Requiem for a fallen giant

 

Really, for the first few years I knew Ed Johnson-Ott, I had no idea how tall he was. Ed was using a wheelchair at that time, he the film critic for NUVO Newsweekly, and me the newly ensconced entertainment editor for the Indianapolis Star. 

I guess we were supposed to be rivals, but we came to be the very best of friends. For awhile his health improved and he was able to walk with just the aid of a cane, and I realized he was a big man, must've been well over six feet in his prime. As our relationship deepened from adversaries to colleagues to friends, I came to realize he was as gigantic a person as I've ever known.

Ed passed last night. He was a great writer, an even better friend, and an even better human being.

Please forgive me if this paean is as much about me as it is Ed. His loss has affected me on the deepest of levels. Since I moved to Indiana 16 years ago, I only have made three really important friendships. With Ed's passing and that of Star columnist Matt Tully a few years back, two are now gone. I'm not the type to make friendships easily, but they do tend to last. 

I'll carry Ed in my heart forever.

Before I fell in love with Ed as a person, I fell in love with his writing. There was just such a natural ease about it. He referred to his takes on movies as essays, not reviews, and often they were about him as much as they were the film. Reading one of Ed's pieces felt like sliding into a table at a diner for coffee with an old friend to chat about movies, even if it was the very first piece of his you'd ever read.

It affected my own writing style. My reviews had tended to grow into overly wordsmithed ruminations meant to impress the reader as much as inform. Lots of "vocab words" and complex run-on sentences. The sort of thing where you realize the writer is smart, and very much wants you to know how smart they are.

I knew I wanted to write more like Ed, and over the last dozen years I've adopted a simpler style that, if not exactly trying to emulate Ed's, at least took his gentler, more humanistic approach to heart. I even learned to put personal reflections in.

Ed dealt with a lot during the 16 years I knew him. His health, obviously, which landed him in and out of the hospital repeatedly over the last few years. On one occasion I went to visit him and found out he was at a different hospital from the last time. Ed had been in a terrible car accident decades ago where a friend was driving in an altered state and crashed (into a telephone pole, I think it was). His stomach was torn open, a disability that followed him the rest of his life, while the friend was unscathed.

I asked him once if he resented the guy who put him in a wheelchair, and he said not even for an instant. That's just the kind of guy Ed was: the man had no hatred in his heart. Even if he disagreed with you or thought you were behaving badly, he approached you with advice and kindness, never anger or harsh words. 

I remember one time we were out together and some young fellows were acting the fool. Ed, three feet lower in his wheelchair, spoke to them quietly but firmly about how great it was they were enjoying being young, but to have consideration for others while doing it. They stopped, listened and went about their way, a tad less rambunctious. 

Ed never had a lot of money, and his living situation continued to deteriorate over the years. At one time he made his living as a film critic, NUVO paying well enough and a syndication deal with other alt-weeklies making up the rest. It gradually went away, bit by bit, to the point NUVO had to stop paying him. 

Still, he wrote on. Never even considered quitting.

He lived in a ramshackle duplex in Downtown Indy. It was a scary neighborhood when I arrived in Indy, but has now gentrified with a huge, expensive condo building across the street now. His son, Donnie, lived with him for a few stretches, but it was a small place and they had their clashes as his adopted son desired his independence. 

The place got in worse and worse shape as Ed's health grew poorer again. He developed COPD and had to use oxygen tanks  to breathe. He had a car (given to him by a cousin) but stopped driving it because he felt he was no longer safe behind the wheel. We developed a system for press screenings where I would drive to his house, load him in his car with his tanks and wheelchair, go to the movie theater and then do it all in reverse afterward.

Ed lost a ton of weight as a result of his various ailments, which in a strange way actually helped him. His BP improved and the doctor said it was making it easier for him to breathe. He downscaled from the big, heavy oxygen tanks to a portable, lighter battery-powered machine that assisted his lungs. He loved his skinny new look, going from somewhere around 300 pounds when I met him to about 160.

He asked me to take some pictures on the stoop of his place to show off his hot new bod:

Still, he struggled to take care of himself and the place was a mess. Every time I came over I helped pick up, and suggested he consider an assisted living facility. He resisted, holding onto his freedom. He did agree to get a home healthcare aide, which helped for a time. He had a few of them over the span of a couple of years, some good, some not so good. One aide stole from him, but even then Ed was hesitant to report him to his employer.

