Tuesday, May 14, 2024

Bob Dunning takes a bow

     "Journalism," G.K. Chesterton famously observed, "largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive."
     That's a good thing — better late than never. Also unavoidable. Even the most educated person is ignorant of nearly everything. By necessity much of what we read is bound to be news. Also a good thing — my definition of boredom is being told what you already know.
     When a reader forwarded without comment the last column of Bob Dunning, who wrote for a California newspaper for 55 years and was unceremoniously sacked this week, I did not feel embarrassed that it was my introduction to the man. Nothing shameful there, even though he's written for The Davis Enterprise since I was in 4th grade. Davis has a population double that of Northbrook, and is 2,000 miles away. A local oddity myself, I understand and accept my status as a mote of dust in a continent-wide wordstorm. If after writing for the Chicago Sun-Times for 40 years, one out of 10 Chicagoans were vaguely familiar with me, I'd be surprised and gratified. It's probably closer to one in 100. 
     When others of my ilk deliver their swan songs, it's typically how the greater world first learns of us. Birth announcement and funeral pyre in one brief flash, a tiny puff of smoke far away on the horizon alerting outsiders to our existence even as we vanish.
    Dunning's ave atque vale begins:
    "This is a column I thought I’d never have to write. Through these many years, the local owners of this newspaper regularly told me that as long as The Davis Enterprise existed, I would always have a job. ..."
     And you believed them? Well, there's your mistake right there, Bob. The owners of the Sun-Times never gave me such assurances, nor would I put any stock in them if they had. Any boss who flashed me a vulpine grin, and cooed, "Don't worry, Neil, you'll be here forever...." would leave me shaken. And I have the security of a union. If it weren't for the Chicago Newspaper Guild, I would have been put out to pasture years ago. I might still be, despite it.  It's happened before.
     Quality has nothing to do with it. The Tribune allowed the consistently excellent Eric Zorn to go without even trying to keep him. The great Gene Weingarten, who won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for the magnificent "Fiddler in the Subway," was banished from the Washington Post for the sin of making a joke about Indian food. If it can happen to them, who can't it happen to? Certainly Bob, or me. We are all dead men walking.
     "I upheld my end of the bargain," Dunning continued. "They did not."
      What are you saying? That life isn't fair? Let me jot that down for future reference.
      Sorry. I'll stop now. It takes a lot of ego to fill that blank space, day after day, year in and year out, and a lot of humility to realize it doesn't matter to anyone else a fraction as much as it matters to you. Easy for that delicate balance to get out of whack, particularly in moments of duress. I don't want to critique the dying gasp of a colleague, even one I've never met or knew existed. When my time comes, I like to think I'll tip the executioner and lower my head to the block with quiet dignity. But who knows? I might clutch the radiator and shriek like James Cagney at the end of "Angels with Dirty Faces." 
     I'll try to stop, anyway. One does drone on, as I'm illustrating here. Dunning expended over 2300 words, triple the word count of my daily column, to valorize his exit. That's like the last act of "Tristan & Isolde." You can really like Wagner and still think, "C'mon, get it over with." I've been on staff at the paper for 37 years. However I go, I'm not going to shake my fist at the sky and demand, "Why Lord, why?!?" I know why: the profession is falling apart in big chunks. I'm not indispensable.  On days my column doesn't run, they still publish a newspaper. It was a good run. 
     Dunning writes with candor — he mentions his pay, which most writers would not, particularly when that pay is $26 an hour. He wasn't doing it for money, clearly, he was doing it for love, and nothing feels worse than love unrequited.  He has my sympathy. The Davis Enterprise should have treated him with a modicum of human compassion. Stop the presses: that is in short supply in newspaper owners. 
     Then again, life is precious because it ends. We all have an arc, and now that I'm well into my downward plunge, and see the canyon floor racing toward me, I hope I can splat with a certain finesse and not too much indignation.  The world has changed. Newspaper columnists offer the answer to a question fewer and fewer bother asking.
     I'm 63. Bob Dunning is 77. So maybe I'm displaying the casual cruelty of youth — not something I get the chance to trot out much anymore. But the end can come at any time from any direction. When that sad day arrives, it isn't up to us, but to others to determine what value we  had, if any. When my time comes — tomorrow, or next week, or next year, or at 77, or 90 — I hope that I don't go on and on telling what few readers who have stuck around how unfair it all is, and how much I enjoyed writing for them. Hopefully, they'll already know. 

39 comments:

  1. Amen Neil. Nobody owes us anything. Love the plummeting to the canyon floor reference. Thanks. John Howell

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    1. I love that the fall is expressed as "the floor racing towards me," the opposite of reality, but just the way we humans perceive things, a better metaphor for all its wrongness.

      john

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  2. yup life ain't fair. and when it ain't...well, that's the secret to survival

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  3. All I have to do is figure-out where Davis, Calif. is and why anyone should care. I'm guessing they have a few dairy cows and a movie theater as a third-rate, small college town. Who doesn't?

