Category: newspapers
I had lunch yesterday at the Riverside Market with two old friends from the Sun-Sentinel (one down from DC) and a former bookseller who used to hang out with folks from the newsroom.
As ex-newspaper people do, we drank beer (Swamp Ape getting an enthusiastic thumbs up), remembered colleagues, cursed managing editors (old m.e. wounds heal slowly). I told the story of the m.e. who, when she was at another paper, reportedly said in a news meeting, after the photo editor had announced that two polar bear cubs had just been born in the city zoo: "Nobody wants to see pictures of polar bear cubs."
On the way out, Rob mentioned a reporter who was no longer with us. He said that at his funeral a colleague got up and began his eulogy: "I was the last in a long line of people who thought they were Bill's editor."
I was in a post office in Boca Raton yesterday, addressing an envelope, when the woman at the counter turned and asked, "Mr. Swick?"
"Yes," I said happily.
"I thought that was you," she said. "I read you all the time in the Sun-Sentinel."
"Thanks very much," I said, "but you know, I haven't been in the paper for a long time. I was laid off in 2008."
And instead of marveling at her ability to imagine a presence for nearly four years, she sympathized with me over my unemployment.
While she did, it occurred to me that newspapers were quite possibly on to something. (Because this was not the first time that this had happened.) I wondered if publishers had discovered that they could lay people off - even high-profile people, with columns and mug shots - and readers would think that they were still there, appearing week after week in their usual places. In my particular case, I had appeared in the Travel section every other week for 19 years; the idea of my now not being there was, to some subscribers - even after four years - more inconceivable than the idea of my disappearance. This despite the fact that, instead of my words and my face, readers now see those of Rick Steves. That I am to some of them more real than Rick Steves pleases me immeasurably.
Yesterday at Bob's News I stood by the pile of Playboy's and Penthouse's and paid for my New York Times.
"Enjoy your paper," the cashier said as he handed me my change.
"Thanks," I said. "I read it for the articles."
My friends and old Sun-Sentinel colleagues John and Greg performed in the open mic portion of the monthly Songwriters Showcase at the Broward Center last night, interrupting the fairly steady stream of guitars with a little piano music. Like true professionals, they wanted a beer when the evening was over, so I led them down Andrews to Tap 42.
They knew it as Brownie's. Taking a seat in the garden, John remembered Ernie's (which is still around) as the place people would go - even the editor-in-chief - after Sunday afternoon softball games. Mention of the old Cajun House brought up more names: The Governor's Club, Banyan's (now Chima), Dancing Bear and La Brasserie (now YOLO), Bar Amici (M Global Tapas Bar) and the more recently departed O'Hara's. Most of the bars are replaced; the journalists aren't.
This morning, reading the front-page Herald story on the Golden Anniversary of Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, I learned that the lot where I park in downtown Miami for my Monday evening travel writing classes once held the parish school of Gesu Catholic Church in which Belen began its life in the United States. And that the school, which was founded in Havana in 1854, counts among its alumni Fidel Castro.
Three years ago this week I was laid off from the Sun-Sentinel. I was in Australia, speaking at a travel writing festival, when I got an e-mail from a woman in the newsroom I rarely spoke to. She asked me to call her immediately. I called her when I got home - I wasn't going to phone from halfway around the world to learn that I was no longer employed - and was told that the position of travel editor had been eliminated.
The next morning I drove to Deerfield Beach for my exit interview. The jet lag made it seem even more surreal. I handed over my parking garage pass, my ID badge, my corporate credit card. I had forgotten my camera, so I told the woman in human resources that I would bring it to the newsroom.
Downtown I turned in my camera (which still used film), cleaned out my desk, received a disk containing all of my files and e-mails, and said my farewells. Then I walked out of the newsroom for the last time.
No mention was ever made in the Travel section - where my picture had appeared above my column every other week for 19 years - of my departure. Like in the old Soviet Union, I simply disappeared.