I?m not expert in too many things, but I come close in moving.
I once calculated the number of times I?ve moved. I was in my early 30s and, as I recall, the total came out to something like 34 or 35, more moves than I had years of life.
Of course, that number was bolstered by the many relocations I made as a college student. I once lived in three different apartments in the span of four months. I counted all those moves because I threw everything I owned in the back of my old ?72 Datsun pickup truck and hauled it across town to yet another slightly improved (I thought) living arrangement. Having missionaries for parents, I?ve been involved in more significant moves. I spent most of my childhood in Grants Pass or southern Japan, as our family did its share of traipsing back and forth between continents.
Now I?m here, at the end of another move, and I can say this one was definitely the most challenging ever.
I?ve been trying to figure out why. Since Sweet Home was somewhere we really wanted to come, why was this one so tough?
Could it be the accumulation of all that stuff during our 11-year sojourn in the peaceful Southern California bedroom community of La Mirada? Or maybe it?s because this one involved my wife and three daughters. (Most of my prior moves were solo.) Or maybe it?s because I?m a decade older this time. (I pull muscles easier now than I used to.)
I have to say, though, I?m delighted to be here, back to my roots of small-town newspapering in Oregon.
I?m delighted to take over as owner/publisher/editor of The New Era, where we?ll be doing the kind of journalism I enjoy most: reporting significant events and notable achievements of people in a community that really takes pride in itself.
It was the taste of such that sucked me into what has been a great calling for me. Since my first job as a sportswriter in Grants Pass back in 1980, I?ve gotten to see all kinds of interesting things and meet many, many interesting people.
Some of the most memorable and quirky include:
— Covering giant wildfires (that?s what they call them in California);
–Reporting on how a high school football team, which hadn?t won a league championship in over 20 years, went all the way to the Southern California division championship in one miracle season;
— Meeting people like Arianna Huffington before she switched sides. Oh, she and her (former) husband Michael, too. Ah, they WERE a pair.
–Ruining a great pair of brand-new leather sandals while wading in the ocean next to a beached 80-foot blue whale that I was reporting on. The stench wasn?t that noticeable in the sea breeze, but my wife talked about it for weeks, every time she got into my car. She also tossed my shoes ceremoniously into the garbage can. Our newspaper photographer almost fell into a deep hole that had been created behind the beast?s head by currents and shifting sand. (Let?s see, wasn?t that also the day my old Pinto almost got trapped in the surf as I was driving along the beach?)
— Having to pass on the offer to ride a rodeo bull at a bull-riding school in central California. I was there to write a story on the place, which attracted a lot of hot young wanna-be?s, and the owner offered to let me have a go at it. To my lasting regret, I had to decline because I was still limping around on a recently healed ankle that I?d busted playing football on Christmas Day.
Over the years, I?ve had to leave Oregon twice to find work in California and I?ve missed the Beaver State the whole time I was gone. So now I?m back, a veteran of small-town journalism and eager to pick up where Alex and Debbie Paul are leaving off.
Alex and I both believe that newspapers best serve their community when the owner is part of that community. Corporate journalism is sweeping across America as large media conglomerates buy newspapers large and small and squeeze as much profit as possible out of these local newspapers. The people who run most of these corporations generally have little to do with the communities they are supposed to be serving, even though many local journalists who work for these local newspapers are devoted to doing the best journalism they can. Problem is, they don?t control their own destiny.
I know because I was one of them. It?s difficult to do good journalism when your resources for doing so, staff, equipment, financial backing for projects, etc. are (seemingly) constantly being chopped to improve profit margins. I?ve worked for skinflint publishers who owned their own papers, but I?ve also worked for those who invested the effort and money necessary to put out a product that well-served the readers. The latter is what my wife, Miriam, and I intend to be.
I?m not planning to go through the agony of another move any time soon. Instead, we intend to continue to produce the kind of journalism that people in any community deserve and which they should demand: interesting, informative, energetic reporting, opinion and visual journalism that tells you what you need and want to know about Sweet Home, Oregon.