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    1. I'm surprised to see it has twice the population of Northbrook. I assumed it was bigger.

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    2. Not exactly third-rate or small. Do some homework.

      UC Davis is a 120-year-old agricultural college, but has expanded and has a med school and a veterinary school...and a business school...and much more. UC Davis was once connected to UC Berkeley, but it's long been a separate school, with 10,000 students living on-campus, out of 40,000 enrolled. Far bigger than the Midwestern state school I went to. Almost twice the size.

      Davis is a town of about 70,000, and not far from Sacramento, which is a city of over 500,000, in a metro area of 2.7 million. None of those figures are anything to sneeze at. It's not exactly a Moo U. in the boonies, full of hix from the stix. Google it and see the pix, before you say nix.

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    3. Thanks Grizz 45. It's my alma mater and a hell of a school. Great town too.

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  4. I stopped reading Bob in '98 when he sided with Krispy Kreme in the Davis donut wars.

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  5. The demise of the daily newspaper is one of the tragedies of our society. Forming perspectives based upon "sound bites" which match the diminishing attention span of consumers is adding to the decline of communication. I so miss my "full" daily newspaper.

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  6. Forgive me, but they DO owe us something, whether we ever get it or not.

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  7. “The world has changed. Newspaper columnists offer the answer to a question fewer and fewer bother asking.” WHY IS THAT? Has our society retreated so that a majority are “low IQ knuckledraggers”? It’s time to reverse negative trends. We can’t quietly allow the ignorant to dominate our society, or soon we will have no society.

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  8. Just bravo. As always.

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  9. As soon as you mentioned James Cagney I knew the movie although I could not remember the title. This is another reason to like your columns. I've been living in Chicagoland since 2004 but only "discovered" you last year from following Eric Zorn's blog. I was a reader of the Daily Herald first then the Tribune and never really read the Sun Times. I now know that was a mistake. You are correct, everything eventually ends, let just hope it's a few more years for you and newspapers in general.

    Matt W

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    1. Aw, love old J. Cagney films. Hang in there, Mr. S.

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  10. In the summer of 1967 my then boyfriend, now husband, was working a summer job at a hydraulic press plant for some subcontractor to the auto industry. The safety guides were frequently broken and he declined to operate the press when they were. It was pointed out to him that if he got injured he'd have a job for life. Since he was really hoping for a career as a math teacher, the offer did not appeal. I suspect the press plant lasted as long as his teaching career.

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  11. Steinberg, this is really, really good.

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  12. Newspapers have changed. News has changed. Society has changed. Some things are better, most are not. The gilded age seems quaint when compared with the world we live in.

    keep writing. I'll keep reading. and the 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 will be better for it... despite what the rest of the world thinks

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  13. "Ave atque vale" is a Latin phrase meaning "I salute you, and goodbye." Typically translated in English as "Hail and farewell." It is attributed to the Roman poet Catullus (84 BC--54 BC). He used it to conclude his elegy to the ashes of his deceased brother. Over the centuries, it has been used to designate an end, and a new beginning.

    Grizz is so old, and so out of touch, that $26 an hour still sounds like a lot. That's 54 grand a year, which I guess ain't so grand anymore. I can clearly remember when half that much was real money. I'm assuming that the paper didn't go under...that they just fired his wrinkled old geezer ass, after 55 productive years.

    Hell, I'd love to see that 2,300-word rant, Mr. S. Betcha it's a keeper. At 77, which is what I will turn in another three months, he should have long been aware that nobody...NOBODY...is indispensable. Nope, not even the Orange Guy.

    In today's callous and pitiless workaday world, everyone is just a Kleenex now. When the suits are done using you up, you're easily and unceremoniously thrown away. Shown the gate. Given the boot. They'll broom you out the door for any reason. Or even for no reason at all. If they don't have one, they'll either find one, or just make one up. The security of a union may save you, but only for so long.

    Hell, I was publicly fired from an organization, in front of dozens of other employees, because I was late for a meeting and came in via the front door, instead of through the employee entrance. I wanted to punch my boss in the face. Far too many witnesses. They invalidated my keycard, and then they took it back.

    The most likely scenario? They probably had something on me, but couldn't prove it. And without that conclusive and damning evidence, they needed another way, and they found one. Truth is, I might have, eventually, gone to jail. So they probably did me a huge favor. I'll say no more.

    One last thing, before I finally stop: If you're suddenly axed, Mr. S, this reader will feel a great sense of loss. This reader will feel sad and diminished, and this reader will piss and moan and bitch about how shitty it is. And he'll tell anyone who cares to listen how much he enjoyed reading what you so greatly enjoyed writing. Just in case you didn't already know.