I grew seriously worried when his mental state began to waver. Sometimes he'd be all there and other times he'd be confused and disoriented. He didn't have dementia, but the combination of his health challenges and medication would leave him addled.

One time I came over and there were pills strew all over the floor of his place, some of them crushed. I carefully put them back into their bottles (thank God for color coding) but the decision was finally made to give up his place. Fortunately Ed had turned 65 and could now receive Medicare, and moved into a nice rehabilitation center on the northeast side of Indy.

All the while, Ed kept reviewing movies. Maybe more sporadically than before, but whenever he could. He had another friend who would pick him up and drive to a movie theater, watch it together, and then work on the review collaboratively. Ed's fingers shook -- he had Parkinson's, on top of everything else -- and had lost the ability to type. Even a special laptop for people with disability I arranged for him from Easterseals Crossroads didn't help. So Ed would talk and the friend would write it down, and they'd turn it into an essay.

Even then, Ed worried that the work wasn't representative of his voice. I told him honestly that reading them, it sounded just like the same ol' Ed. I think this reassurance was important to him. Even with all his problems, he couldn't stand the idea of letting his readers down.

Ed seemed happy at the rehab center. He liked not having to worry about meals or meds, it was all taken care of. The last picture I took of him was January of last year. He wanted me to post it on his Facebook page, because in all the moves and complications, he'd lost access to his social media and email accounts. He wanted everyone to know he was doing OK.

I'd go see him every few months, bring him food or talk on the phone. It could be hard to get ahold of him. Most of the time he wouldn't answer the phone in his room, and voicemails never seemed to find their way to him. You'd just have to call and hope he picked up.

A couple of times when I saw him he was very confused. One time they'd had to move him out of his room because of a fire alarm, and he became convinced that they'd relocated him to another facility without telling him. He finally had a moment of clarity.

"Chris, is this one of those moments where an old person becomes confused about where they are and what's going on, but everything's actually OK?"

But then I'd go back a few weeks later and it'd be Ed, same old Ed, with all his brilliance and heart.

Ed and I talked a lot, about the deepest stuff that you really only share with a spouse or best friend. We shared our worries, our hopes, our disappointments, our sadness and pain. I'd had a lot of the latter over the last few years, with family deaths, job loss and my own health issues. We talked about our relationships, sex, insecurities, body image, all of it. 

He once reminisced about when he was younger and riding a bike with a lover on a hot day, and they took their shirts off. His boyfriend had a camera and took a picture, and he remembered being mortified at the time of his paunch and love handles being captured for all eternity. He still had that photo, and looked at from time to time to remind himself that he had no reason to be ashamed of his body. 

Ed had found his way to a place of practicing self-love long before anybody had given a name to it. What's more, he encouraged me to follow his trail. 

(Though it's something I still struggle with. Even today, I hate to be photographed and, though I'm on television every week, I never watch the footage.)

I hope people will remember Ed as a film critic. He truly was one of the great writers in Indiana history, certainly a giant of Hoosier journalism. There should be tributes and memorials. 

The Indiana Film Journalists Association exists because of him. In late 2008, after I'd been laid off from the Indy Star, Ed encouraged me to keep reviewing in whatever capacity I could. He mentioned that he and former Star critic Bonnie Britton (gone now as well) had tried to organize an Indiana critics group years earlier, but nothing ever came of it. 

He and I decided to try again, and found four other critics to join our little club. Our goal was to draw attention to our own work by giving out awards, and lobby for screenings that the studios had allowed to dwindle to a tiny trickle. But we also wanted to encourage young writers to try their hand at film criticism. Today we have two dozen IFJA members, and the studios actively solicit our attention.

As important a writer as Ed was, I hope people will remember the human being even moreso. He truly was one of the best people I've ever known. He always chose kindness over hatred, engagement over isolation, and listening over shouting.

We came from opposite places in a lot of ways: politically, geographically, sexually, professionally. But Ed never let it divide us.

I haven't been able to see Ed in person over the past year, which breaks my heart. But with a breathing disease and now a senior citizen living in an assisted facility, he was in the highest risk group for COVID. Since he couldn't access email regularly, even after the IFJA bought a tablet for him, occasional phone calls were all we had.

