A NYC newspaper iPod battle

An analysis of iPod art used in New York City area newspapers today to illustrate the Gov. David Patterson's proposed major tax increases, which include a 4 percent so-called "iTunes Tax" on videos or music downloaded from the internet.

1) New York Post: Jack Johnson's "Sleep Through the Static"



2) Newsday: U2's "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb," specifically the track "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own"




3) New York Daily News: Hot Chip's "The Warning"

:


Also, 4) New York Times: A engaging picture of Barack Obama and Joe Biden in an early education classroom.

The following can be inferred from each selection:
1) The graphics editor at the New York Post, a mid-30s tech-savvy person merely trying to get by in the print business until the economy rebounds, grabbed her iPod, hit shuffle and took a picture of the first item that came up in time to meet deadline.
2) A news editor at Newsday had a brainstorm for a front-page graphic after seeing the tax story come across the wire. But after about 50 minutes of arguments, the rest of the staff was able to talk him out of using an image of a unspooled and tangled analog tape. With deadline fast approaching, he Googled "pop music pods" and copied the first non-Britney-Spears-stomach picture that came up.
3) "Hey intern! Give me your damn iPod for a minute."



And the winner is......
The Daily News.


Bonus: Listen to Hot Chip's "Over and Over,"and watch an, um, interesting video here.

Newspaper Lulz

for a dark week:




Both via Newspaper Death Watch.

Trivia team names for the week

Ok, so I haven't actually gone to a trivia night since moving to NY, but it's not like I should be using my brain for other things like, you know, looking for a job or something.


Kafka's Proctologist
Enter This Boy Soul*
Shellfish is an Obamanation
That Baby is a Dick
Liquid Meat
What Will Movies Spin for Dramatic Points Once Newspapers Die?
Tryptofurky
Just What In the Hell, Illinois?
Bill Murray Washed My Dishes
Brown Bagging is the New Cosmopolitan
Give Us Our New Bike Already
Hobo Fire Building 101
The Great Depression: Now in Color!


And, one of the best I've heard in a long time, from team Hilton Head in my absentia:
One and a Half Thumbs Up




*Say it quickly now

Pour one out

for Tribune.

The first big one to take the hit. But, tragically, it's surely just the first casualty of a bloody body count to come. Hoping for the best for all my buddies at Trib papers today.

Interesting and somewhat related interview with Nick Denton of Gawker in MarketWatch today, talking about discovering young writers:

But not the old-fashioned media, that is. In fact, Denton, again, takes the opportunity to rip the mainstream newspapers and magazines for their inability to spot promising young journalists. "People say I have an eye for talent," he scoffed. "That's bull____. The only reason is that newspapers and magazines haven't been doing their jobs, bringing on young writers."

This essentially what I've heard from a lot of our generation of journalists. When newspapers had the opportunity to embrace young talent and make them an integral force of reshaping news coverage for the new media landscape, they instead created an environment that was frightened of new ideas and too reverential to an old architecture, even as it was rapidly buckling under new pressures. The result has been many young journalists who have deemed this attitude to be too unrewarding to bother investing time in, and an exodus followed.

My last newspaper job did me very well experience wise, but by the end, with cutbacks and little new investment, it practically became an endurance test for how long the staff could justify being there for clips alone.

Roger Ebert and the Demise of the Ink-Stained Wretch

It's funny -- I typically consider Roger Ebert's movie opinions pretty worthless, off-the-mark and overly deferential to mainstream tripe [insert Cribbs rebuttal here and here and here]. That's not to say he can't turn a phrase among some of the best reviewers, such as this one from his Kingdom of the Crystal Skull review, which he, predictably, enjoyed:

"If you eat four pounds of sausage, how do you choose which pound tasted the best? Well, the first one, of course, and then there's a steady drop-off of interest."

But his thoughts on the decline of the newspaper industry and his defenses of the value of the printed word have been spot on, even stirring in their passion. He wrote a blog post Wednesday about the AP's new limit of 500 words on movie reviews. Here's the hottest selection:

“Perhaps fearing the challenge of reading a newspaper will prove daunting, papers are using increasing portions of their shrinking news holes in providing guides to reading themselves.” … “The celebrity culture is infantilizing us. We are being trained not to think. It is not about the disappearance of film critics. We are the canaries. It is about the death of an intelligent and curious, readership, interested in significant things and able to think critically. It is about the failure of our educational system. It is not about dumbing-down. It is about snuffing out.

The news is still big. It’s the newspapers that got small.”

Yowzers. Ebert isn't too cheery on his future with newspapers, and with good cause. Ebert, however, is representing a different view of the decay of the industry, one that is being lamented more than the the loss of the physical product itself: he says the fault lies not soley at the feet of the internet, blogs and the 24-hour news environment, but rather on the doorstep of the decline of intellectualism among the population as a whole, this fascination with tasting the trifle that is destroying our abilities to digest the significant.

Read the whole thing here. It's still not enough to get me to watch Crystal Skull again though. Sorry Rog.

NYC: Wraping up the print industry

So, fine, print is basically dead, whatever, I'm getting over it, and I'm probably not even going to join that Facebook group "Don't Let Newspapers Die," because unless the group plans to nail its messages to the doors of newspaper executives in the middle of the night Martin-Luther style, it's an exercise in cosmic futility, not to mention that their stated positions are pretty vapid and unconvincing, even to me, a guy who has cried tears of ink of many a night watching this death spiral unfold. The positions are, as directly quoted:

1. Newspapers are an important & historic public resource.
2. Journalism is vitally important to the impartial gathering & reporting of news.
3. Newspapers are cool!

At this point, better arguments for the continued existence of newspapers (as Michael Shapiro and I spent a day brainstorming on for our proposed newspaper survival advertising campaign) have to appeal to practicality. Some ideas include:

* You can't wrap a present in the internet
* Why waste a good towel when your dog throws up on your floor?
* An iPhone won't keep you dry in a pinch during a rainstorm
* Birdcages look naked without it
* Try stuffing your wet shoes with internet and see what happens
* Your Twitter post doesn't transfer onto silly putty
* Without newspapers, what are you going to whack your cat with?

See? Much more practical. Appeal to the physical realm, because apparently no one cares that the high-quality investigations and storytelling of newspapers has yet to be fully replicated elsewhere, or that through history newspapers have served critical roles in shaping our democracy. Boooo-ring. But start telling people they'll actually have to buy wrapping paper even for those I-hate-this-person-but-feel-obligated-to-go-to-their-birthday-party occasions, and we might start to get some traction.

Print may be dead, but it's clear the world still needs copy editors. This is just from the course of a few hours wandering around the city yesterday. I let the signs in Chinatown slide. For now:

Farmers market in Union Square

Brocoli is, according to Google, a French record label. And only $2 a pound!


Dan Quayle, your legacy is a strong one. Oh Sarah ... you could have been destined for such great things too.

Harder to see, but the sign says "their hot." I tried one. And indeed, the chili peppers' hotness did belong to a group of people standing nearby.