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    1. Well, $26 an hour isn't bad — a greeter at Walmart, with experience, can pull down $21. Lots of people would be happy to get it. But as your salary going out-the-door at 77, speaking for myself, I'd feel frustration. Of course there is value to being integrated into a small community beyond the financial.

      I also appreciate that last part, Grizz, about what the column means to you. I'm sure I'll miss it too. But I have EGD, and it's a less rigorous taskmaster than a newspaper column. I couldn't riff on the word "waffle" in the Sun-Times, but here it fits in. Tell you what, when the ST shitcans me, YOU can write an essay about what a horrendous rend in the fabric of reality it is, and I'll post it. A compliment AND a day off. Something for me to look forward to.

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    2. Challenge accepted. Assuming I'm still around when that sad day comes. I'm 13 years older than you are, and I have a few...well...issues. Nothing serious. Not yet. If I'm still a reader when they axe you, and if you provide a few guidelines, I will write that guest essay. It's a deal.

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  14. I've only recently seen that the Sun-Times is a non-profit news center. Wow.

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    1. The 501(c)3 is a mixed blessing. It unlocked all these millions, supposedly. And put us under some kind of charitable entity gag which has me writing in code, like playwrights in the old Soviet Union.

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    2. I enjoy this greatly. Continue when the black crow flies at midnight.

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  15. Great EGDD column! And cool to see John Howell commenting!

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  16. I hope that when you do a book compilation of your columns, this one is included. It would be fun if selected comments were included, too, like grizz65’s today.

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    1. That's a great idea. Though collections of columns are notorious dogs, sales-wise. Let's just say that the University of Chicago Press isn't rushing one out.

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  17. It looks like the Davis Enterprise is trying to save face for unceremoniously firing. Bob Dunning. Hope the comments to their editorial bring him cheer. The man has fans. https://www.davisenterprise.com/forum/from-the-editor-farewell-to-a-legend/article_f5eeda1c-0e8e-11ef-b8fe-9bb51278dacd.html

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  18. Being put out of a job may be inevitable, and it may even be more likely in some fields (like "local journalism") than others, but the WAY it is done makes a world of difference. If a long-term employee has lived up to their end of the contract and not committed a crime or violated their business code of ethics, they deserve respect, compassion and perhaps even some say in how they make their exit. I don't know anything about Mr Dunning other than what Neil wrote, but I do feel some sympathy for him. If I were a local Davis resident, I would think less of the newspaper for how this ending was handled.
    Jill A

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    1. My view as well. I've worked in/with corporate America my whole career so I know all too well what immoral slime they all are. The unceremonious booting after 55 years and recent accolades? Nah - I'm as cynical as they come, but that's beyond the pale. Not surprising, but I'd be outraged too, just on the principle of it.

      And since I moved away from Chicago, I had no idea Zorn had been booted, or that the perpetually-annoying Kass was gone too (yes I always read both the Trib and the Sun-Times). Who the heck is even left? (Well, other than you of course!)

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  19. Not only did the Tribune let Eric Zorn go, but they retained Christopher Borelli, Heidi Stevens, and Nina Metz, which is a bonehead maneuver on par with NBC firing the brilliant Conan O'Brien to make way for the brain numbing banality of Jimmy Fallon.

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  20. It's tempting to get that clip from Gladiator of Quintus telling Maximus, "People should know when they're conquered," more for the answer: "Would you? Would I?" And I did go look at it before typing this because what a great exchange. Admittedly who among us knows how gracefully we will go? Not having read Dunning's column, if it read like he was outraged to get cut loose after 55 years, I hold out hope that he was kidding. I know Neil will come up with something completely unexpected, with an opera reference, and a Latin or Greek phrase I have to look up.

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    1. The part that really irked me was when he quoted — three times — various nice things his bosses had said about him. There was something pathetic about it. I don't want to jump on the guy with both feet though. As Royko once said, you shouldn't go after a flea with a bazooka. It isn't like he's John Kass.

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  21. I would offer you a more updated view of aging from Jane Fonda, who is 87, for your consideration, rather than thinking of aging as an arch on which we peak at midlife and then begin a steep decline into decrepitude, but rather it’s a staircase showing our potential for upward progression toward wisdom, spiritual growth, learning — toward in other words, consciousness and soul. Would also recommend reading This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, by Ashton Applewhite. Age discrimination continues to be so acceptable in our society when it is so ignorant and limiting!

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  22. Capitalism! Freedom of the press for those who own one.

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  23. Thanks for the nice words, but to be accurate the Tribune *allowed* me to go along with Mary Schmich, Heidi Stevens, Dahleen Glanton, Steve Chapman, John Kass and many others who took a buyout offer.

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    1. I worried about wording that exactly right. I've amended it to be completely accurate (I hope).

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    2. Thanks, Neil! Great piece, by the way. I pulled a quote out for this morning’s Picayune Sentinel

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    3. MARY SCHMICH TOO??? Sheesh, it sounds like there aren't any local columnists left. Very sad.

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