Carrying On

I pulled out a copy of the Jan. 15, 2007 Times Herald-Record the other day. I do this from time to time. The Record is a tab up in New York, and it used to be run by a fine man named Mike Levine. If you read this site, you've probably heard of him, and you probably know he died unexpectedly last year.

I don't know who runs the place now. But I know it's been a tough few weeks for the folks still there. They've fired good people and they've closed a bureau in one of the most interesting, desperate cities in the country, Newburgh, N.Y. I worked in Newburgh. So did many great reporters.

I was emailing with one of them the other day. He wrote this:

Man, it really is like watching someone die... slowly. I think of all the arguments I've had or seen in newsrooms about how best to do a story. Heated, fair debates about form and reporting and style and etc... And now, they all seem so small. The argument has moved down some awful hole. Just survival now. There is no way any reporter can get at the nuance or subtlety of a place like newburgh when all stories are 10 inches or less, the newburgh reporter is covering two other towns, there is no editor and now there is no office. And this is happening all over ...

I've come to expect that everything I think newspapers should do, they will do just the opposite. everything I think will never happen, will happen soon. (The LA Times just handed their Sunday Mag over to ADVERTISING! For real). They are going to lay off reporters and use freelance citizens for content. And that's it. It's gonna happen. And young kids coming out of college will still fight each other for the chance to have those "jobs". It's so, truly sad.

This copy I'm looking at memorializes Mike after his death. He's on the cover, elbows on his knees, palms touching.

I wonder what Mike would be doing right now, at a time when things are crashing. I wonder how he'd handle himself as the clouds roll in.

There's a pullout quote inside the paper. Mike's words.

"The wonder of this world is not that we are unfairly visited by sadness and tragedy. The wonder is that we have so much resilience to carry on in the face of it."

There are still people carrying on. Doyle Murphy is one of them. He sent a question:

"I'm guessing we'll have some freedom to set this up like we want. Wondering if you could solicit the gangrey readers for suggestions. I keep thinking of questions like, what do I do with my files? What other equipment am I going to need? Am I now going to have to text message Alexa, Meghan and Mike with the after-work drinking plans?"