We tried to arrange a meeting in December, after we'd heard the rehab center was allowing outdoor meetings. I picked up his favorite Indian chicken dish as a treat, and had one more. 

The studios send DVD screeners to critics at year-end to make sure they see all their movies for awards voting, and it turns out Ed's had been piling up at his old house. The guy who lived there had been saving them, and got hold of my email address. I put together the whole pile, dozens of films, in a box along with a portable DVD player and headphones.

Alas, we could not meet. The facility was still not allowing in-person visits, even outdoors. So I dropped off the food, DVDs and player for him to enjoy. We talked later about how much that meant to him. I take great joy in knowing he spent the holidays in the company of a bounty of the love he and I both loved. 

Our last phone call was a few weeks ago, and Ed sounded strong and hale. Funny, smart, wonderful. Vintage Ed. 

He told me he loved me. I told him the same. It was something we'd started saying to each other about 10 years ago. In my upbringing, men aren't supposed to say that to each other, and other than my father, Ed was the first one I'd ever said it to. I only wish I'd said it earlier and more often.

We'll always have the movies, Ed... and, so much more.

What I did with my settlement check

KARMA UPDATE: A few hours after I made this video, I received a letter in the mail from my mortgage company. It said my escrow was in overpayment, so I would be receiving a refund check that was nearly the same amount as the settlement check I donated.

I now believe in karma.

UPDATE, PART DEUX: A couple of other sources have linked to my post or given their own take, which you can read yourself:

Ruth's blog
Indy SPJ

Diary of a rabble-rouser

I am not, by nature, an outgoing person. I think I chose journalism in part because it involves learning about others without revealing too much of yourself.

The standards of objectivity preclude one from taking part in overt political demonstrations, even up to putting bumper stickers on your car or elections signs on your property. This mindset inevitably leads to a feeling of setting oneself apart from others: You're an observer, not a participant.

So today I found myself in the curious position of participating in my first public protest -- well, sort of. I stood for a little over six hours in the August sun in front of a union hall, trying to convince my former Indy Star co-workers to vote against an onerous contract that included, among many other nasty items, dropping the arbitration for myself and six others employees laid off in December in blatant violation of seniority rules. I, along with one other person, handed out flyers and talked to people as they were going in to vote.

In the grand history of demonstrations and union agitation, my actions rated about a 0.07 on the Richter scale. But I thought I'd share my thoughts about the day. (Hey, this way I'm still kinda/sorta a reporter.)

• Believe it or not, my biggest concern prior to the protest was the sun. I am quite fair-skinned, and can sunburn in literally 10 minutes. My second concern was my back -- it tends to lock up after a lot of standing in one place. I made sure to bring a fold-up chair and heavy-duty sunscreen to address these seemingly minor issues.
• I had to stay outside because the music hall was an official balloting site, so no campaigning can take place inside. I also checked it out with the union president to make sure they had no objections; they didn't. One of the officers even kindly offered me pizza.
  
• I didn't want to have to bother with running back to my car to feed the parking meter every couple of hours -- one of my goals was not to leave my post unmanned for even a minute. So I parked in a free spot way north and walked about 15 minutes to the music hall.
• Checking my reflection in the hall's glass doors, I worried that I would look scary to people. I was wearing shorts and a bright red polo shirt, but also had on a union cap and prescription sunglasses to protect my head. It has a subtle but certain psychological effect when people can't see your eyes. I tried to remember to remove the shades whenever potential voters neared.
• The biggest trick of the day was figuring out who of those walking near were voters and who were just passers-by. I recognized about half my co-workers, but had to make some educated guesses on others. I ended up unintentionally accosting a couple of non-combatants when I asked if they were voting today, and they were just trying to catch the bus.
  
• The flow of voters started at a trickle, just one in the first 20 minutes, but picked up as the lunch hour wore on. About half the people were willing to stay and talk a little bit about the case.
• I finally got to meet the Star's sports columnist, Bob Kravitz. The sports guys often work crazy hours and are out of the office much of the time, Bob more so than others, and I'd joked that in my 3.5 years working there I never ran into the paper's highest-profile employee. We chatted for a few minutes, and he made some funny but intemperate comments about the contract situation I won't repeat here.
  
