Mike Dunne, The Sacramento Bee’s food and wine critic, wrote the following blog post on Sept. 12 about colleagues who’d accepted buyouts from The McClatchy Company, The Bee’s corporate parent.
That column mysteriously vanished from Dunne’s blog.
Not that mysteriously, actually. If anything, I’m shocked it was up even for a few hours. The way in which Dunne’s farewell post was yanked seems consistent with how most newspapers routinely handle the indelicate news of their employees’ growing exodus: They don’t report it. Maybe they believe newspaper readers are so stupid we won’t notice missing bylines and shrinking content.
Although Dunne is upbeat and kind in his descriptions about his dearly departing co-workers, his column has a haunting, familiar ring to it. It’s a depressing reminder of how our once-proud, beloved newspapers are strangled and gutted every day to extract every last morsel for the gluttonous corporate giant. (Check out today’s Record Searchlight, skinny as an empty toilet-paper tube, minus its D section).
These are mournful days for those of us who love a good newspaper. In Redding we’ve watched our local paper dump people, outsource some writers and advertising production work, and amputate its circulation areas.
Thank you, Mike Dunne, for having the courage to write such a moving tribute to your colleagues.
Godspeed to The Bee employees who’ve left your long careers. Best wishes to those who remain behind, charged with doing more with less as you watch your paper circle the drain. To you all, we at Food for Thought: A News Cafe, offer a hopeful example and message: Independent journalism is alive and well online.
As proof, Dunne’s column below is an exclusive for Food for Thought: A News Cafe readers.
Too bad you won’t find it in The Sacramento Bee.
Less Honey From The Hive
By Mike DunneFor the next edition of “Papers of Permanence,” the history of The McClatchy Company, author Steve Wiegand will need to include at least a footnote about Sept. 12, 2008.
That’s the day when The Sacramento Bee, one of several newspapers published by The McClatchy Company, bids goodbye to many of its “best and brightest,” to not exactly coin a phrase.
To me, the loss is personal, from two perspectives. For one, I’ve read and relied upon these people each morning for years. I’ve looked to them to inform and entertain me with intelligence, color and wit.
Secondly, I’ve looked forward to seeing them each working morning. Ten of the people who will walk out of The Bee for the last time today or in the near future have been colleagues and friends in the features department, many of them for more than two decades. I’m not a personally expressive person, given to hugs and that sort of thing, but I have to admit I’ve teared up since learning the other day I’d no longer be greeted by Bob’s biting insight, Dan’s keen humor, Janet’s infectious excitement.
They are people who have been responsible for helping give The Bee its substance and tone, which, contrary to the dark, twisted and corrosive comments of the anonymous, has been a fairly consistent source of nurturing light in the Sacramento community for more than 150 years.
By my rough calculations, the people leaving The Bee during the current cutback represent more than two centuries of journalistic integrity, and that’s in the features department alone:
Bruce Dancis, a staffer 18 years, 16 of them as entertainment editor, recently has been a columnist and writer. Whether writing of DVDs, baseball, racism in movies or any of the other diverse subjects he’s addressed, Bruce consistently tooled features and columns based on a solid understanding of history and an abiding sense of social justice. He’s also renowned for the most cluttered desk in the department. You could never be sure whether Bruce had gone on vacation or was buried under all that stuff. In the office pool, I was betting he wouldn’t have it cleared until 2011, but it looks as if I’m about to lose.
Greg Endicott, an exceptionately affable copy editor, is leaving Sacramento for South Bend, Ind., apparently presuming that Notre Dame will be looking for a new football coach about mid-October.
Janet Fullwood has been The Bee’s travel editor for more than 20 years. She beat me out for that job back in 1987, and I soon saw why. All adventurous travel editors have gumption, but Janet’s DNA has a measure or two more than others. In her travels, she seized time, place and personalities with both empathy and candor, and on top of that returned with some of the more remarkable photos in the industry.
Kevin McKenna is a name that won’t be familiar to even avid byline followers because he’s been mainly an editor, one invariably respected by reporters because he’s respected reporters, guiding them with patience and humor to make good stories better, to strengthen their voices, and to correct their oversights and mistakes in a kind and instructive manner.