My favorite, at a Duane Reade:

Yikes. Maybe if this is the only other option, people will finally start flocking back to newspapers, happy to entrust their gifts to the comics page rather than being forced to purchase roll after roll of wraping paper.

Day 3:At least I will die free

Tonight I drank a PBR in a building in which both David Lauderdale and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger used to work: The Raleigh Times. There's nothing like the mighty carcass of a defunct newspaper building full of yellowing old memories of print days gone by to make one feel ever the more wistful for the sad reality that is the fate of newspaper journalism. Plus, it was turned into a bar, in either an act of humble homage or incredible prescience. The PBR was even at the accurate price range for the despondent journalist: $2 a glass.

Even the N and O is noticeably fading away lately, so said Ginny, with a sad sigh. And Raleigh has always deserved -- and typically had -- a strong paper, as the Times building reminds you with its old issues lining the walls, their headlines blaring for attention over the din of the bar and the fans watching the Hurricanes game.

I can only hope the future bears similar paths for other newspaper buildings should (or when) they become empty, giving at least a fitting use to the remaining ink stains and ghosts of the printed word.

Then I went across town and played "Wave of Mutilation" on a plastic drum set hooked up to a TV for two hours. I even managed to be not terrible at it.

That's front-page news, in my world.


11/20 UPDATE AND CORRECTION: via David Lauderdale--

Arthur and I both worked for The Raleigh Times, but not in that building. The late and lamented PM paper (“Evening Hours Are Reading Hours”; “Today’s News Today”) was on the second floor of the N&O building on McDowell Street when we worked there. (Arthur and I were not there at the same time; he was before me.)

Inverted Soapbox regrets the error.

The Wisconsin State Journal will rule us all

Newspaper circulation numbers were released today and all the top 25 papers are dropping circ like hot anvils, and everything is bleak, and the internet still exists, and yadda yadda yadda so forth and so on.

Here's an interesting stat in the numbers however: the top 25 papers that actually gained circulation. Note that only two of them are large (above 90,000) and only four others are above 50,000. I'd love to know what the Wisconsin State Journal has done to boost their numbers 10 percent this year.

Meanwhile, the nation's elite class of newspapers — the ones with the resources and talent that traditionally produce in-depth, groundbreaking work — are all losing readers, sometimes precipitously (AJC lost 13 percent this year; The Philly Inky lost 11 percent). Meanwhile, these smaller papers in smaller markets have been able to gain some traction. You could hypothesize that this is the future fate of newspapers, that the ones in small markets will survive, even thrive, since many are the only news and information source for the local community. But it makes you wonder: what do people think to themselves when they stop picking up the Washington Post or the New York Times? Is it that the journalism is better in these smaller markets, or that the paper in those areas is still just too indispensible a part of people's lives? Will they ultimately suffer the same fate as the biggest 25, just on a longer timeline?


Here's the numbers (via Fitz and Jen at E&P):

WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL -- 97,012 -- 10.61%
MACOMB DAILY (MICH.) -- 46,014 -- 9.40%
THE VILLAGES DAILY SUN (FLA.) -- 30,616 -- 6.98%
TRENTON TIMES (N.J.) -- 53,303 -- 5.34%
MORRISTOWN CITIZEN TRIBUNE (TENN.)* -- 18,589 -- 5.31%

FARGO FORUM (N.D.) -- 49,834 -- 4.70%
OKLAHOMA CITY JOURNAL RECORD -- 3,470 -- 4.20%
BOWLING GREEN DAILY NEWS (KY.) -- 20,804 -- 4.01%
MAUI NEWS (HAWAII) -- 20,887 -- 3.99%
SANTE FE NEW MEXICAN -- 25,616 -- 3.70%

IRON MOUNTAIN DAILY NEWS* (MICH.) -- 9,303 -- 3.69%
ELKINS INTER-MOUNTAIN* (W.VA.) -- 10,583 -- 3.67%
CHAMPAIGN NEWS-GAZETTE* (ILL.) -- 41,578 -- 3.21%
DESERET MORNING NEWS (UTAH) -- 71,133 -- 2.09%
SANTA MARIA TIMES (CALIF.) -- 18,823 -- 2.08%

WOODLAND DAILY DEMOCRAT* (CALIF.) -- 8,738 -- 2.06%
ERIE TIMES-NEWS (PA.) -- 56,124 -- 1.81%
BEND BULLETIN (ORE.) -- 32,951 -- 1.79%
PARK HILLS DAILY JOURNAL* (MO.) -- 8,023 -- 1.79%
QUAD-CITY TIMES (IOWA) -- 50,820 -- 1.66%

CRYSTAL LAKE NORTHWEST HERALD (ILL.) -- 37,516 -- 1.58%
BEAVER COUNTY TIMES (PA.) -- 39,417 -- 1.55%
ARIZONA DAILY SUN -- 11,292 -- 1.54%
SOUTHERN ILLINOISAN -- 26,256 -- 1.50%
BATON ROUGE ADVOCATE (LA.) -- 92,030 -- 1.35%

Interesting note: Ken Doctor at Content Bridges points the finger at the quality of the content. Makes sense to me:

One big reason the numbers are declining is the product itself. In the last year, we've seen unprecedented cuts in the product -- and the customers are noticing. It looks like the amount of newsprint is down about 10-15%; some in stories, some in ads. Trusted bylines have disappeared overnight. Readers notice, and talk to their friends, and they're saying: it's not the newspaper it used to be. When the subscription notices come, they're a little less likely to be acted upon.

The Big Plunge

I found myself in an odd, nearly surreal position a few weeks back. There I sat, looking directly into the eyes of a job offer at a significantly larger paper, on a good beat, for more money, in a nice area, with some room to grow and explore, and with absolutely no desire to take the job.

The job was undeniably a step up the ladder I put in front of myself way back in high school, when I first felt the hot bite of the newspaper bug and immersed myself in the mystique of the newsroom, the clack of the keyboard bouncing off the walls, phones slammed down with harried aggression by bedraggled reporters, my own phone ringing at a late hour with an irate editor at the other end, demanding more information, more questioning, bellowing on about standards and printability; then the satisfying smack of the paper on the front porch the next morning with my name in small print across the front page topped by some dramatic headline, the ego always kept in check by the quick yellowing decay of day-old newsprint, the knowledge that each day's achievements are only as good as the next day's deadlines.

I loved it. Still do. The problem is, it doesn't exist any more. Or maybe it does still exist only in the hearts of the dedicated printies, those with ink and fire in their veins, the people whose idealism is being strangled to death every day by the latest budget cutbacks, staff shortages, shrinking news hole and general top-down malaise infecting the newspaper industry that makes a newsroom about as cheery a place to work as a factory that produces greeting cards for dead pets. Those people are still out there, the ones with good ideas, the energy, the talented enthusiasm and dedication to a higher purpose and an understanding of the damned importance of the journalism newspapers provide that should have drawn us all to this profession in the first place. Honest truth is: we are being shunned away from the industry in droves by an overarching mindset stuck in the old model of journalism, when newspapers were fat with advertising wealth and market dominance, and technology was seen as an annoyance rather than a tool. At too many papers, it was too common for everyone to enjoy their privileged perch atop the world of information purveyance, never stopping to see the ripples of evolution rocking the foundation. (The music industry went through the same thing, fyi. So don't say we couldn't see it coming.)

