TimWoolery.net Documenting the Journey and the Learning Curve

08 – Battle of the Rags

Between the ages of 8 and 15, I worked for three different papers. Threw Dollar Savers with my brother because I was too young to get a route of my own. Then when I was 10, got a route of my own for the Argus. Left that a year later, started up with the San Jose Mercury News. Held that job for 2 ? years, it was my longest stretch of employment until I started working for HDS. Looking back on it ? I have only one thing to say: it sucked. No really ? it sucked.

For starters, there were no days off. Not for being sick, for vacation, for anything. For vacations, I had to find a kid and pay him 2 or 3 times whatever I was making per day to take over the route while I was gone. Summer vacation, winter vacation ? your friends are up all night and sleep until the crack of noon. Not you, you get up and go to work?and no whining. The one respite was dad and the Sunday route or any day that was too rainy or cold. He?d get up with me, help me fold papers and then we?d go blast ?em out. On some Sundays we?d finish up with donuts and hot chocolate at Lloyd?s. He didn?t just do that for me, either. Steve had a route, Janine had a route. Between the three of us, we had 10 or 12 different paper routes during the times we grew up. Mom had a peripheral job being the person who would drop off the blocks of Dollar Saver newsprint for kids to deliver. She even devised an interesting way to rat out the kids who were being paid to deliver the papers but just dumping them.

I remember all the times I?d be staying home from school sick but getting up to throw papers. One of those times, I got up to go to work. I was entering puberty and suffering from this massive zit on my nose in addition to being pretty sick. I walked into the bathroom, flipped on the light to find that my entire face was pale with the exception of this bright red dot on my nose. Mom and dad were pretty tough about it; don?t know if that was their choice or if they were ever really aware of how sick I was. Their response to me being sick was ?Yeah, you?re pretty sick ? get out there.? It?s amazing how much you can accomplish when you don?t have the option to quit. The very worst time it ever was, they let me sleep and delivered it themselves. I was delirious at that point ? wouldn?t have been much good anyway. One of the best nights of sleep I?ve ever had.

Wintertime in the Bay gets pretty nippy ? especially if the wind is cutting across your ungloved hands as you ride through the neighborhood. I tried a lot of ski gloves trying to find out which ones wouldn?t let my hands freeze in the winter time. With my old coats, gloves and hat, I looked a lot like that Johnny ?Two Dollars? Gasparini from ?Better Off Dead?. You could get a decent spin off the paper if you bounced it off of a frost-covered windshield. I had cranks on my job ? people who wanted their papers on the doorstep every morning but didn?t feel that tipping was necessary. Other guys who wanted to yell because I bounced their paper off of the screen door every morning. Their gate was locked ? what was I supposed to do? My laziness made me creative. I had one house on the street next to my parent?s house. Rather than riding up there to put it on their driveway ? I?d lob it over the backyard fence to put it on their deck. Sometimes I missed?

Not to say that it was all ?Oliver Twist? time with the job. It was hard; it sucked. There were some good memories that stuck with me. Being the person to deliver the first editions of the ?89 quake, waking up to see ?WAR!!!? plastered across the edition for the start of the Persian Gulf war. Getting my very first brand-new paper-route bag for the Merc (I still have it). Rubber band wars using those industrial-strength bands that the Mercury still wraps their papers with. Looking back on it, I realize now that I was given a lot of opportunities to screw up, piss people off and realize the benefits of a happy customer, long before I was ever exposed to one in the real world.

Stuff like that. It?s also a badge of honor?sort of. Being able to say that I?ve worked for going on 20 years before I?ve hit thirty is always an icebreaker but it smacks a little too much of Reader?s Digest so I always leave it out. I think it was on the job that I learned the ability to duck my head down and keep punching. I also learned the value of school because I knew more clearly than anything that I didn?t want to be doing a job that like until I died.

A few weeks ago, in a weakened state, I paid $25 for a year?s subscription to the local newspaper. I broke a personal rule doing so ? the Argus and I have never really gotten along. It?s been fun, I?ve been in the paper a couple of times, had them put my picture on the front page of the local section when I was in high school. This is tempered by the fact that this is such a small-town rag that anyone living in this town has a reasonably good chance of being in a front page photo just by being a part of life here. Was in the front page for that high school thing, almost in the picture they took of all the shoppers standing in line at Raley?s during the Safeway/Albertsons strike in 1994/5. In the picture they took of the escalator at Target when it opened at the mall (I?m facing away from the camera but I know what I was wearing that day).

Reading the local rag instead of another newspaper like the Chronicle or the Mercury helps you understand that there are differing levels of professional journalism. And that every newspaper puts its own spin on the news. It changes everything to put an article at the front, bury it on page 9 or put it on the front page of a back section. All these things are conscious decisions and it helps you know where your paper stands on a given issue.

Case in point ? the Argus has been running (for several weeks, I might add) a news story regarding a ?hazing? incident that happened within the swim team of a local high school. I?ll admit, it?s news but the attention it was given really threw me for a loop. At least twice a week for 3 or 4 weeks running, this was one of the front page/above-the-fold articles in the Argus. Now, for everyone who didn?t take journalism in high school, let me explain what that means. The front page is folded in half to make the standard wad of newsprint that you buy for a quarter in front of the liquor store. The top half of that front page is where you put every news story that you think will make the casual observer buy the newspaper. It goes without saying that this probably means you?re going to put a really broad spectrum story there. Something that everyone in the news-reading public will want to know about. Your wars, your earthquakes, your horrible accidents that leave many people dead. Goes without saying?but I have the need to say it anyway.

