The anniversary that isn’t.
So, 25 years ago today I started work at the Thousand Oaks News Chronicle.
For some reason, I don’t feel a whole lot like celebrating the milestone.
In the 24 years, 10 months and 21 days that followed, I went through one reapply-for-your-job merger, one pay cut and at least two pay freezes. I worked out of four offices, for a half-dozen sports editors, and went through uncounted crises — either for the company or journalism as a whole — until the one that claimed my job on Feb. 16.
On the bright side, along the way, I also covered:
— The 1996 Little League World Series, which I remember most for the improbable way Moorpark earned its berth — winning three games in a single day at the San Bernardino regional — and the resulting logistics of getting to Williamsport on one day’s notice. (I ended up having to fly to Baltimore and drive from there to Williamsport. Google Maps tells me that’s a 176-mile trip. It seemed longer, but then, I was operating on about four hours’ sleep and distinctly recall wandering out of my lane as I fought to stay awake over the last part of the drive.)
— The 2002 World Series, one of the great unexpected success stories in my experience, as the Angels just kept winning. As much as I enjoyed covering the success of Mike Scioscia and a very likeable roster, the championship was a bittersweet moment. My dad, a big Angels fan and one-time season-ticket holder, had died the previous summer.
— The Ducks’ Stanley Cup Finals appearances in 2003 and 2007. As a hockey fan, seeing the Cup presented in Anaheim should have been one of the great moments ever, but I was so incredibly sick that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have. Still, the memory of walking out on to the ice to do interviews after the Cup presentation — with the crowd still in the building, cheering — still gives me chills.
— Three BCS championship games. The best one, clearly, was the USC-Texas game at the 2006 Rose Bowl, the second consecutive year Vince Young was just dazzling in Pasadena. The other really memorable one was the Orange Bowl the year before — memorable mostly the cross-country trip for about a 36-hour stay in Florida to cover USC’s 55-19 thumping of Oklahoma was such a complete anticlimax to the because Texas-Michigan Rose Bowl I covered before flying out.
— Six NBA Championships. I have so many memories from these that they deserve their own blog entry or entries, which I’ll save for a future date. I’ll note here that the 2004 Finals, the one that saw the Lakers lose to Detroit, marked the high point of the paper’s commitment (and financial wherewithal) to sports. That was the year I covered every playoff game, home and road, learning just how grueling the beat-writer life could be in the process. Between the Lakers coverage, the Olympics, a few other assignments and vacations, I was away from home over 100 nights that year. I like traveling, but even I found that a bit excessive.
— And, of course, the five Olympics: Sydney, Salt Lake, Athens, Turin and Beijing. As I’ve written before, I have great memories from each one, and few of those memories revolve around the actual sporting events.
And, as I’ve told a few people over the years, I sometimes think it was a misperception that made it all possible. It was mostly because of Marion Jones that I joined the Scripps-Howard Olympics team in Sydney; she was clearly going to be a big local story for The Star, and there was some thought that, because I’d covered her in high school, it might help us get a little more access to her.
Which, of course, it didn’t — access to Marion was tightly controlled (understandably, when you remember she was arguably the biggest story in Sydney, and there were something like 10,000 journalists covering those games). And, though I never went out of my way to point it out, I had never covered Marion as a track athlete, even in high school. Former Star staffer David Kirvin did the track stories, as well the best single feature about Marion during her high school career. I covered her during basketball season — and still think she was the best girls’ basketball player I’ve seen.
Still, it went well enough that I was part of the Scripps team from then on, until there wasn’t a Scripps team to be part of — the news service passed on Vancouver in a cost-cutting move.
I know about those all too well.
Still, to the extent I’m thinking about that 25th anniversary today — and once I’m done writing this, I probably won’t dwell on it much — I’m grateful for the things I was able to do, and the people I met along the way.
And the support I’ve had over the last month has made it clear it was the people, not the places, that made those 25 years really meaningful.
March 25th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Newspaper people are the best. I spent 30 years on the ad side. Had I not been such a “late bloomer”, I would have gone to college and majored in journalism. I have had to settle for watching my dear editorial colleagues, always knowing it WAS and IS always about the News. I didn’t know you David, but I knew OF you. Through FB and your blog, I feel like I know you. You have a “cheer leader” on your side. You have my admiration as you move forward with what you do and you do it with a passion.