Happy New Year

 

          Good evening, 919 Gang. As we start a new year, I ask your help in bringing the 919 Gang Directory up to date. It’s a 171-page document listing all our members. Each listing includes a brief bio and often a mug shot.

          Please tell what paper you worked at, what years, and what job titles.

          For many of you it would appropriate to tell what you have been doing since you left the paper. If you wish to include your email address, that’s up to you.

          The bios don’t have to be (shouldn’t be) wordy. My bio is below and it shows what info is needed.

          If you have a bio in the current directory, it may need updating. If you like, message me and I will show what I have so you can make changes.

          If you have never given me a bio, why not? You have a lot of friends in this group. Come out of your cave.

          When we have completed updating, I will distribute the directory to everyone. Here’s my bio:

 

REBER, Jack -- Worked for Tribune and Union-Tribune 1961-2004. Sports writer, assistant sports editor, special assistant to the editor, assistant managing editor/operations, systems/facilities editor. Retired. 919 Gang moderator since June, 2006. Keeper of the data for a national online genealogy research group. Retired 2022 after operating a mail-order business selling stamps to collectors. Contact: 2reberjack@gmail.com; P.O. Box 2239, Ramona, Calif. 92065; (760) 703-0306.

 

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CARL LARSEN writes:

Karen Kenyon, a remarkable long-time U-T freelancer as well as poet, author and college instructor, died last week in a local hospital. Friends say she had suffered a brain hemorrhage earlier last month.

          Well-known in the local creative-writing community, she was the author of biographies on Charles Dickens and the Bronte sisters, but poetry was her passion.

          Personal tragedy influenced a great part of her writing.

          Her career began with a poem in The Ladies Home Journal about her developmentally disabled newborn baby, Johanna.

          Months later, Johanna died and she then wrote an article about her for Redbook.

          Later, her husband committed suicide, leading Kenyon to write Sunshower, a memoir about her family’s gradual recovery from that tragedy. The book has been cited by therapists as a resource for those impacted by suicide. 

          Here is an interview with Karen for SDSU’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, where she was an instructor:

          https://cesblog.sdsu.edu/instructor-profile-karen-kenyon-osher-lifelong-learning-institute/

 

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          REBER: Tonight we wish Edna Whiteley a Happy Birthday on Jan. 1.

Disappointed reporter

 

          Good evening, 919 Gang.

 

          JERRY RIFE writes:

Although I spent 40 years as a U-T photographer, it was not my first career choice. I wanted to be a newspaper reporter.

It was 1962 and I was in my senior year in journalism at San Diego State College. I had already been a reporter, news editor and managing editor on the Daily Aztec. I was in line for the editorship but I passed on it because I wanted to return to writing. Rex Salmon, bless his heart, stepped into the editor’s slot and named me Daily Aztec Chief Reporter. It was a heady title which thankfully was allowed to pass into oblivion.

The Copley Training Program was high on my list of possibilities so I was setting in the front row when its director, King Durkee, came to speak to our journalism class. Mr Durkee was a tall, elegant gentleman with beautifully coifed hair. He carried himself regally, perhaps channeling his given name.

He began by saying he was not sure why he was there. It was unlikely, he said, that the training program would take anyone from SDS. They were mainly interested in people from “the big Eastern schools”. He half-heartedly invited us to apply but left little doubt that we were small potatoes.

Despite the discouraging words, I applied the next week figuring I at least had a shot at it. I had checked off the undergrad journalism boxes (reportage, editorships, writing awards) and educational boxes (dean’s list, multiple minors). I also had an ace-up-my-sleeve. I was already a U-T employee, thanks in part to Frank Holowach.

Frank worked on the Union rim along with teaching SDS classes in writing, editing and photography. There was an opening for a wirephoto operator and Frank recommended me for the job.

With my toe in the door, I used the opportunity to learn more about photography. I would occasionally come in on my day off to go out on assignment with photographers. It was very stimulating. Director of Photography Stan Griffin liked my work and wanted to move me up to staff photographer upon my graduation from SDS.

Yet my goal was still being a reporter so I carried my application, resume and clippings to my first meeting with Copley Training Program staff. A Mr. Chapin took my materials, promised he would go over them and get back to me. To keep myself alive in his mind, every week I would send him clips of work as Daily Aztec Chief Reporter.

Several weeks went by and I had heard nothing from Mr. Chapin so I called for another appointment. He was pleasant but said I needed to send him some clips. After I told him I had been sending them every week, he opened his desk file drawer. There on top were the weekly envelopes I had been sending him.

“There they are,” I said.

“Oh, I thought those were Dean Wariner’s,” he said with a surprised expression.

I returned to the photo lab and accepted Stan's offer to hire me as a photographer. He said I would be on a training program and accompany photographers on the job while they taught me the ropes. It would last for a year. Just like the regular Copley Training Program.

The first morning I went out with Joe Flynn, and we photographed a man on his boat. Photo editor Leo Bowler looked at our negatives and chose one of mine to run. When Joe and I returned from lunch at the Press Room, Charlie Sick handed me an assignment and said I was ready to go it alone.

My training program turned into an ad hoc affair. When handed an assignment, I would seek out a photographer who was good at that subject. For news, it was Joe Flynn and CR Learn. For sports it was Dan Tichonchuk, Bob Redding and John Greensmith. For portraits it was Phil McMahan, Ted Winfield and Al Sund. They were all my teachers. Especially Thane McIntosh who used surprising angles and lighting. Often I would approach an assignment with the question, “How would Thane do it?”

I never lost the habit of learning from other photographers. Every new hire had something to teach me. Sometimes it was their photographic technique but always it was their passion.

 

 Photo of Jerry Rife by Bob Hawkins, who wields both camera and keyboard with professional skill.

 

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          REBER: We close out the year by wishing Steve Perez a Happy Birthday on Dec. 31.

Carl and Carl

 

Good morning, 919 Gang.

 

CARL LARSEN writes:

headline “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.”

It has gone down as one of the most famous of newspaper bloopers.

But how many of you know that another Chicago paper, the Sun-Times, committed a similar Page 1 screwup involving presidential politics?

 

As part of a series marking the newspaper’s 75th anniversary, Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg presents some of the paper’s most memorable mistakes.

No one on staff is immune, from tone-deaf Roger Ebert in a review of “The Graduate” to a piece by a woman columnist admiring actress Annette Funicello’s breasts that ran with the photo logo of the paper’s media columnist, a man.

In another case, about an illustration depicting a Cubs pitcher as the “Friday the 13th” masked killer Jason, an assistant managing editor was fired.

 

From: Neil Steinberg <dailysteinberg@gmail.com>
Date: December 29, 2023 at 5:20:02 AM PST
To: Neil Steinberg <nsteinberg@suntimes.com>
Subject: EGD: Whoops! Mistakes, we’ve made a few in our 75-year history



Good morning!

Thank you for subscribing to Every goddamn day.

Here is today's post — apologies for being a little late; it seems nobody remembered to post the story, which is fitting, given its theme.

Please feel free to leave a comment in the comments section.

Your host,

Neil Steinberg

 

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CARL LARSEN forwards again:

But wait, there’s more as the Sun-Times also offered readers yesterday a story by long-time breaking news reporter Stefano Esposito on making the transition to the paper’s Features team.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/12/29/23945580/stefano-esposito-recovering-breaking-news-reporter-story-behind-the-story