With salary freezes, job cuts, shrinking circulation and a future strategy that is focused on paying off creditors instead of trying to regain ground, what incentive is there for us to stay?

I sat in that interview in Virginia and asked the editors point blank "What are your ideas to turn this thing around?" and "What is the plan??" only to have them look back at me, shift papers on their desk and say things to the effect of, Well, , uh, we need to hold on to the readers that we have, we need to keep providing the top-quality product we've always produced, we need to redesign to attract younger readers, we're experimenting with web video, and so on with the same thing I've heard echoed from coast to coast, A section to the classifieds.

I kept after the line of questioning, not something I was doing to impress my interviewers with tenacity. It was the only action I could harness to repress my inner voice wanting to scream: "That's not enough."

And it isn't. The strategy for newspapers to save themselves at this point, according to every person I've heard from at my paper and others, from low editors to top executives, from three years ago to just last week, is the following:

1) Offer readers shorter stories
2) Offer readers fewer of those stories
3) Hire less staff to cover a smaller area
4) Provide your staff with a smaller pool of resources with which to do their jobs
5) Charge more for the product
6) Add superfluous video to newspaper Web sites
7) Wait with open arms for readers to return

I'm not a business person, but that strategy seems redonkulous to me, and I have yet to see any evidence to disabuse me of that notion. I'm not in the position to say I have all the answers (though several people have proposed many good ideas that deserve review), but at our paper alone, the fact that every day we walk through the door isn't a Defcon 2 lockdown all-hands-on-deck affair trying to figure out how to turn this ship around is baffling to me. How long do you let yourself keep getting smacked by cannonballs until you stop worrying about bailing out the water and start returning fire, or, at least, turning in the other direction?

The editor from Virginia called me back a week later. How would I feel about taking on an crucial beat out in Suffolk? We need someone who can dig into things, she said, and you'd be a perfect fit.

I thought about it and talked to her again. I just can't do it, I said, the echo of the response surprising even a part of myself still. I need to find something else. Newspapers are clearly not the answer. Not the way they've been handled, not the way they're set up now, not with the stubborn impediments to progress that are frustrating our generation with no end in sight.

And that was it. That phone call was essentially my break up with the newspaper industry (at least for the short term). And that bitch still had my CDs.

So then the big decision lumbered back into the picture: what the hell else are you supposed to do when the only industry you've ever had interest in no longer is viable? I bounced around several ideas that included the obligatory trip-to-Europe-to-find-myself-or-at-least-someone-who-looks-like-me, or moving to the ATL to live with Cribbs and Pouya and turn freelance tricks for any john publication willing to pay. Neither seemed to click as the immediate answer.

I knew I couldn't stay here, on Hilton Head, this quiet rock I've lived on for damn near four years, where I've gathered an intricate collection of life experiences, heartbreak and help, but where the tank on challenges and excitement has long since run dry.

After a period of heavy thinking, er, heavy drinking ... that is to say, heavy thinking while also drinking ... and consultation with friends, my spinning Twister blade stopped and I realized uncertain times call for uncertain measures.

New York City.

The plunge into the center of it all, the beating heart of the beast, in search of something different on lost city streets or in the shadow of shiny skyscrapers, where the great sum of creative forces amass before trickling down to all the rest. The goal is Brooklyn, an interesting place with interesting people, where lots of friends and associates have already landed and made a successful go of it since college.

The action came hot and fast after that. I told the Packet I was quitting effective Nov. 4, the latest in a stream of resignations, and that they had best get a replacement ready. I called my mom and told her the plan, and she reacted with a sort of verbal shrug of the shoulders, a surprised complacency. You always seem to land on your feet, she said. I sighed with relief back at her and silently hoped she was right.

I spread the word at work and started reaching out to any and all contacts in the city. My boss's first thoughts were to give me the name of a good soup kitchen. True story: St. Anna's near Rockefeller Center, he said.
"Do you know this from experience, Fitz?"
"Well ... no, no. I just know the guy..."

Sure you do. (Note: I just Googled this and am not sure if it is a real place or not.)

The nerve-wracking part is that I have no job leads, no housing arrangements and pitifully (I do mean pitifully) little money saved up, even less so maybe after this weekend when I stepped on this dude's over-priced Quicksilver sunglasses and may have to buy him a new pair.

All I've got right now is the pledge of a few couches to sleep on, a familiarity with the regular content of Brooklyn Vegan, some friends who are making a living in some writing related fields in the city and a tall pile of clips that I've got no choice but to put full faith in at this point. Surprisingly, no one has advised me that this idea is a bad one, or even warned against incautious career evacuation. A handful of my editors were even visibly exuberant at the thought, saying things like, "I wish I could do that too," and, "What a great idea." Mostly I'm sure this is meant to either console my soon to be homeless sorrow, or to reflect their joy at being able to hire a newer reporter at lower pay rate.

Part of me always knew I'd end up in the city at one point or another (I also have the same assumptions about California, where I was heartily applying for jobs up through this summer), possibly a byproduct of growing up in Jersey, the gleaming heights and roar of the subway train just a school field trip's journey away at all times, the excitement always bleeding over state lines and down to our suburban enclaves. I was in the habit for awhile of telling all creative types I met that I'd see them again when we crossed paths in the city, the terminus everyone must pass through.

About Nov. 10 or so, I'll pack up my tiny red Saturn, having sold most of my large belongings to the new reporter taking over my bedroom in the apartment, point the car north and plunge into the great unknown, the wild tumult of houselessness and funemployment (the new buzz euphemism) and all the excitement that is being an wandering journalist full of pent-up writing vigor, searching desperately for an outlet.

Cut to Paul Mitchell's house days later, my birthday actually, when his parents weren't home and we climbed a ladder up onto the roof of his dock house, ignoring the warnings of instability broadcast by the tequila warming inside our stomachs, us gripping tightly on to the ridges of the slightly sloping roof that was thankfully, maybe presciently, made of a sturdy, non-slip material.

It was Hsieh and I up there this time, and, as we crouched on the roof facing over the black expanse of Broad Creek, we decided to jump in toast to our different adventures on the 15-foot drop. I rocked on my heels and threw myself off the perch feet first, opening my lungs to a mad scream of "BROOKLYN!" stretching out to the vast patch of marshland in the distance, with Hsieh a second behind chasing after his echo of a hurried "ALASKA!", both screams tearing through the silence that buffeted the still creek-front houses. We hit the water with a quick splash and I sunk deep into all the salty memories of the last four years, the edges lined with waving marsh grass and the top crowned in Spanish moss dripping in to give everything that sleepy, dream-like quality.

I swam to the dock to hoist myself out of the brackish creek, its waters still not hinting at fall even in the bottom of a September night.

It's these things about Hilton Head I'll miss the most. But my time here has come to an end.