• Perhaps I was being paranoid, but every time a police cruiser drove by, I worried about being rousted and arrested as a loiterer. Hey, considering the strong-arm tactics that have been brought to bear in this process, an anonymous 911 call is not that far a stretch. I even prepared for this contingency by printing out a message from the guild president granting me his blessing to protest, as long as I stayed outside. Nothing happened.
• Of all the loopy scenarios I imagined happening, I didn't foresee the one that did: A counter-protester. Yes, really. One of the former Guild officers showed up around 2:30 p.m. or so and started handing out her own flyers urging people to approve the contract, arguing that a terrible contract is better than no contract. I suppose I could have argued with her that no contract that goes unenforced is worth anything, but I thought it best to be pleasant. We exchanged small talk and I offered her some sunscreen, which she slathered on copiously. Interestingly, she herself was laid off last month, but her case is not being grieved by the union because even though she had been there a decade, she was the least-senior person in her department. She departed after 90 minutes or so. I did not object in any way to her presence -- after all, she was exercising the same rights as me -- but I did find it very puzzling.
• James Yee, one of the other seven awaiting arbitration, showed up promptly at 3 p.m., as promised, to spell me for a while. I hopped over to Bazbeaux for a bathroom break, some AC and refreshments. James ended up staying the entire rest of the day, which pleased me mightily. I enjoyed the company, and I think it made a lot stronger statement to have more than one of us there.
• I asked as many people as possible if they knew the amount of the monetary settlement the seven of us would be getting. I would say about 80 percent of them did not. As I told the guild officers, I wish they had never introduced the idea of these settlements into the mix, because it resulted in a lot of misinformation. Some guild members were under the impression that we were partners in the negotiations and welcomed the settlement. It was simply appalling. When told the exact amount, people's jaws nearly bounced off the hot pavement.
• A few people waved off my offer of a flyer, smiling and saying "Oh, I'm already voting no!" In general, I was very pleased by how receptive people were to our petitioning.
  
• In fact, during the entire day only a single person gruffly refused a flyer or to talk. Ironically, it was one of the guild officers (past and/or present).
• The conditions weren't too bad for the first couple of hours, when the sun was east of the music hall and provided some bit of shadow. It evaporated by 1:30 p.m. or so, and we were left in Sol's full glare. My sunscreen did its job where I applied it, but I ended up getting mildly burned through my shirt. My back did OK, too, although it was getting pretty stiff after 5 p.m. My throat was sore and I sounded hoarse. I spotted a fellow features denizen walking on the other side of the street and hailed him, but it kind of came out as a croak.
  
• I do know that I swayed at least a handful of people's votes, because they told me so. As a lifetime observer, it was thrilling to know you're having a direct impact on the democratic process. I tried to tell everyone that no matter how they were voting, I thanked them for participating.
• I arrived home to find dinner nearly ready. This is a rare thing in our household, since even before my layoff I did almost all of the cooking. It was rather nice.
• The guild president called around 6:30 with the results: The contract was approved 56-45. I had rather expected this, but still held fantasies of a rejection, perhaps even a resounding one. So my last, best and final chance of again working for the Indy Star has evaporated.

So did my mini-protest accomplish anything? I had warned my wife that it was entirely possible that all of my agitation could end badly. I could have pissed off the company, alienated some colleagues and still lost.

Is that what has transpired? Was it worth it? Once it was clear that the company was demanding the union throw the seven of us under a bus, should I have stepped off the curb and indulgently placed my head under the bumper? Compromised my principles and my rights to make it easier on my former co-workers?

I honestly don't know the answer to these questions. All I know is that I stood outside all day and did not merely observe and report, but got involved and made my voice heard.

I lost. But if there really is nobility in defeat -- if that's not just a story we tell to make ourselves feel better -- then perhaps I found a little of it.

Thank you

So, as I posted earlier, the contract vote for the Indy Star guild passed today, on a narrow vote of 56-45. I'm obviously disappointed, as this agreement includes dropping the arbitration for the seven of us who have been waiting since last December for our hearing.

But rather than slink and sulk, I see it as a day for holding my head high. I can honestly say that I did everything in my power to convince people to vote against this awful, unfair contract. I (along with James Yee) spent the afternoon in front of the music hall, handing out flyers and talking to people as they went in to vote.

