined the other side. He's now a speechwriter at the San Francisco office of the Federal Reserve. Better health benefits.

CHUCK NEVIUS didn't like it when TV critic Tim Goodman's blog took issue with the investigative columnist's thoughts on the death of Anna Nicole Smith. Nevius let off a little steam in a hallway encounter with Goodman, a mini-tirade that the rumor mill later changed into a semi-physical dustup. It wasn't, but then-editor Phil Bronstein issued a stern memo that urged “respect” in blogs. Too bad. He didn't understand show biz. With the Chronicle circulation dipping down every week, any kind of debate among the deep thinkers will sell papers.

REX ADKINS, recovering in San Diego from the December ailments that put him in the hospital and took his sight, is enrolled at a center for the blind and taking a class in how to use a computer. Call him in the evenings at (619) 295-9519. We're told that Rex's wife, Yoshiko, “has been super, a very strong partner for him.”. . . Michaela (Cooney) Lindsey, the cheerful former copy clerk and daughter of the late reporter Bill Cooney, tells us from Puyallup, Wash., that her machinist husband, Monty, is back at work after a spate of disability from heart problems – arrhythmia, sleep apnea and heart spasms. Email: montyhlindsey@comcast.net. . . . .Onetime Peninsula bureau chief Paul Gullixon, who moved to the now-vanished Times-Tribune as editorial page director and later edited the Palo Alto Weekly, was named recently the editor of the editorial pages of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, where he has worked since 1998. . . Dave Hyams, now “senior vice president, media relations” for Solem and Associates, is spokesman for the Great America amusement park as 49ers football club tries to move next door in Santa Clara ...Also in PR is former city editor and relentless investigative reporter Chuck Finnie, who left the profession in March to join DBNhouse as "public affairs expert" . . . Mi-Ai Parrish, a protegé of short-term publisher John Oppedahl, followed him from the Arizona Republic and quickly gained a reputation as probably the most clueless, high-handed and unpopular short-term features/arts editor in the annals of Chronicle. She jumped in 2002 to the Star Tribune of Minneapolis as assistant M.E. for the Sunday paper, then deputy M.E. for “features and visuals.” It lasted less than a year. She was named the new publisher of the Idaho Statesman even before she learned to say “Boyssee” instead of “Boyzee,” a mark of the newcomer to Idaho . . . Chronicle alumna Lisa Chung’s name appeared on the layoff list at the Mercury News, where she was an enormously popular columnist.Friends tell us that she's taking it easy. . . All in the family: Chronicle alum Karen Peterson launched TerraMarin magazine, "Marin County Green Living Guide," last fall. The masthead lists Karen as publisher-editor (she also writes articles), as well as these other former Chronsters: copy editor Elissa Rabellino; contributing writers Laura Merlo and George Snyder; design and production by Visual Strategies, a.k.a. John Sullivan and Dennis Gallagher, former Chron Art Department greats.

Herb Caen’s loyal assistant Carole Vernier, whose intellect and good nature triumphed over

(Continued on Column Two)

An edifying stew
of tidbits from
the pickup line

1. George 2. Suzanne
3. Jerry 4. Steve

1. Tumor rumor

GEORGE MARKELL was saying a year ago that his hip replacement was working out fine (good) but has done something evil to his spine (bad). On Dec. 4, the copy editor-turned-lawyer boarded a flight that would take him to Dallas and then to Arkansas. He was chatting with the woman passenger on his left when he turned away.
    His right hand was misbehaving.
    He lost the ability to speak.
The flight crew gave him oxygen until the American Airlines jet landed in Houston. He regained his speech. The paramedics didn't need a gurney. He walked off, but then he was shipped by ambulance to the Baylor University Medical Center. After two days of MRI and CSCAP tests, he was told that he had been stricken with a brain tumor that had triggered the seizure on the airplane. At first diagnosed as benign, the tumor was removed and reclassified as cancerous – but treatable. He’s cheerful about the whole thing.