Why? Well, apparently, this is a rule they didn?t cover on Editing Day at whatever J-school the collective editors of my local rag went to. They think that the story that deserves the most attention is that a hazing incident took place at the local high school. In addition, their in-depth reporting uncovers the fact that hazing has been going on for a long time at this high school. The upshot is that two faculty members are fired. If that weren?t enough, the kids who play sports and, most importantly, the kids who play for the teams these two members coached are ?left high and dry?. This leads to a lot of drama in which 300 people show up and deliver ?impassioned? speeches about these two guys. Now, count the sentences above?there?s five. Those five sentences cover about seven or eight front page news stories that the Argus felt were important enough to put front page, above the fold.

I did not agree with their decision, but I was prepared to ignore it. The sixth time I saw this recurring pseudo-drama reported on, I expressed verbal annoyance with the ?dunderheads? running the Argus. The seventh time, I did so again?louder. The eighth or ninth?I got pissed enough to write. A copy of what I wrote is below:

From: Tim Woolery

Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 8:46 AM

To: 'arguslet@angnewspapers.com'

Subject: Enough with the MSJ Debacle.

For the kids in high school who were left "high and dry" by the loss of the AD and coach at Mission San Jose High School: seriously...get over it. Life isn't like TV or the movies - you will find that high school doesn't count for much in the great human experience. At the very most it's a bullet point on your resume or a letter on a faded jacket that you bury in the back of your closet and look at from time to time. Be grateful that you live in an area of the world where the largest issue on your mind is the fact that you don't have someone to coach your after-school activity. Day after day I'm reading front page, above-the-fold articles about this non-issue. Kid's swimming is affected in a world where so many people can't find enough clean water to drink much less swim in-what's wrong with this picture?

On a personal note and you can leave it out of my letter if you decide to print it - I'm a lifetime citizen of Fremont and a former paper carrier of yours. I just took out a subscription after about a 10-year run of the SJMN and other papers. This is not news - this is something you bury in the Local section and let crackpots write letters about (the irony is not lost on me). Normally I wouldn't be saying anything but this has been going on for weeks now - there is much more going on in the world that I have much more interest in reading about than this faux-drama. ANG newspapers isn't exactly impressing me with its editorial decisions here. You had an 8-page front section (with one full page devoted to an ad) where the Chron and the Merc will do 15-20 with much more coverage of what's going in the world. You guys reprint articles from the AP and Reuters all the time, let's get with the program. I've got about 320 days left of this year's subscription...don't make me regret it.

As you can see ? my beef with them stretches back to cover a large portion of my childhood. I spent my childhood throwing these wads of paper on people?s front porches, driveways and roofs. It?s sad to know that something I spent so much time doing was in fact encouraging a lot of lazy journalism and the review of a lot of no-news news. Day after day I pick up this pre-paid hunk of copy that I knew was crap back in high school. Front page news stories about the high schools, front page local news stories that talk about kids going back to school and that some of the area classrooms have been painted. This is news? If I flip open the Local section and see prominently displayed on page 3 the respective lunches of the elementary schools and the senior center?does that solidify in my mind that I?m reading what I need to know?

?Well, we cover the news stories that other papers don?t care enough to investigate,? is the reply I know I?ll hear. And that may be true, the other papers don?t carry front page stories about ?Pioneer Days? at Ardenwood Farm. However, just ponder a bit, is there?you know, maybe?a reason?? With all the news I know is happening around the bay and around the state, could I maybe find it annoying to realize that I have to read the paper I paid for and then go find another one to hear about everything you didn?t tell me?

?But then, all that extra news costs money,? you?ll say. ?We?d have to up the price of the paper by another quarter to be able to finance the extra news reporters, papers, ink and ancillary costs.? My response: please do. It?d be nice to only have to go to one (Hear me? One. One.) place to read about what?s going on in the world. Since you?re not telling me what I know must obviously be going on, I?m forced to cruise the other newswires to catch up on everything else that you bumped to make room for some teen angst drama that honestly sounds like a bad 90210 episode. Let it happen to ?em, let them whine about it on their Livejournal and let me ignore it.

The epilogue of the e-mail is that the two faculty members of the high school were hired back and the newspaper called back to say that my letter was ?moot? and would therefore not be printed. At least they got that part right. I consider this Strike One for the Argus?two more of these episodes and I?ll cancel my subscription ? refund or not. I?ll go crawling on my hands and knees to the Merc and beg to bump my subscription back up to daily.

The guy delivering my paper always gets a tip from me. I don?t know who he is but he comes by in the wee hours before I get up. I stepped outside this morning to go to work and was struck by the clean beauty of the pre-dawn darkness. Navy blue sky dotted with stars bright enough to shine across light-years of distance and through the bowl of sodium vapor light pollution around me. A swipe of purest blue, lightening so gradually toward the horizon. Mornings like that were ones that made me not mind having to get up early.

For a few seconds I could remember seeing a runty blond-headed kid with a mountain bike he bought for $100 at Costco weaving through the neighborhood. The pack of papers he carried in an old Argus paperbag almost looks too big for him but he says nothing as he chugs past me. He?s wearing a pair of sweat-wet Walkman phones and I can hear the scratchy sound of something pouring out of them. The swish and thump of a paper landing on a driveway echoes down the street.

He does not recognize me.