So, rather than vomit up a bunch of accusations and bile, I want to take this opportunity to thank my former colleagues.

• Thank you to the Guild officers who have spent months negotiating with what might as well be a brick wall. I know you hate this contract almost as much as I do. And I know you feel like this is the best deal you could get. There's a toll one pays in your position -- professional, psychological and spiritual. It is not unappreciated.
• Thank you to the other six of the "December Seven," as we have been dubbed in recent blog posts and conversations. I appreciate the efforts you made on behalf of all of us. No one wants to be tossed into a lifeboat, but having crew mates like you makes it a little easier.
  
• Thank you to everyone who took a few minutes today to stop and talk to myself and/or James Yee about our situation and how this vote affects us. Some of you I was meeting for the first time; some I already counted as close friends. It was satisfying either way.
• Thank you to those who voted "yes" on this contract. Yes, I know it may seem strange to be offering kudos to those who effectively sealed our fate. But I know that each of you had your own decision to make, based on your own personal circumstances. Were our positions reversed, I might well have voted the same way. My sincerest hope is that you never find yourself in my situation, depending on former co-workers to defend your rights.
  
• Most of all, I want to thank the 45 who voted against this contract, and in favor of keeping our arbitration. You chose to take a stand, and just because it failed does not mitigate the fact that you stood up for what was right and true. Bless you.
  

A message to my Indy Star Colleagues: Please vote no

Newspaper Guild members at the Star are set to vote on a contract proposal this Tuesday. They are voting on a counter-proposal to the company's last, best offer that included a 12 percent pay cut. Gannett agreed to reduce it to a 10 percent cut in exchange for dropping the arbitration for seven employees improperly laid off in December, including myself.

On behalf of the seven of us, we're asking you to please vote no.

Obviously, this agreement would be detrimental to us, as we would lose our right to have our case heard before an arbitrator in exchange for a pittance of a monetary settlement, which we had no hand in negotiating.

But beyond the fate of us seven, the reason we need to uphold the arbitration is that no contract is worth anything unless we're willing to enforce it.

I'll be attending the informational meeting today from 2-4 p.m. today, and will be happy to answer questions from anyone who wants to contact me. My e-mail address is posted here on my blog under my profile.

More losses in Indy Star features

When I started work at the Indy Star in June 2005, there was a directory of features reporters taped next to the mailbox for our department. It listed 16 names. This did not include editorial staff at INtake (which became Indy.com, which became Metromix Indy), which at the time numbered about a dozen.

As an old editor once told me, "Politicians lie, but numbers don't." And the numbers for Star features reporting tell a very demoralizing tale.

After a couple of new departures, the number of features reporters at the Star will be down to an eye-popping eight. This includes both the old Star features and INtake staff, which were combined in January 2007.

Today I learned that Neal Taflinger, the prolific nightlife and music reporter/Web guy, has given his notice. I'm not revealing any secrets, since Neal -- known about town as Taffy -- has posted his move on social media. Joining Taffy on his way out the door is Konrad Marshall, arts reporter, who had already announced his attention to leave at the end of August.

Here's a roundup of the survivors. The beats listed are somewhat amorphous, since as you can imagine everyone is picking up other bits of coverage these days:

T.J. Banes - home/garden
Amy Bartner - nightlife/dining
Barb Berggoetz - health/fitness
Jenny Elig - fashion/lifestyles
Jay Harvey - jazz/classical music/dance/theater
Jolene Ketzenberger - food/dining
Cathy Kightlinger - Talk columnist
David Lindquist - pop music

My best wishes to those remaining, who carry on the thankless task of trying to keep lifestyle and arts coverage going.

Where are all the Metromix boxes?

I work out at the Cardinal Fitness in Broad Ripple, so it's usually a pretty easy affair to swing by any of the 6,792 banks of newspaper boxes where the free papers are distributed. My gym also keeps a rack of Metromix, the Indy Star's weekly "youth" tabloid, inside the main door -- although not, for some reason, the city's alternative weekly, NUVO.

(For those who can't keep up with all the changes, INtake begat Indy.com the Magazine, which begat Metromix Indy. And despite the Star's insistence that it's aimed at young readers, every reader survey I ever saw showed the average reader was in their late 40s.)