2. Grief

WHEN SHE volunteered to join the summer exodus, Chronicle reporter Suzanne Pullen thanked Examiner people (Bob Stevens, John Koopman, Greg Lewis, Deborah Brown) who helped her move at the Ex from editorial assistant/free-lancer to the Question Man. (“I'll always remember Willie Brown telling me his favorite San Francisco movie was Steve McQueen’s ‘Bullitt’ because his car mowed down newspaper boxes.”)
    She plans to write a book about her own experience as mother of a stillborn baby – and the sequel. She also thanked the editors who assigned her to Chronicle Watch and encouraged her to write about her mixed feeings as mother of a second baby in a normal delivery. It brought her joy – but didn’t offset her grief.
   As for the newspaper: “I may not have always agreed with the people directly in charge of my destiny at this paper – and I definitely made that clear, as most of you have been in a staff meeting with me can attest to – but I am grateful for the chance to work with some of the most intelligent and inspired people I have ever met,” she wrote in her last staff posting.
    “Unfortunately,” she added, “many of them have left the paper.”

3. Oddballs

FOR REASONS that defy analysis, you can't walk down the streets of Missoula without being jostled by mobs of authors, but former Chronicle reporter Jerry Carroll is no longer one of the Montana crowd.
    After finishing his latest book, he signed on last year as a reporter for the Village Voice in Hot Springs, Ark. A veteran of the San Jose Mercury and the Santa Monica Evening Outlook, he is no stranger to community journalism.
    In the announcement that he was coming aboard the Arkansas weekly, the onetime Stanford Fellow is quoted as saying his days at the Chronicle introduced him to “the strangest collection of braggarts, loafers, liars and oddballs ever assembled.”. . .
   (He couldn’t have been referring to Birney Jarvis, of course, but the retired police reporter, karate fighter, sailboat skipper and storyteller now lives with wife Joyce in Orange Beach, Ala. The 78-year-old ex-Hells Angel says a local tabloid publishes his column, and it “tends to favor conservative viewpoints and the Republican Party.”

4. Cockroach!

GEORGE POWELL, longtime copy editor at the Examiner and later at the Chronicle, decided now that he's retired to accelerate his activism with the Media Workers Guild. Back in 1991, still known as the Newspaper Guild, the union struck the Chronicle, the Examiner and their joint agency.
     When George was asked to put together recollections of the relatively successful strike, the Gazoot supplied two anecdotes. Neither made the cut.
   Steve Rubenstein was the first to exploit picket power by use of a bullhorn. From the first day, the Chronicle's top general assignment reporter hectored unseen watchers on the third floor of what was then the Examiner annex.
    Then he would hammer them with strong language, but he avoided taboo words. His   favorite pejorative:
“cockroach!”
   He also enjoyed insulting management and scabs who arrived in vans, the windows boarded in case one of the arts critics decided to heave a brick at them. When one of the vans rolled past the new chain-link fence into the parking lot, it disgorged a middle-aged woman in a well-tailored blue suit. She looked bewildered, probably because she had never before seen the rear entrance.
     Steve raised his bullhorn and said, “Hey, you. Yeah, you in the blue outfit. You're a cockroach!”
     Too late he recognized the only person he admired in all the Chronicle hierarchy, Nan Tucker McEvoy. He silently handed the bullhorn to someone else. (It wound up soon in the hands of Stephen Schwartz, who spent the next week blasting the two newsrooms with incessant ranting.)
     The youngest picket was Kenny Ludlow, 3 years old, who was pushed in a stroller. She told her mother, Margo Freistadt, “I don't like the pickup line."

              Lynn Ludlow

The Geezer Gazoot
tardytimes.com

September 2008

---------------------------------------
Continued from Column One

tedium at the old M&M and Hanno’s, interrupted her retirement with an almost-fatal attack of viral pneumonia. After 10 days in the hospital, she’s back home, inhaling from an oxygen machine – and swearing that she will never smoke again.