[photo credits, bottom up: 1) Jay Karr, 9/30/08; 2) personal collection, 11/07; 3) Social Security Administration; 4) masternewmedia.org; 5) ecx.images-amazon.com]

Gigantic Pencil, Reporter Nearly Kill 74-year-Old Woman

This is probably my greatest response to a story EVER. And by greatest, I mean perhaps the most stultifying, stupefying example of head-smacking obtuseness:

I have not listened to the weather channel or paid much attention to hurricanes since the passing of Ike. After all, I had prepared to evacuate with the threat of Hanna, but recently unpacked all my necessities. I just was avoiding the issue.

And then today's headline! "The Storm is headed for the Carolinas." My goodness, a story that should have been a Sunday feature on an inside page ends up on Page 1 of the Beaufort Gazette. I looked at the picture of the huge hurricane heading straight for us and quickly turned on the weather channel. It was after the hour, so there was no Atlantic weather news. Back to the story, and it turns out it is just a feature on "the Carolinas".

My heart did not stop racing for at least half an hour. I am 74 years old. How many elderly people did you cause to have heart palpitations this morning?

I wonder if it also got first page coverage on the Island Packet. Your next headline might read "12.000 people in Sun City head for the hills--or back to Ohio." Sounds like the radio program of "War of the Worlds."

Anyway, the article was a fine one, even though it was misplaced.

For reference, this is the story that's under discussion. And (brace your heart for it), below is the offending graphic that ran with it that made me responsible for this woman's near cardiac arrest:


So, instead of actually reading even the first paragraph of the article that sent this woman's heart into Speed Racer mode, she threw aside the newspaper and threw herself into a panicked frenzy befitting cable news coverage, presumably calling up the Weather Channel and awaiting Local on the 8s while haphazardly stuffing prescription medicine bottles, the deed to the house and various clothing into a duffel bag, yelling at her husband to don't even bother boarding up the windows, just go outside and start the damn Escalade already.

But, more amusingly, I can only imagine the thoughts that ran through her head when she noticed not only a large hurricane barreling straight for South Carolina, but also a gigantic pencil looking like a Stylus of God sticking out of the sky apparently erasing South Carolina from the map.

"Dear Lord, Joseph, get the sharpeners! This thing means business. Do we know if our storm shelter is eraser proof? GAH! THERE'S NO TIME MAN, THERE'S NO TIME!"

I haven't responded to her yet, but I'm betting my reply will be none too light on the sarcasm (in extraordinary circumstances such as these, you are allowed to bite back, I think) and contain the basic sentiment of: "sorry you didn't take the time to look at one sentence of the story before freaking out, and sorry for piquing your interest and getting you to read our newspaper."

But at least she liked the article, when she finally did read it. This is, however, the first time I've been compared to Orson Welles. But maybe not the last?

Time to Pretend

Look, during the week, on the clock, with the eyes of the print publishing world glaring at my choice in belt buckle, I don't mind wearing the monkey suit and doing the little dance to confound enough people into thinking I'm some sort of well-groomed, tucked-in member of society. Personally, I think choice of clothing has about as much to do with my ability to report and write a good story as what I ate for lunch. I probably actually do better reporting when I'm in jeans and sneakers because I feel more comfortable, less constrained and better able to relate to the average citizen. But I understand there are certain concessions necessary when traipsing through the prickly brier patch of the professional world, and I've come to deal with this through a secretly subversive combination of thrift store pants and hand-me-down collared shirts. I'll get even more gussied up for big events — congressional visits, major galas, and so forth. I wore a tux in college to an event featuring Bill Cosby.

But when I'm not on the clock, that's my time. And I will look as much like a harassed strain on society as I damn well please. It's the least I can do after paying penance to the anachronistic practice of tucking in a shirt for five days a week (OK, four days. Cas Fri to the rescue).

This, however, proves quite troublesome on Hilton Head Island, a town about as big as my high school gym class where I can barely go to the trash chute in my apartment building without running into someone I know. I try to lay low and can usually pass off as one of the anonymous waiters, caddies or check in clerks who make up the majority of the young people population here. If people ask me for more ranch dressing, I know I'm in the clear.

Sometimes, however, it is impossible to remain unmasked. Last Saturday, for instance, walking up the pharmacy counter at Walgreens, me looking entirely unpresentable in the cargo shorts that have become stiff with fatigue from the strain of their unrelenting tour of service without leave time this summer, topped with my red Miss Teen USA 1980 paegent thrift store shirt, my hair erupting in its traditional Saturday morning revolt without the application of shower water or product, my eyes probably still glazed with residue of the last beer Friday night. As I got to the counter, I caught the middle of the conversation between the clerk and an oldster: "...well, there's just so many (Mylastname)s in the world, you never know..."

He thanked her and walked away. Then I tell her I'm picking up prescriptions, and my name is also Mylastname, and she laughs at the odd coincidence. The oldster turns on his heel, aroused with sudden curiosity. His name was Ted Mylastname, which I remembered because he was from Massachusetts and had that chowda-filled Ted Kennedy accent. "Hey, are you Chris Mylastname?"
Who the feck is Chris Mylastname? I'll crush him.

No, I told him, providing my full name. Ted's eyes grew wide, recognizing the name from the bylines in the newspaper.
"Oh ho!" he said. "I read your stories all the time! People always ask me if we're related!"
Why then, I thought, did he first ask me if I was Chris Mylastname? Probably, I figured, because he discounted this clearly hungover derelict as some inconsequential beach bum who only got out of bed long enough to pick up a morning after pill for the hooker he picked up last night, now lying in a passed-out mess on his air mattress back at home. Oh but you were wrong, Ted. I even wear a tie some days.

Later that same day, I'm at the thrift store, buying what I must say was a rather nice blue-button down shirt that at one time probably fetched a decent price tag on a store rack somewhere. It looked nearly brand new, and cost me a pricey $3. The woman who rang me up took notice. "Wow, this is a nice shirt. Are you going to wear it with a suit?"

No, just a shirt for work, I told her. "Oh, where do you work?" I always wince when this quesiton comes up, as it does often on Hilton Head, because people ask it here to affix you to some part of the familiar geography of the island. It's like asking what dorm you live in in college. Often people get the answer of a particular restaurant or store, and they can relate to shopping or eating there once, offer to say hi next time they're in there, etc. When you tell people you work for the newspaper, they start treating you differently. I told one of my roommate's friends a few years back that I worked there and his response was, "Like, delivering the papers?" When I met one of Andy's dad's friends last summer, she told was in shock at recognizing my name. "I thought you were an old man!" she said, though not unkindly.

I braced myself and told the clerk the truth, then she probed as to what I cover, what my name was, and so forth. Since I've worked here for 45 years now, she had seen my name around, read my stories, all that. I ducked out of the conversation before it turned to specific town topics. But I can't help picturing that she went home, saw her husband reading the paper and said, "Honey, I met that Mylastname reporter today. Did you know is a homeless person? He has to buy his shirts in the thrift store and everything. I'm surprised they even let him into official buildings, he looked like one of those bohemians I heard about on Fox News."