But last week, I picked up my usual copy of NUVO, and noticed that the red Metromix box was gone from its usual spot on the corner of College and Guilford. So I started walking around to another one of the collection of boxes -- same thing, no Metromix. They still had the Metromix rack inside my gym, but it only had last week's edition.

Finally, after searching around I eventually found a Metromix box with a current edition in it. But that still doesn't explain where the rest of them went. Without exageration, there used to be at least a couple dozen of the red boxes spread throughout Broad Ripple. I can only find two now.

Have they been stolen? Pulled by the Star? I'm wondering if the Star is intentionally cutting back on distribution of Metromix as a cost-saving measure. Interestingly, they had an humorous item in the paper a few weeks ago saying that their box by Jimmy John's had been swiped, and asking for its return. Did the rest follow suit? Is this happening in other areas, too?

If anyone hears about what's going on, please leave a comment.

Indy Star layoffs again decimate features

The word is trickling in here and there about the mass layoffs being conducted at the Indy Star. Apparently they are again disproportionately affecting the features department.

Here are confirmed names:

Zach Dunkin, travel reporter
John Hawn, features copy desk chief
Channon Seifert, features art director
Chris Jordan, features page designer
Marisol Gouveia, copy editor/page designer
Jacqueline Thomas, senior editor/features
Konrad Marshall, arts reporter

I should note Konrad gave his notice that he was leaving, but is being included as part of these layoffs at his request to spare someone else their job. Very stand-up move, my friend.

My heart goes out to all these folks. If it wasn't apparent already, "soft" news is not something that's valued at the Star. As someone who grew up reading newspapers primarily for the lifestyle and arts coverage, it pains me to think about what these losses will mean for local features reporting. Not to mention the impact on these people's lives.

Once again, it appears management has decided to completely ignore the contract regarding doing layoffs by seniority. But I'll leave that to the Guild to address.

Congratulations

In this time when it seems like the only news about newspapers is soul-crushingly bad, it's always welcome to hear about the good work they still do.

On that note, I'd like to congratulate my many former Indianapolis Star colleagues who won awards at the Indiana chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists award contest. The Star had another impressive year, picking up 19 first-place wins and 38 all together.

I'd especially like to laud Neal Taflinger and Konrad Marshall, who won first and third place, respectively, in the lifestyle feature category. Feature departments at the Star and most newspapers have been especially hard hit during the economic downturn, so it warms the heart to see them honored.

I myself won second place in the A&E feature category. It was for an IndySunday cover story I did about the rising influence of African-American film.

I do have a cautionary note, though, to all those who won and especially to those who thought they might and didn't: Don't let an award, or lack of, lay too heavily on your ego. If they're honest, the people who run these contests will confess how arbitrary the process is. It falls to a tiny group of journalists, usually out-of-staters, to pass judgment, with their own biases and predilections.

I remember one of the biggest awards I won in the early part of my career, for the SPJ regional contest covering the entire South. I won the top award, known as the Green Eyeshade, for breaking news about a shooting in rural Florida. I was about 26 years old at the time and over the moon. Then I submitted the same story, in the same category, to the state SPJ contest and didn't even rate an honorable mention.

So, to those who won: Cherish this award, but don't let it go to your head. To those who didn't: Keep plugging; your time will come.

More newspaper layoffs: 50 in Miami Herald newsroom, 4 features writers

There's a list going around of the 50 journalists who lost their jobs at the Miami Herald today in the latest whackety-whack that is to today's newspaper industry what the sound of the teletype was a generation ago.

You'll notice that there are four features reporters' names on it. I counted one business reporter and one sportswriter, and a couple of bureau reporters.

Sadly, this proportion seems to echo what's happening when newspapers make cuts: Features writers are always the first to go, and always the department hit hardest. Even though features is generally one of the smallest departments at any paper, a majority of the reporting jobs lost usually come from there.

When they laid off 20 of us from the newsroom of the Indy Star in December, nearly one-third of the bodies were from the features department (or, using the term employed by senior managers and no one else, the "My Life" department). Four reporters, a copy editor and a page designer lost their jobs. (Technically, the designer was part of the visuals department, but she worked full-time on features products.)

No sportwriters, business writers or any metro reporters were laid off. After features, the department hardest hit was the Northside bureau. If you look at the sort of things they write about in the North tabloid, you'll see that it looks more like a features section than a metro section.

