Remembering George Perry Floyd… and endless others

Bill Knight column for 6-8, 9 or 10, 2020     

Maybe it’s only superficial appearances that suggest that tsk-tsk finger-wagging about property damage is more prominent than public outrage about another black man killed by another white cop, not unlike the optics of more apparent concern about business re-openings than the risks posed to workers and customers in a pandemic of a very contagious virus.

One also can’t help comparing 2016’s sensationalized fury about NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick protesting brutality against African Americans by KNEELING during the national anthem, to the virtual shrugs by too many people at the footage of Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin KNEELING on the neck of unarmed and handcuffed George Floyd for 8 minutes and 46 seconds on Memorial Day, when the 46-year-old African American died of his injuries.

Other recent killings of black Americans show the results of centuries of systemic racism in the United States, where despair over disparity, inequality and injustice gnaw at the soul of the whole nation.

Remember Ahmaud Arbery?

According to data from Mapping Police Violence, last year saw 1,099 Americans killed by police. Blacks (13% of the country’s population) were 24% of those killed. Even where such deaths are obviously not justified, police are rarely charged with a crime, much less convicted.

We can go on – and put names on numbers:

            Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Eric Garner…

Yes, we could go on.

A 577-page poll conducted by Morning Consult May 31 and June 1 shows that a majority of Americans (54%) support the protests that have unleashed unrest in dozens of U.S. communities. (About 22% say they’re opposed.)

In a culture steeped in narcissism, greed and violence, white Americans must mostly listen to the anguished voices, acknowledge the crisis, and bear witness to the daily terrors others bear.

            … Oscar Grant, Freddie Gray, Botham Jean …

We could go on.

Focusing just on selfish looting, misdirected arson, or mindless destruction of retailers, CNN, the AFL-CIO, etc. by demonstrators (or bystanders, or infiltrators) seems to overlook African American targets of police misconduct.

            …Trayvon Martin, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice…

We could go on.

The world cannot remain silent, yet white Americans should also be relatively quiet. too, and concentrate on heeding racism and its consequences, having empathy, and showing solidarity with all parts of our race – the human race – with special attention to black people tragically the most frequent victims of bias and brutality.

            … Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, Breonna Taylor …

… and we could go on about untold others.

Ijeoma Oluo, author of 2018’s “So You Want to Talk About Race,” commented, “If you live in this system of white supremacy, you are either fighting the system or you are complicit. There is no neutrality to be had towards systems of injustice. It is not something you can just opt out of.”

We CANNOT go on.

Insider’s book bemoans changes in newspapers

Bill Knight column for 6-4, 5 or 6, 2020     

As the world watches media attacked by the President, police and supposed protestors during unrest about the killing of another African-American by another white cop, John Stiles’ new book “(30) – from Woodward and Bernstein to Donald Trump: A Career” offers a broadside backstory to today’s newspaper business.

Change, like justice, is difficult – shown in newspapers, which too often embrace change as “creative destruction.”

An insider’s indictment of an industry suffering from mismanagement and greed, Stiles’ 237-page paperback is the heartbreaking lament of a reporter spurned by the vocation he loved, an industry that in some ways betrays the country. Its angry insights are universal, commercial and personal.

Writing about himself, Stiles says, “He had gone from a career he once saw as not only promising but successful, to an old man trapped in both his accomplishments and sins, trying desperately to find something worth saving.”

The title comes from the keystrokes reporters typed to indicate stories’ ends, a tradition with explanations ranging from an obscure reference to the Peloponnesian War and telegraph shorthand to Linotypes and Associated Press quotas, and Stiles’ byline here is “P.J. Cratty,” a nod to a grandmother. (Besides the nom de plume, the book, available online, substitutes fictitious names for communities where he worked in Illinois, Iowa and elsewhere.)

His reflection on four decades as a newspaperman comes from an irascible, likeable curmudgeon: driven, impatient and at home with yesteryears’ yelling, clacking typewriters, and smoking that made newsrooms as noisy as factories and exciting as anything.

The grizzled Stiles (reminiscent of renowned actor/writer Leo Gordon) was an activist when we met in the 1960s, a time of debating war. The combat veteran of the Viet Nam War eventually reversed himself about war, and we found common ground, including journalism.

Journalism requires reporters “to gather, compile and write in a readable form the truth, or as close to that laudable goal as they could,” he writes. Although finding truth is painful, uncomfortable and hard, he adds, “it’s the only things that matters.”

Others have described the mission: “Give voice to the voiceless, and hold the powerful accountable,” “comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable,” and Wilbur Storey of the 1861 Chicago Times saying, “It’s a newspaper’s duty to print the news and raise hell.”

But along the way, speaking truth to power became a sham, a shameful descent to irrelevance, he says.

“Society’s watchdogs have been chained to the wall … in favor of an entirely new business model,” Stiles writes. Knowledgeable beat reporters were eliminated, and eviscerated staffs became dependent on press handouts. Newspapers have been “committing an excruciating act of Hari Kari.”

Stiles sees himself as “now or about to be the last of a dying breed. Newspapers weren’t run by newspaper people any longer; they were run by a bunch of … bean-counters. They didn’t [care] about people reading their paper, only pleasing those who paid the advertising bills or were connected.”

