[Vision2020] Time to switch tracks, let the young take it from here

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today’s (February 28, 2018) Moscow-Pullman Daily News with a special thanks to Lee Rozen.

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His View: Time to switch tracks, let the young take it from here

By Lee Rozen

In the spring of 1969, my college honors adviser - suspecting I didn't have what it takes to succeed as a scholar in academia - suggested I try writing for the university newspaper. After nearly 50 years in daily newspaper journalism, I retire Thursday from the Daily News. As managing editor - and editorial page editor - I'm allowing myself a few unfiltered words in your paper, a chance most of you won't get.

I started at the Daily News in late June 2010. It was the second best thing that ever happened to me.

First, by far, was marrying Sydney, whom you've come to know through her column, the Impetuous Gardener. Also, I look back with fondness on leading the inspired team that created seattlepi.com, the only part of the old Seattle Post-Intelligencer that survives.

I'm 69 now and ready to turn the struggle over to younger men and women. A struggle it will be, for not only is what we do under political attack - nothing new in that - but the business formulas that funded local journalism into the 1990s don't work well any more.

The principal owners of this employee-owned paper - Butch and Nathan Alford (two of the finer men I've known, let alone worked for) - spend much of their considerable energy devising ways to support local journalism as traditional retail advertisers and subscribers drift away.

But for me, I'm at a point where my friends and I spend too much time reviewing the indignities of bodily aging - something we all once pledged never to do. Yet, the key here is that I seldom used the phrase "my friends and I" during 25 years spent commuting to work in downtown Seattle from darkest suburbia or exurbia.

Sydney and I have put down roots in Moscow, even if the soil in our yard is laden with clay. We've made good friends at church, in our neighborhood and in the broader community. Many of you letter writers, columnists and sources feel a lot like friends to me. Everyone seems to care what Benjamin BadKitten is up to.

Our daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren - now four - followed us here and live just a few blocks away. For the time being, of course. Our son in Seattle calls regularly.

Speaking of young people, I'll miss our staff. I've got a good 40 years on most of them, at least 10 on all of them. Knowing how hard they work and how much they care about doing a good job, it irritates me when I hear anyone complaining about kids today. Not being around them each day will be my loss.

Since 2010, I've said a lot of hellos and goodbyes in the newsroom - it was like running a post-graduate practicum in newspaper journalism for five new students each year. I happily remember those days when I was finally able to say hello to a professional journalist, not just a new college graduate. Along the way, I've had to reassure several distraught staffers they could reach that point - and each has.

Three excellent journalists who have been here all along, who helped me and who will carry this institution forward, are City Editor Devin Rokyta (you'll be hearing more about him), Photo Editor Geoff Crimmins and Digital News Director Craig Staszkow.

It's been fun to be part of a community conversation on the Opinion page, arguing with the editorial board and writing and editing editorials. Recruiting columnists and encouraging letter writers - especially ones who disagreed with our positions - added to the intellectual honesty of the page.

I'm planning to spend the next few years learning to do things I've not done. Nothing dangerous - I'm too cautious and conservative for that - but fun nonetheless. There'll be a lot of impetuous gardening and honey-dos, of course, some pastor-dos, a little grandkid mentoring and maybe a puppy.

But I want to dive into the history of the Washington, Idaho and Montana Railway and the communities it ran through from Palouse to Bovill about 1925. I may write about some of what I find. Then, I'll recruit the grandkids and some new friends to build a model railroad reminiscent of it in my basement.

Or I might learn something entirely different. Who knows?

See you in the funny papers.

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In spite of your well-deserved retirement, your Op/Eds will be greatly missed, friend.

Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
http://www.MoscowCares.com
  
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

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