Mark Purdy: Lessons from Dad

The newshook was Father's Day. The column, by San Jose Mercury New sportswriter Mark Purdy, was an ode to the life lessons he learned from his father -- a lawyer, judge and part-time basketball ref in small-town Ohio.

He recalls what he learned from his father while, as a young boy, he tagged along to games on Saturday afternoons. He loved every minute of it -- except for hearing the folks in the stands curse at his dad whenever they didn't like a call. Wherein comes the lesson that applies to life in general -- and journalism in particular.

From the column:

At some point, Dad must have worried about what I was experiencing in the stands because one night over a truck-stop burger, he told me:

"Look, when people are calling me a so-and-so, it isn't because they actually think I'm a so-and-so. They don't know me at all as a person. What they are really saying to me is, 'That foul call you just whistled makes me believe you are a so-and-so.' Don't worry about it. You should only get concerned if a good friend or a neighbor tells you that you're a so-and-so."

I nodded, but I didn't think too deeply about it — until many years later. After I landed my dream gig of writing a sports column, I discovered that some people responded to my opinions with vile phone calls or letters or (eventually) e-mails. It was then that I flashed back to that discussion. I realized that Dad had prepared me not just to view a game with as objective an eye as possible, but also how to deal with people who are obscenely personal in their criticism.

Do the job with integrity. That's what matters. bk

three quick linx..

...on the future of journalism:

1. Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker (with whom I rarely agree) offers the following insight on the implosion of journalism as we once knew it. Read the whole column, where she castigates Rush Limbaugh and others, here.

The biggest challenge facing America's struggling newspaper industry may not be the high cost of newsprint or lost ad revenue, but ignorance stoked by drive-by punditry.

2. Go here to read San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll's reflections on the hangover from Saturday's vote on the new union contract. Call it melancholy:

I try to view this without nostalgia. Of course I grew up with newspapers; of course I romanticized them. My first day in the city room of The Chronicle, I felt like a prince of the realm, even though I was editing the crossword puzzle. But it seems to me that the death of newspapers would rapidly contract the world, even as the Internet is supposed to be expanding it.

Yes, we'll know about something cool that happened in Bangalore, but will we know about something uncool? Will we know about the problem with the sewer system? Would you click on that? No, but you might read it. And if you read a lot, then maybe you'd begin to have a visceral sense of the problems with the world's water supply, and what we might to do to help.

I know that if Britney Spears takes her shirt off in South Africa, I'll know about it. I am not at all sure that if four young protesters in Cape Town have their shirts ripped to shreds by bullets from police rifles, I'll ever know about it. That's what newspapers do: They connect, using the most accessible technology of all. People who do not have electricity can still have a newspaper.

And 3. Finally, go here to read about Nancy Pelosi's suggestion to the DOJ antitrust division "to look at the 'market realities' of competition in the digital age when reviewing mergers or 'other arrangements' of competing newspapers. The local angle? A collaborative venture that merges the Chron with the Merc, something that I've heard whispered more than once. Years ago, such consolidation would have sent shivers up and down the spines of anyone even tangentially related to journalism. Today, it's just one more sign of desperate -- and changing -- times.

From the story:

The Justice Department has traditionally been concerned that a merger of papers in the same market would give the surviving entity too much power to set prices for advertising.

Newspapers, however, have argued that the market for advertising is much broader, including online news and advertising competitors such as Craigslist, Google and Yahoo.

Antitrust regulators' other concern has been with preserving the number of editorial voices in a community. For that reason, when newspapers have combined operations in the past, they have been restricted to back office, printing, circulation and other non-news functions.

death of the dream

The front section of today's San Jose Mercury News was eight pages. One of them was a full-page ad for Fry's electronics. Another was the (singular) op-ed page.

Not hard to do the math: six pages of front section news, minus ads. bk

R.I.P. San Francisco Chronicle?!

Another heartbreak. And a bit of a coincidence -- or is that irony -- given this morning's post.

MarketWatch reported this afternoon that the Hearst Corporation said today that without "critical cuts" within the next few weeks, it will be forced to sell or close San Francisco's daily newspaper. Whether you liked the paper or not, you've still got to root for the survival of this 144-year-old fixture of the city's history. What will replace it?

I noticed today that the front section of the San Jose Merc was all of eight pages.

Thanks, Andrea, for the tip and the link. bk

life follows capstone ... again

Back in spring of 2006, capstoner Katie Dooling (clearly, a playwright in journalist's clothing) chose to do her capstone as a narrative piece on the folks who live in mobile home communities in the Bay Area.

Who thinks of that?

It was well-reported and beautifully written, loaded with detail, a sense of place, and fascinating characters. More importantly, she uncovered a lot of the inherent insecurity of residents who owned their homes -- but not the patch of land they sat on.

Apparently she jumped the Merc -- and life itself -- by a couple of years. Mercury News photograher Dai Sugano won an Emmy Award Monday for his video of mobile home residents in Sunnyvale, who had been uprooted when their mobile home park recently closed.

You can see Sugano's piece here: thoroughly compelling video that immediately engages you and reminds you why visuals are an important piece of news websites. Still, Katie was able to achieve that same sense of engagement -- with words on paper. bk

signs of the times

For sale signs, that is.

We heard rumors a few weeks ago, but now it's apparently official. The San Jose Mercury reports today that its longtime headquarters and surrounding land are up for sale. In the story, Merc publisher Mac Tully says that the newspaper could save money by moving to smaller offices. A relevant point, seeing as how the workforce has decreased exponentially since the paper was taken over by Denver-based MediaNews Group a few years back. Tully notes that an adjacent parcel of land -- to be converted into a big-box shopping site -- just sold for somewhere near $27 million.

One question is whether the money saved by the sale and proposed move to smaller digs would be used to rebuild the paper -- which almost shrinks as you hold it -- into a news organization that will again serve Silicon Valley as it once did. The other question, slightly scarier, is where those new digs might be. Tully acknowledges that the paper has not yet found a new location.

Coincidentally, my intro class just turned in an assignment in which they created their own blueprints for the news media of the future, with special consideration to the principles laid out in The Elements of Journalism, Kovach and Rosenstiel's treatise on the relationship of journalism and democracy. These j-kids represent the generation of fresh-thinking, techno-savvy future journalists who may one day lead the news media through these scary growing pains into something the old-timers have yet to imagine. Their blueprints reflect a certain amount of idealism and passion for all that journalism could be, something that has been drained away -- along with the money -- from so many daily newspapers today.

Maybe folks like Tully should pay attention. bk

p.s. More dismal news. The Boston Herald reported last week that Portland, Maine "could become one of the first American cities to lose its daily newspaper. The Portland Press Herald said in court papers last month that it is hemorrhaging so badly that it may have to be dismantled if it isn't sold."