The industry degenerated into insignificance, pushing pablum, cheering the Chamber of Commerce, and treating conservative propaganda as news, he says, adding that if the Founders thought the press was merely another moneymaking venture, why’s it in the First Amendment?

Unfortunately, he continues, newspapers went from serving the public to filling space between ads. And after readership declined because papers stopped telling them what they needed, the Internet filled the vacuum with unchallenging content that mostly reinforces existing beliefs and “petty prejudices.”

“(30)” has special criticism for those complicit in its demise, publishers he dubs “idiots in suits,” slash-and-burn types eager for ever-more newspaper properties. In the past, Stiles says, publishers had working knowledge of newspapers. Now all they know is debt load and how to cut expenses, he says; some “wouldn’t know Royko from Ronco.”

Besides the enlightening, enjoyable diatribe from a professional point of view, Stiles weaves parts of his personal history into the narrative, touching and shocking memories from Viet Nam and marriages/divorces, to running, loving his family, and dealing with health issues.

Throughout, he offers a more impassioned viewpoint than Charles Madigan’s 2007 book “-30-: The Collapse of the Great American Newspaper,” adding experiences since 2016, with the election of Donald Trump, “a narcissistic, sanity-challenged and barely literate human being who, despite a history marked by vile word and deed, rode his hatred for the truth and those who seek it to the presidency of a people he neither respected nor understood.”

Again writing about himself, Stiles says, “He was watching the democracy that he had loved for so long and so fervently die.”

In Stile’s poem about what passes for patriotism today, readers can see parallels to changes in newspapers and its “ink-stained wretches.” He writes, “America the beautiful, home of all that’s brave, all we’ll ever ask back from you is everything we gave.”

Remembering an overlooked Illinois journalist

Bill Knight column for 6-1, 2 or 3, 2020

The saga of often overlooked Illinois newspaperman George Fitch – born this week in 1877 – started back when “Jack of all trades” was high praise, especially in the newspaper industry, which welcomed reporters familiar with the back shop, printers willing to write a lede as well as run a Linotype, pressmen who could be pressed into service for spot news, Teamsters who could develop sources for newsroom colleagues.

“George knew the precincts of journalism well – the vagaries of the newspaper game as well as the idiosyncrasies of those entrapped within it,” wrote Martin Litvin, author of “I’m Going To Be Somebody,” Fitch’s biography,

“As good as any professional, he could toss off birth, wedding and death notices, editorials, and, when necessary, sell ads and write copy,” Litvin wrote. “He knew how to write straight news, do headlines and layout, [and] could produce pretty good political cartoons.”

A prolific, ambitious and witty reporter, editor, humorist and columnist, Fitch graduated from Galesburg’s Knox College in 1897, and advanced through work on weeklies and dailies, magazines and books, becoming successful and demonstrating that talent and perseverance could pay off no matter where you started.

Galva, Ill., was where George Helgesen Fitch was born that June 5. George’s father Elmer bought the Galva News some six years later, and from a young age printer’s ink seemed to have been pumped into George’s bloodstream.

After college, the six-foot, four-inch Fitch returned to Galva to work for his father’ newspaper, then went to Galesburg, where he was a reporter for the Mail. Galesburg’s rival Register lured Fitch away, only to fire him later. So, he returned again to Galva, then worked for newspapers in Ft. Madison and Council Bluffs, Iowa, and the Peoria Herald-Transcript.

Although now almost forgotten, Fitch’s career made him famous, influential and well-off. He wrote for prominent national magazines including the Ladies Home Journal, Munsey’s and American Magazine; he was a contributing editor at Collier’s; and from 1908-14 penned 20 short stories based at a fictional college named Siwash (a Native American word derived from sauvage, a French word for savage). Based on Fitch’s experiences and exploits at Knox, they appeared in such publications as the Saturday Evening Post and the Kansas City Star.

Eventually, the stories also sold well in book form and were even used as the basis for the 1940 William Holden movie, “Those Were the Days.”

By 1910, Fitch not only was a respected writer and editor, he became a nationally syndicated columnist for George Matthew Adams’ news service. Fitch’s “Vest Pocket Essays” and other articles appeared in dozens of periodicals, and Fitch became associated with the syndicate’s stable of stars: Kansas editor and publisher William Allen White, reporter and playwright Edna Ferber, comic-strip artist Harold Tucker Webster, and editorial cartoonist Jay “Ding” Darling.

After covering the political conventions in 1912, Fitch quit the Peoria paper over a disagreement about Progressive Party presidential candidate Teddy Roosevelt. Fitch himself ran as a Progressive for State Representative, and published the Daily Progressive newspaper for six weeks, until Roosevelt’s loss to Woodrow Wilson – and Fitch’s own election to the Illinois legislature.

The Chicago Tribune published Fitch’s series of humorous essays about Springfield and capital politics, then Fitch lost his re-election. He retreated to his Peoria home across the street from Bradley University, writing and receiving guests such as poet Vachel Lindsay and journalist/poet Edgar Guest.

Fitch considered returning once more to his hometown of Galva, where he’d write books. But en route to a California convention of the American Press Humorists, where he was president, Fitch was stricken with appendicitis and died at the age of 38.

Fitch was fondly recalled then, when poet and Indiana native James Whitcomb Riley wrote, “Even while we smiled and laughed with him, he left us, hushed as though awaiting the gladness of his return.

“Only heaven is the brighter now.”