Then her husband would huff, crumble the paper up and toss it into the fireplace (they keep their fire running in the summer, because it's powered by gas, and they want to help reduce the nation's exorbitant oil surplus) and exclaim: "Well, that's the last time we read that rag! I thought there were still standards in this country! Bohemians ... next thing you'll be telling me that he has long hair. Quite absurd, quite."

It's interactions like this, and the high likelihood of running into sources around every corner, that keep me on my toes. It's why I know not to get stupid wasted at a bar if there's a source lurking about, to chose carefully who to cut off in traffic out of fear that it will one day be the mayor, and why I tucked the copy of "Dreams from My Father" I was buying at Barnes and Noble the other day into my newspaper when I saw one of the angry, liberal-media accusing, military haircut old Republicans headed my way (He said, "Hi," by the way, also not unkindly).

The worst of these situations came my first year here, at the St. Patrick's Day parade, easily the most enjoyable and community building free event on the island all year. My condition was respectable, but I was with my roommate John, whose job as a waiter did not give him the same public considerations I had. He was 10 miles beyond wasted, had a dripping plastic beer yard hanging from his neck, and was wearing a set of beads with plastic marijuana leaves hanging from it. "I really hope I don't run into any sources," I thought, taking a sip from my beer. Then I turned around in the bar parking lot we were standing in and saw THE ENTIRE TOWN COUNCIL and our statehouse representative lining up in their convertibles before entering the parade route.

Figures, I thought. I had come in disguise with sunglasses and sweatshirt, and pulled my cap down over my face.

Then, two years later at the same parade, I got drunk on the side of the route and screamed at the town manager to throw me some freaking candy as he passed by. He did. My shirt was not tucked in at the time. I mean, there's only so much pretending one person can do.


Bonus: Listen to MGMT's "Time to Pretend" It's in a movie trailer so it's probably going to be annoyingly popular soon. But they get it.

Reflections from Virginia

After a weekend of touring and job interviewing here:


• Several letters in the word "Norfolk" are useless. Several others arise mysteriously upon pronunciation.
• Virginia Beach is significantly less heinous than Myrtle Beach.
• PETA being based in Nahfik infects the surrounding city with vegetarian-friendly dining options.
• PETA is located on the banks of a river, possibly creating a runoff problem that apparently does not rise to the level of an ethical dilemma.
• Newspaper journalists everywhere are a depressed, downtrodden lot.
• Common sense will tell you to avoid eating an airport egg salad sandwich. Do not ignore this.
• Virginia Beach has Actual Surfing.
• Rarely is there a collective mood on an airplane that welcomes the irreverent gallows humor of the male flight attendant who mistakes the intercom for the microphone at Evening at the Improv.
• Having a baby immediately enters you into a rotating free dinner delivery service program.
• Newspapers are still struggling to understand "the internet"
• Newspapers' plan to save themselves is alarmingly similar to Bush's Iraq strategy circa 2005.
• Hampton, Va., is allegedly the most-integrated city in America.
• All the Tribune newspapers are being redesigned to resemble children's picture books.
• Virginia. Effing. Loves. Mixed-use development.
• Serious, weighty, pivotal thinking and decision making will dominate my next few weeks. Heavy drinking is expected to be called upon to lubricate the cogs of introspection.


(photos by me, except for the map, which is from hrrelocation.com)

Waves of Mutilation

WARNING: this post contains discussion of unpleasant body functions.

I've scarified any number of items or body parts to the sea over the years. A rough estimate says this includes at least 10 contact lenses, three necklaces, two rings, too many hair ties to count, unknown amounts of cash, in addition to varying levels of skin, hair and a lot, lot of blood. All these usually are related to surfing, or rather, the many years I spent being tossed into the air and raked across the sea floor up and down the east coast trying to become minimally proficient at surfing.

But something happened to me on the waves this morning that I've never had to deal with before: I threw up.

Tropical Storm Fay is stirring up an impressive amount of wave activity, particularly for the typically flat and joyless Hilton Head surf. So I got up early to catch the tide and joined the dozen or so others who ducked into the strong winds and jumped into the turbulent waters. About an hour in, I started feeling nauseous, so much so that I could barely lie with my stomach on the board without worrying about intestinal reverb. I tried to wait it out but decided to pathetically doggie paddle my board back to the shore, probably looking like a confused kook in the process. It was then that I retched, out of nowhere.

Luckily, this is one of the least embarrassing places I've ever performed the Freshman Flush (higher on that list are various bathrooms at workplaces; a Walgreens parking lot; the outside of a Chinese restaurant when I was 9; in front of our girls' team at the finish line in a cross country race in high school; about every 50 miles along I-95 between Saratoga Springs, N.Y. and Boston last fall [thank you, whiskey]; and, the all-time, still-can't-live-it-down, gold medal holder: the side of my mom's Chrysler Concorde at a toll plaza on the Garden State Parkway on the way back from Medieval Times on my 12th birthday).

The hurl this morning was masked by waves and ocean spray, and it wasn't much more than stomach juices, so I doubt anyone else noticed. The entire situation, however, was disconcerting. I hadn't felt sick earlier that morning. I had a few drinks the night before but was far from hungover. I put my board down next to the dunes, where I sat contemplating this situation for a long while while more surfers and tourists continued arriving at the beach. Possible scenarios:

1) Lack of food -- Dinner on Tuesday night consisted of two Yuenglings and several handfuls of Hsieh's white-cheddar-flavored popcorn at Tropic Thunder. This seemed adequate sustenance at the time. I did not go to bed hungry, at least.

2) Geography-related muscle atrophy -- Living on Hilton Head has surely made me soft. In a place like Jersey or even Maryland, where the waves break with somewhat more consistency and the ocean has more than a 20-inch depth, you actually have to paddle your way through the breakers to reach the lineup -- a process that everyone I've tried to show how to surf has agreed is by far the most difficult and frustrating part. I reference the normally docile Matt Remsberg, lying defeated wearing his new rash guard and clutching onto a 9-foot sponge board like a lost sailor in Santa Monica in 2002, informing the ocean at the top of his lungs that it could go fuck itself as it continued to mockingly push him closer back towards the shore every minute. In Hilton Head, it's rare there's even any outside waves to find your way to. Even if there were, the water is usually so shallow you would look ridiculous paddling your way out, with your head level to some Ohio tourist's ankles.
Facing an actual strong current and steady sets required calling upon muscles that have not been used in some time, and this exertion, combined with aforementioned lack of even a sampling of the 1,200-calorie Michael Phelps diet, may have caused the stomach to erupt in sudden revolt.