Lori Korleski Richardson has been primarily a copy editor, but outside The Bee she’s celebrated for being an amazingly organized and creative cook, a calling that has prompted her to write for The Bee’s food sections articles and cookbook and dining reviews that have enlightened and entertained readers with their lively mix of both the funny and the practical.
Pat Rubin, The Bee’s garden writer, sits right next to me. She can make anything grow, including, I think, her desk. Pat turns out so much helpful and smart copy I have to look over now and then to make sure she hasn’t damaged her green thumb.
Gwen Schoen, the last of the “Katherine Kitchen” writers who with earnestness and spunk have been advising readers on all things dealing with food, fashion and furnishings since 1934. Gwen hasn’t been here that long, just three decades, but her influence will be felt at dinner parties for years to come. Whether in print, in video, on television or on the phone with a cook who is right in the middle of preparing a meal, Gwen has been a model of passion and patience, genuinely interested in doing whatever she can to help others succeed. The first “Katherine Kitchen” column in 1934, incidentally, included a recipe for a St. Patrick’s Day salad of lime gelatin, walnuts and sweet pickles, writes Wiegand in “Papers of Permanence.” Gwen never would come up with a recipe that sounds so dreadful.
Barbara Stubbs, as assistant design director, is something of a flight-control coordinator, getting writers, editors, artists and photographers on the same page with a shared vision of how a feature should be organized and presented. It’s a task that takes a kind of diplomacy usually found only at the State Department in the good ol’ days, and she’s coordinated all these interests and egos with unwavering aplomb, remaining positive and effective. Her grace and smile haven’t hurt. She’s been here 35 years. More than an administrator, she’s also an artist, and the next time I see her I won’t be surprised if it’s at a Second Saturday gallery reception where her new work just has been hung.
Bob Sylva has been a Bee features writer for 29 years. Before Bob and I joined The Bee, we both worked for competing community newspapers in Amador County. I still have in my files a clipping of an article about a prospector and a gold mine Bob wrote at that time; this was in the 1970s, not the 1870s. There are folders and boxes all over Sacramento with clippings of Bob Sylva features and columns, I’m sure. If we’re lucky, they’ll be collected and published in a book eventually. If not, we’ll just have to visit the Bob Sylva Room at the Sacramento Archives and Museum to be reminded of his poetic and spiritual profiles of Sacramento. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve run into over the years who would comment that Bob has the paper’s most individualistic voice. He’s a master of narrative, structure and idiom. He wrote long, but the reading of a Bob piece was addictive and fast. And while he gave you a complete picture, he’d leave you wanting more just for the joy of reading such finely crafted words.
Dan Vierria, who during his 32 years at The Bee has done it all, from writing of motor sports and goats to writing of Bigfoot and restoration of a church, probably all on the same day. As another Bee colleague remarked the other day, Dan is a team player, always eager to help his fellow reporters pull together a more complete story. He’d hear you were starting to work on a particular topic and before you could even begin to gather your thoughts he’d be e-mailing you links, providing phone numbers of key sources, printing out documents dense with helpful background information. He took the job seriously, but brought a sense of levity to both the newsroom and stories, and for that alone will be missed.
All these people took The Bee’s buyout offer, necessitated by the industry’s plunge in revenue.
Other writers packing up and moving on are Art Campos, Lakiesha McGhee, Edgar Sanchez, Deb Kollars and Dorothy Korber.
If you’re familiar with bylines, it unnerves you to see the loss of so much commitment and depth represented by these writers. But there are more of their kind remaining, so take comfort in that. And at least some of these bylines may not be gone forever. Freelancing is a possibility. I’m pretty sure I’m safe in saying that none of them is retiring. They still burn with too much curiosity, energy and talent. By midweek, two already were handing out business cards to announce their continued careers as freelance writers. They see a future for the written word based on fairness, accuracy, thoroughness and entertainment value.
They’ve been providing it at The Bee for decades, and they will continue to do so. I’m just going to miss seeing them in the morning.