It's depressing that features is always at the bottom of the totem pole, everywhere you go. I spent the first half of my career on the "hard news" side, so I saw first-hand how devalued folks on the "soft news" side were (starting with that term.)

Traditionally, features was where the best writers (i.e., wordsmiths) in the newsroom gravitated. It was the place where they tried to do real storytelling, serious coverage (including criticism) of the arts, and essentially breathe some life into the paper. Yes, there was often some silly and frivolous stuff in the features section, but it balanced out the more sobering (especially these days) timbre of the rest of the paper.

Features is, if you will, the dessert of a satisfying newspaper meal. It should be the part you really want to read, as opposed to the stuff you feel you must read to be a well-informed citizen.

But, when push comes to shove, and dollars turn into cents, newsroom managers in Indianapolis and Miami, and everywhere, always turn to the features department first. Always it was, and always it shall be...

Reflections on the Seattle P-I

Even as you're reading this, they may have already announced the closing down of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The Hearst-owned daily had been put up for sale with a deadline of 60 days, with pretty much the full knowledge that no buyer would come forward.

I feel bad for all the fine journalists there who are about to lose their jobs, as I did for all the folks at the Rocky Mountain News, which also folded recently. The San-Francisco Chronicle and Tuscon Citizen are also in danger of going under.

The PI has special significance for me, though, in that for a number of years I'd hoped to work there. Some years ago I went to a features journalism conference, and a senior editor from the PI (I won't say who) approached to tell me that they had been one of the judges in the arts criticism contest that I had won, and how impressed they were with my stuff.

I can't begin to tell you what this meant to me, personally and professionally. I was doing fine work at a smaller paper, but I felt like I was stuck playing Triple-A ball, so to speak. To have a big-city metro editor tell me I had the goods ... well, I was over the moon.

Anyway, we kept in touch and there was some fairly serious talk for awhile about becoming film critic there, although it never materialized. Movie critic Bill Arnold has kept the torch burning there until the PI's demise.

So it's ironic for me to think about. Here I am, having moved to Indianapolis nearly four years ago without knowing a soul here, now happily married and part of the community but laid off from the Star. If the sands of fate had shifted but a little, I could be in Seattle waiting for my paper to close its doors. Either way, it's sobering and it's sad.

Why I still take the newspaper

Before heading off to the gym this morning, I followed my usual routine of reading the newspaper where I was formerly employed. Some people might wonder why I still do this, paying money to an institution that cut me loose so readily, and for a product that has clearly diminished. It's especially hard for someone like myself who is very interested in arts & entertainment and other feature coverage, and The Indianapolis Star has essentially eliminated the features section four days a week.

Oh, I know there's something included in the paper called an "Extra" section that the Star honchos would claim is the features section, but let's be blunt here: It's the classified section, filled out with comics and puzzles. There's been one small "story" at the top of the section each day, but it's a five- or six-inch blip with little substance. (I'm not being snooty; I had to write plenty of these myself over the years.)

The comics, puzzles, TV listings and syndicated columns are what we in the features biz call "furniture" -- stuff that occupies the same space day after day, and can be slapped in with minimal effort and editing.

They'd talked about these changes for months before they happened, and the question everyone in features department had was whether they were simply folding the features section into an existing part of the paper, as they have done with the business section, or actually eliminating all the daily features content except for the furniture. Now that we've seen it, it's clearly the latter.

So why do I still take the paper? Part of it is habit. I grew up with parents who read the paper every day (and still do), and it rubbed off. I can't imagine my day without thumbing through the sections, even though there's less and less of what I like to read. Some days "reading the paper" consists of a 5-minute skim.

Another part of it is reading the bylines of friends and former colleagues. Matt Tully takes a lot of beating in the Indy blogosphere, but he's a good friend and a good columnist, and I want to hear what he has to say. Ditto for David Lindquist, Shari Rudvasky, Mike Wells, Erika Smith and many others whose bylines I consistently enjoyed.

But the most basic reason is the one I would give to people when I was still employed by a newspaper, and they asked why they should pay for what they can get online for free. It's that news, or content, or whatever you want to call it, doesn't come free -- the good stuff, anyway. If I want to see this stuff, whether online or on paper, I feel I should pay something for it. Otherwise, it's likely to just go away ... suddenly, or bit by little bit.