3) Horrible, ghastly, job-related depression -- You know that scene in Titanic where the ship's sinking fast and the only ones left on board are the band? I'm pretty sure I'm that band's roadie at this point. In the span of one week, we found out McClatchy was freezing wages for a year, that more job cuts are expected and that three (EDIT: Now four, as of Thursday) key staff members at our sister paper The Beaufort Gazette including the executive editor, are quitting, likely not to be replaced. The lower-level staff resignations have been coming hot and fast since then, creating more positions that probably won't get filled. To recap: the strategy to save newspapers and make them profitable again is to hire fewer people, offer them less money and give them fewer resources and less space to work with. This is similar to the Milwaukee Brewers' strategy to win more games this year by only using seven players, giving them whiffle ball bats to play with and making them sell hot dogs in the stands in between innings.

I, too, am debating quitting and making the next few months until my lease runs out more profitable by waiting tables, cleaning toilets, catching alligators or selling fake diplomas via e-mail. Surely this nest of ill-tidings could easily manifest itself in unpleasant gastro-intestinal ways.

4) The forest for the trees -- I've been experiencing unhealthy mental necrophilia in the past few weeks about the breakup with Andy, particularly after spending a weekend at home amid the forest of childhood friends turned into husbands, wives, parents, PTA members and broad-smiling, contented adults, when all I can do is stare up and wonder how the tree canopy grows so fast. Then I keep poking and prodding at fresh scabs and wondering if I'll ever be lonely enough to look back and classify this as the foundations of a towering pile of regret.


I sat on the board for a little while longer before finally deciding it was probably the second scenario that caused the unexpected upchuck. It was nearing 10:30, about half an hour before the tide turned and the waves would start to dissipate. I strapped my leash back on my leg and marched into the churning ocean. A slight nausea returned when I pressed my stomach to the board, and my biceps were screaming for relief with much paddling left to do before getting to the line up. But I was not leaving without the satisfaction of sliding down at least one decent wave, to feel that ocean rhythm and it's overpowering force rise up and propel the board on its own course, completely indifferent to all the throw-up, contact lenses and blood it claimed from me over the years.

Walt Disney's Sin City

Something about this feels so horribly wrong. And yet, another, bustier, more sensual part feels oh-so-right. I always found Ariel kinda hot. Is that weird? Not weird because she's a cartoon, but because she's half fish. That's also kinda hot in its own way too. I am clearly not Disney's target demographic.



Images via notafishinglure, by artist Curt Rapala.


Related: Remember all those hidden Disney sex messages that would cause you to wear out the VCR while trying to convince your friends they were real? That was fun. VCRs, I mean, not the sex thing. What a crazy technology that was. Maybe there's a VCR plant hiring somewhere. It's got to be a more promising career than newspapers.

JAWSOME MEMO

Nothing like coming back from a weekend away to find the latest in our company's ongoing series of Memos From the Funtime Happiness Police. I've edited out the corporate doublespeak and treacle below.

DATE: August 14, 2008
TO: All Employees
FROM: (Publisher)
SUBJECT: Wage Freeze

economic downturn ... unprecedented negative effect on revenues ... our financial health. ... control expenses.

... implementing an across-the-board, one-year wage freeze effective Sept. 1, 2008

... avoided taking this step as long as possible .... stress on your personal expenses ... you are working hard to adapt to our changing business model. ... we hope we can continue to count on you ... difficult period. ... confident ... cost control measures ... financially healthy company in the future.

Translation: Hooray newspapers!

We got a shipment of new reporters notebooks today and they came with a few free black notebook holders. The boss said they sent us these to try to entice us to buy more of them. Michael Shapiro said, "But this will come in handy when I start working in a restaurant at nights."

The boss looked at him and said, "Well, yeah, it would."

Yeah indeed.

Don't Call Us Office Drones

Thanks to Colin McEnroe of The Hartford Courant for reminding people that newspaper jobs aren't supposed to be like regular 9-to-5 rat mazes. He wrote last week about, you guessed it, the general sense of malaise that is driving journalists into alcoholism (well, further into alcoholism) over the past few months. Other reporters may hate some of these, but McEnroe hits on the essence of the business that I know I and other reporters signed up for when we felt the rush of our first stories. Some of my best nights have been in the newsroom until midnight or later. Also, I hate getting up early:

1. REGAIN YOUR SENSE OF URGENCY. One problem with newspapers -- not just The Courant -- is that they're often a little a boring. They go for days and days without a "Holy S--t!" story on page one. There are ways to address this. One of them is to put the g-d paper together at night. If you're a morning newspaper and there aren't a hell of a lot of reporters and editors in the building at 11 p.m., something is wrong. The building should be damn near empty until 2 p.m. and full until 11. But somewhere a long the way, newspaper jobs gradually started to resemble other white collar jobs. They lost some of their romance and replaced it with comfort and security. We all wanted to go home to the suburbs, have a glass of wine, interact with our spouses and kids. Much better for our lives but probably not for newsgathering. (Meanwhile, cable news and the internet actually tightened up the news cycles -- people now expect to be updated fast.) If the news staff is going to be an elite strike force, it had better include a lot of workaholics and night owls.

The next suggestion I think deserves more credit than people realize. Some papers have requirements for their reporters to live in their coverage area; we don't have that, but there's definitely an advantage to be a member of the community you cover — you find out tips and background info when you're out at the bars on a weekend, you see the same traffic delays and drainage problems that your readers do and you have an important sense of connection to your community:

2. A FEW OF YOU MUST MOVE TO HARTFORD! When I started out at the Courant, you know how many Courant reporters lived in Hartford? Most of them! I could give you names and names! A whole bunch of us lived on Zion Street, of all places.Three or four different staffers bought houses on Madison Street and, under somewhat terrifying conditions, tried to rehab them. We drank in Hartford bars. We partied in Hartford apartments. We got arrested by Hartford police. Andy Kreig's New Year's Eve party in Frog Hollow was terrifying! Do you know how many Courant reporters and editors live in Hartford now? Very few.
...You see, suburbs are, also, really, really boring. That's why people like to live there. That's why it's really big news when anything dire happens there.

And this one just seems to make sense, to me at least. Why, for instance, is the Washington Post OK with David Broder and Tony Kornheiser, two of their biggest names, taking buyouts? Apply this to another industry: "Hey, the Cavs are in trouble this year — let's buyout LeBron's contract to spend money making viral web videos for the Cavaliers Web site!"
But there's probably a reason I'm not running a newspaper (other than having no desire to take up what is surely a completely thankless and tiresome job):

3. KEEPING THE ABOVE IN MIND, LOCK UP A FEW FRANCHISE PLAYERS. I will never understand the newspaper industry's love of buyouts. You lose good people that way -- people you might have been able to keep. The Courant still has a few dozen people who are so good that they can maintain the paper's brand name. They're smarter and more skilled than any comparable group you could assemble from local TV, radio, other papers and blogs. But that's getting to be a closer and closer call every time the paper downsizes. There are now people that the Courant really cannot afford to give up. You gotta have that strike force of smart, aggressive, skilled, knowledgeable, workaholic blue chippers. You almost can't afford to lose even one of them in this round of cuts.

