Of goats and men

If anyone asked me 30 years ago what my goal was, I would have replied (without one hint of modesty) my intention was to become publisher of the New York Times. At the time, I was publisher of a small daily between Albuquerque and Gallup, New Mexico. Our editorial staff was a dream team of writers. Mark Acuff had covered the Russian invasion of Afghanistan for CBS news. Joe Looney wrote the first Watergate headline for The Washington Post. Dave McDonald had spent years covering Detroit crime for one of the city’s two dailies.

It was a fun newsroom. Combined, I’d guess those three writers had logged 70 years of memories – tales that were fun and amazing. The romance of journalism…

And now, here I am in Gonzales, thinking livestock shows are the coolest thing in the world. It’s about as far from the New York Times as it gets. That’s a good thing.

On a national or state level, nobody seems to know what news is, anymore. Even the best attempts to ferret out the fake stuff doesn’t always work. On the other hand, the real news forces upon us a type of parlor game where we read one thing but the underlying essence of the subject is completely another. I listened to the head of a large California insurance company chairman explain on NPR, Friday morning, how the “better” version of health care reform will, with near certainty, remove 20 million of the 22 million people enrolled in a subsidized plan. The proposed plan won’t be better. He said it would be devastating. If you want to know why Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, a republican, surprised everyone when he said last week he couldn’t support the current GOP plan, that’s the only figure you need to know. Included in those millions of people at risk are 250,000 Arkansas constituents.

When a conservative senator prefers Obamacare, the world has shifted on its axis. It becomes difficult to understand. When I think of Messrs. Acuff and Looney, though, I realize it may not be as simple as it once was but we’re no worse off. Russian aggression was very real (and frightening). Watergate almost took down the entire government. But those were separate issues – not combined to form one confusing knot like now. The third writer? Dave McDonald would be the first to tell you Detroit is still a mess. Substantively, nothing has changed much in 30 years. It’s all the same and yet because of the sophistication of news and media (real and not) combined with the immediacy of technology it seems very different. It comes at you fast and often.

Those three writers ended up in Grants, New Mexico, because they realized then what I’ve finally come to understand. The big jobs may seem glamorous and exciting, but they are full of work. The conflation of real reporting and fake news has only made it worse. The emergence of Twitter proves how 140 characters can be more toxic and misleading than 1400 words. Put simply, our world hasn’t changed. Facts have. Finding the truth and telling it has never been more difficult or labor-intensive.

I don’t want to be the New York Times publisher anymore. Not even close.

I humbly submit, if I’m going to need to get to the bottom of something, I’d prefer a good goat-judging controversy any day.