KEVIN FAGAN, back at work after a Knight fellowship at Stanford, isn't just another gifted reporter and talented writer (he's writing a novel). He's a songwriter, singer and guitarist. And now he's a record producer. His CD, entitled “I Think of You,” also features the flute of Kevin's former Oakland Tribune colleague, Bob Loomis. Interviewed by the Jewish Bulletin about his “Shame of the City” series, Kevin said, “The trouble with most homeless reporting is it treats homeless people as cutout characters. They're either lousy bums or pitiful folks who are just down on their luck. But I thought that getting to the core of why they were on the street and how they could truly get off them was more important than anything else.”
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BACK in Gotham, “irreconcilable differences” were blamed in June for the sudden departure of the Hearst Corp.’s CEO, Vic Ganzi, a 30-year lifer with the publishing and broadcast empire. In speculating on a successor, Fortune magazine said the privately held corporation’s “highest echelons have the mystique of a kind of secret society.”
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Foreign editor Mark Abel, who left the Chron in 2004, has produced "Journey Long, Journey End," his second CD of what he calls "alternative classical music." (The first was "Songs of Life, Love and Death"). One of the pieces is entitled "True Believers," and on his website (www.markabelmusic.com)
he describes it as the last thing he wrote before leaving the Bay Area in 2006 for Carlsbad. It's probably the first composition inspired by the handling of international news: "The text of this piece derives, of course, from recent global events and my pondering of them over a span of decades that includes my career as a journalist specializing in foreign news. My intention was to depict the mindset of religion-based terrorists -- in particular, their grandiosity, self-absorption and lack of critical thinking -- in such a way that the 'lay person' may gain some insight into how people with at least some degree of sensitivity can be transformed into self-righteous murderers.
I opted to let them tell their own story -- except at the end, when they are informed that their ruinous actions have betrayed whatever justification their cause might have and will deny them the glorious martyrdom they seek. The piece concludes with the hope that those who inflict pain on the innocent may someday come to understand the immorality of that position."
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BACK in Gotham, “irreconcilable differences” were blamed in June for the sudden departure of the Hearst Corp.’s CEO, Vic Ganzi, a 40-year lifer with the publishing and broadcast empire. In speculating on a successor, Fortune magazine said the privately held corporation’s “highest echelons have the mystique of a kind of secret society.” Among the directors: Will Hearst, San Francisco-based president of the Hearst Foundation, who worked briefly as a promising reporter at the Examiner. He later moved to the dark side as its publisher (a largely ceremonial job because the joint operating agreement with the Chronicle gave most of the publisher's traditional duties to the joint agency's CEO). In the Hearst empire's hierarchy are two former copy editors at the Examiner. David McCumber, remembered for his book on the Mitchell Brothers ("X-Rated," 1992) and three other very readable books, has been the managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer since 2000. The publisher and editor, named that same year, is Roger Oglesby. His official résumé mentions his stints with the Mercury-News, the Los Angeles Times, the Omaha World-Herald, the Dallas Times Herald and the Morning Call in Allentown, Pa., but he omitted mention of the years he spent on the night copy desk of the old Examiner while he spent his days as a law student at Boalt Hall. Odd.
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WHEN SHE volunteered to join the summer exodus, Chronicle reporter Suzanne Pullen thanked Examiner people (Bob Stephens, John Koopman, Greg Lewis, Deborah Brown) who helped her move at the Ex from editorial assistant/free-lancer to the Question Man. (“I'll always remember Willie Brown telling me his favorite San Francisco movie was Steve McQueen’s ‘Bullitt’ because his car mowed down newspaper boxes.”)
    She plans to write a book about her own experience as mother of a stillborn baby – and the sequel. She also thanked the editors who assigned her to Chronicle Watch and encouraged her to write about her mixed feeings as mother of a second baby in a normal delivery. It brought her joy – but didn’t offset her grief.
   As for the newspaper: “I may not have always agreed with the people directly in charge of my destiny at this paper – and I definitely made that clear, as most of you have been in a staff meeting with me can attest to – but I am grateful for the chance to work with some of the most intelligent and inspired people I have ever met,” she wrote in her last staff posting.
    “Unfortunately,” she added, “many of them have left the paper.”

DEATHS: August Maggy, copy editor; Frances Moffat, columnist; Joe Rosenthal and Art Frisch, photographers; Phil Frank, cartoonist; Mel Wax, Denne Petitclerc and Dale Champion, reporters; Gina Warren, editorial assistant. For obituaries, see Thirty.

The Geezer Gazoot
tardytimes.com

September 2008