At Least Bob Woodward Knows My Name

When you're in the newspaper business, you have to deal with a certain number of people who have, let's say, special qualities that distinguishes them from the average iteration of humanity. They might be someone who was wronged years ago and has dedicated their life to fighting for their cause, which somehow inevitably involves e-mailing a local news reporter upwards of 19 times a day with long diatribes. Or they might be a person who sits at home counting the dew drops on their windowpane and gathering evidence for the Suburban Crisis Discovery Revolution Squad she fears is plotting to steal her rhododendron bushes and turn her cat gay.
Or they might just have a case of what we like to call "The Bat Fucking Shit Crazies."

I'll let you figure out in which category this character resides. Suffice it to say our entire newsroom, as well as Bob Woodward, the newsrooms of the Washington Post, the USA Today, the New York Times, Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, Rupert Murdoch, and seemingly every member of Congress have been bombarded by e-mails by this guy. Here is where I would normally try to summarize his supposed gripe, if, that is, I had any success at deciphering his ramblings and getting at his actual issue. It has something to do with being arrested for driving a car and spending time in jail, then apparently a bunch of white people were racist against him, though it has never been made clear how or why. I have been instructed by my bosses I'd best ignore his e-mails, or else he will just get more riled up. But today's is classic because he's e-mailing the Rev. Al Sharpton, comparing me directly to Don Imus's latest racial foot-in-mouth. Finally, the big time.

I would just cut and copy the text of the e-mail here, but you really need to see an image of it to get the full stylistic fireworks display of fonts and colors. This all started when I asked why he was attacking Shanda, probably the quietest and most non-threatening copy editor on an already pretty quiet and non-threatening copy desk. I also was trying to figure out exactly how he had been the subject of such vehement racism by white people when he is (and he is) a big white guy. My fault for trying to get a straight answer out of a big mess of crazy pie I guess.

This is all one continuous e-mail. Click on the images to read the whole thing. Some names have been removed to protect the innocent.

Your Verbal Tricks Shall Not Pass

Case File: Why Newspaper Writing is Starting to Get Frustrating

The original version of a story about the opening of a comedy club on Hilton Head (with some cheesy puns, but hey, at least I'm trying):

So two guys who want to open up a comedy club on Hilton Head Island walk into Town Hall. The third guy moves out of the way.
Thank you, ladies and germs. And for our next act, John Biddle, a former amateur touring comedian and comedy club owner who came to Hilton Head this spring to open up what will be the island’s only full comedy club. After an approval from a town board Monday, he’s on track to open the Hilton Head Comedy Club in Pineland Station, possibly as soon as next week if the rest of the construction wraps up on schedule, just in time for the peak of tourist season. And hey, why’s it called tourist season if we can’t shoot at them anyway?
Other venues on the island such as Stages nightclub, the Shoreline Ballroom and the Hilton Oceanfront Resort feature touring comedy shows, but this could be the island’s only dedicated spot for comedic acts, unless you count the Sea Pines Circle on a Saturday in July.
Biddle, who owned a comedy club on Sanibel Island, Fla. for six years, said he’s not bringing amateur hour to Hilton Head — he said he has some national acts lined up to appear, including Ron Shock, a frequent guest on The Tonight Show and other television comedy showcases, and A. Whitney Brown, who appeared on Saturday Night Live and was one of the original correspondents on The Daily Show. At least one of the comedians he mentioned, Pat Godwin, a guest on nationally syndicated radio shows like Howard Stern and the Bob and Tom Show, has listed an appearance at the new club on his Web site.
In the 1990s, then again in early 2000s, the island was home to a Coconuts, a chain comedy club that operated most recently out of the Quality Inn. Biddle’s club is located in the former sites of a University of South Carolina Beaufort branch and the Lowcountry Center for Photography, a location he said will avoid the chaos of the south end bars and help draw more locals. (How do you find the locals on Hilton Head anyway? Shout “O-H!” and see who doesn’t answer.)
Biddle first visited Hilton Head two years ago and saw lots of things for golfers to do (like tell their patients they’ll be in “surgery” all day) but the nightlife was lacking. “They really having nothing to do at night except hang out at bars,” he said. Biddle, who worked as a food and beverage manager in Las Vegas, and his partner, former Las Vegas entertainment writer Michael Paskevich, both have connections in the comedy business through their time in Sin City. So they decided to trade “life in the fast lane for life in the bike lane” on Hilton Head, Biddle said.
Tickets will be about $10 or $12 and the owners plan to keep drink prices reasonable to make sure the club stays full. Food will also be served. Biddle said he’ll be able to book national acts because he’s selling the Hilton Head show as a vacation gig. A. Whitney Brown, for example, likes to bike, so they’ll give him a rental and point him to the bike paths, he said.
“We’ve been working night and day to make it happen,” he said. And you can expect to see Biddle on stage warming up the crowds at the new club. “I’ll be the human sacrifice,” he said.

The edited version:

The owner of a planned comedy club on Hilton Head Island got final approval from the town Monday to open his business.
John Biddle, a former amateur touring comedian and comedy club owner, is on track to open the Hilton Head Comedy Club in Pineland Station, possibly as soon as next week, if the rest of the construction wraps up on schedule.
Other venues on the island such as Stages nightclub, the Shoreline Ballroom and the Hilton Oceanfront Resort feature touring comedy shows, but this could be the island’s only dedicated spot for comedy acts.
Biddle, who owned a comedy club on Sanibel Island, Fla., for six years, said he’s not bringing amateur hour to Hilton Head. He said he has some national acts lined up, including Ron Shock, a frequent guest on “The Tonight Show” and other television comedy showcases, and A. Whitney Brown, who appeared on “Saturday Night Live” and was one of the original correspondents on “The Daily Show.” At least one of the comedians he mentioned, Pat Godwin, a guest on nationally syndicated radio shows like Howard Stern and the “Bob and Tom Show,” has listed an appearance at the new club on his Web site.
In the 1990s, and again in early 2000s, the island was home to a Coconuts, a chain comedy club that operated most recently out of the Quality Inn. Biddle’s club is in the former sites of a University of South Carolina Beaufort branch and the Lowcountry Center for Photography, a location he said will avoid the chaos of the south end bars and help draw more locals. Biddle first visited Hilton Head two years ago and saw lots of things for golfers to do, but the nightlife was lacking.
"They really having nothing to do at night except hang out at bars,” he said. Biddle, who worked as a food and beverage manager in Las Vegas, and his partner, former Las Vegas entertainment writer Michael Paskevich, both have connections in the comedy business through their time in Sin City. So they decided to trade “life in the fast lane for life in the bike lane” on Hilton Head, Biddle said.
Tickets will be about $10 or $12, and the owners say they plan to keep drink prices reasonable to make sure the club stays full. Food will also be served. Biddle said he’ll be able to book national acts because he’s selling the Hilton Head show as a vacation gig. A. Whitney Brown, for example, likes to bike, so they’ll give him a rental and point him to the bike paths, he said.
“We’ve been working night and day to make it happen,” he said. And you can expect to see Biddle on stage warming up the crowds at the new club. “I’ll be the human sacrifice,” he said.


Sigh. My editors said they didn't get it. No slight against my editors, whom I respect and admire and trust for their journalistic opinions more often than not, but I worry that sometimes we're afraid to take risks, or to at least try to break out of the mold and make news slightly more interesting. Example: last year I wrote a story about Hilton Head's approval of a $93 million budget. Pretty dry stuff, so I compared the budget to the cost of the first Lord of the Rings movie to help people conceptualize the amount. When I opened the paper the next day, none of that made it in. My boss said "People who read those stories just want the facts. No one else is going to read it." My other editor privately told me he thought some other readers might actually have taken an interest in the story if the LOTR reference stayed in.

This picture seems appropriate, though I'm not sure which character is who in this situation.

Flood Waters, continued

Facebook status update: Tim is being hit from all sides this week.

Still reeling from the aforementioned company woes that signal worrisome things for this industry we still love, even if it doesn't love us back, things outside the newsroom have been rough. A and I kinda broke up the other night, something that was in the tea leaves from the first day she got back for the summer. But I say "kinda" because the edges of this situation are still too fuzzy to form a coherent picture.

The nut of this whole situation is that she's moving to San Francisco at the end of the summer with some friends from college, without a plan or a place or a job or any sort of guidance beyond their own survival instincts and an internal compass pointed West. This news came to me the first day she was back in town, us lying on my dark blue comforter and her face contorting into a frail, nervous smile when she told me, betraying her excitement to be plunging her car into the great American frontier, mixed with a vision of me waving goodbye, my legs stuck by an invisible cement to the East Coast.

So for a few weeks we talked about it and play acted like we were staring at a positive recovery instead of a terminal prognosis. I don't know if I had planned to stick through the summer with an attempt at blissful ignorance until the cold winds of September reality came around, or if my brain was overworked trying to put together a plan of action. After I returned from Bonnaroo, we took a walk outside the apartment and she forced the issue in the calm heat of a June evening. After lots of talking and an about-face into pragmatism, I said I think we'd be better just walking away from the situation now. The alternative was trudging along awkwardly until an inevitable messy conclusion at the end of the summer.

That sucked. In my head, I had the words all lined up and ready for a march out of my mouth, but I choked on them each time I tried. Finally I yanked them out, and the words hung over us for a few seconds until they were carried away on a summer gust into the full moon.

It'd be different if we were breaking up for a concrete reason, something cliched like infidelity or disrespect or just general douchebaggery on my part or hers. But breaking up because of situational inconsistencies hardly seems fair. Particularly after we had just held on for eight months of a long-distance relationship while she finished school.

I don't blame her for going to SF. In fact, part of me is more jealous that she was able to commit to a big plunge. There was a 21-year-old version of me that envisioned the same blind trek west after graduation; then an internship and final credits and the ho-hum first legs of the career ladder popped up and were tempting in their own way, I guess.

This whole thing between A and I, of course, was my first foray into the LTR (previous record: three months. Yes, I am aware I am lame now, but you should've saw me in high school) so I'm far from an expert in this kind of stuff. The age difference between us was never was much of an issue, especially since she acts more mature and responsible than I do most times. But the era of post-graduation is pretty intense, when all the tailwinds of four years of higher education rush up behind you and you feel you could be carried around the world just on your ambition. Those are some big forces to compete with.

We talked again the other night over a grilled cheese sandwich and Yuenglings and she said, Of course I was going to jump at an opportunity to do something when it came up.

That opportunity arose after months and months of hearing me reiterate the phrase "I don't know" every time the question of what I'm going to do next came up, so much the words wore deep, tiresome ruts into the walls of my apartment. She thought I was just going to wait around here for some opportunity to pop up; I thought if nothing popped up, whatever direction her life spun in might be the magnet that pull me away from here. We apparently never communicated this to each other. And there's the rub.

I found myself saying things I hadn't realized were in my head, like that in this time of newspaper implosion, family crisis and borderline insanity from the thought of being stuck on Hilton Head any longer, she was really all I had. Maybe that just wasn't enough.

The Flood Waters Just Burst Through the Door

Facebook status update: Tim is having a rough go of it after returning to the island.

In the newspaper business, we've become pretty used to the steady drum beat of bad news. It's about as common a fact of life now as the accusations of left-leaning bias (this is true, by the way. Thanks to seismological factors and unbalanced weight distribution from the construction of our new press, the building does in fact lean slightly leftwards. The advertising department tends to lean northward, the parapets tilt south and the minarets vote Republican) and opening up my inbox the day after writing a story about immigration to find several people accusing me of smuggling Guatemalan refugees in the back of my Ion. Slashed Christmas parties, rapidly shrinking news hole, eliminated columnists, smaller annual raises, decreasing resources, etc. etc. on until morning. It's all a wild and woolly experiment in minimalism, and I'm excited to be a part of it.

But this week came the biggest wet slap of bad news to hit the company yet, and I think it resonated with everyone like the start of a particularly nasty terminal cancer diagnosis. Layoffs of about 1,400 employees (10 percent of the total workforce) throughout the company would be needed to help tamp down the mounting debt and other financial problems that are crippling the newspapers, which, according to Corporate, has nothing at all whatsoever in any way to do with the purchase of Knight Ridder in 2006. Why would you even ask that?

So we lost a reporter and an ad person at our paper, relatively minor compared with the 200+ people cut from the Miami Herald. I returned from Bonnaroo on Tuesday and the newsroom had a somber, funeral parlor vibe. Hannah made "At Least We Still Have Our Jobs" cupcakes to try to cheer everyone up, which, I might add, is more than any of the bosses did to raise morale.

Everyone's whispering in the corners of the newsroom about what their plan Bs are, and whether there will be more cuts, which seems inevitable since these aren't even expected to make a significant dent in the shortfall. Waiting tables and professional derby girl seem to be the lead options right now.

The underlying sadness of all of this is not the loss of a few jobs, the lack of overtime pay or any of that other day-to-day stuff. That's all just a faucet dripping into the 500-year flood problem we're facing: as newspapers die, so does a key part of the nation's curiosity and public conversation. New media still have yet to step up and fill in the crucial investigation, public affairs and general broad information-finding role of newspapers. And the worst part is, the public seems perfectly content to remain uninformed. David Simon (Terp!) put it best in his brilliant op-ed for the Post: "Isn't the news itself still valuable to anyone? In any format, through any medium -- isn't an understanding of the events of the day still a salable commodity? Or were we kidding ourselves? Was a newspaper a viable entity only so long as it had classifieds, comics and the latest sports scores?"

There was a time in J-school before graduation when everyone talked about the big metro dailies they'd end up at, the years of papercuts and ink stains and harassment by city editors we'd suffer along the way, all with very little concern for our own financial prosperity or even public recognition. The rush was in the thwack of a newspaper against the front door in the morning containing the latest break in a case, the scandalous truth about public folly or just the power of storytelling that forced people from disparate communities to relate to one another through shared experience. The rush is still there for those who charge after it, but the people in corporate offices or on the street who have the power to protect and foster it are getting washed away in the flood.

UPDATE: Despite the fact that Orage Quarles is among the most awesomest of southern names that exists, this pretty much underscores the whole point.