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Clarence Page |
This was a big year. I hit my 20th
anniversary as a columnist and editorial
board member.
I picked up my gold watch for 30 years of service at the Tribune (interrupted by four years at WBBM-TV), and I celebrated meeting Lisa Johnson of Hyde Park 20 years ago. She is now my wife and the mother of our son, Grady, 15.
Along the way it dawned on me that, to quote a New Yorker cartoon, I'm getting "too old to be the youngest anything." I see this when the eyes of my fellow board members glaze over as I recount some yarn from the old days of Chicago, when newsrooms had typewriters, teletype machines, copy "books" of writing paper with carbon copies and endless shouts for "copy boys."
To quote the old tune by the Grateful Dead, whom I cheerfully interviewed when I was a college student reporter back in the '60s, what a long, strange trip it's been. Forty years have passed since I decided as a high school junior to pursue a career in journalism in the hope that, just maybe, I'd get to be a columnist. Be careful what you ask for, children.
My original dream was to cover movies, pop music or some other aspect of show business. Instead my desire to be an eyewitness to history's big stories drew me into urban affairs, race relations, education, housing and inevitably politics, which somebody famously called "show business for ugly people."
I cannot remember a time when I was not intrigued by politics. I'll never forget walking miles as a kid in 1960 to hear Richard Nixon speak from the back of a train in my hometown in southern Ohio. John F. Kennedy came too, but school officials decided not to let the kids out of school that day. It was an early lesson in political one-sidedness.
As a reporter, I tried to be fair and balanced. Now that opinions are my most important product, no one should expect me to be "balanced." I call things as I see them. But I still try to be fair. I can't tell you what to think, but I can strongly suggest things for you to think about.
I picked up my gold watch for 30 years of service at the Tribune (interrupted by four years at WBBM-TV), and I celebrated meeting Lisa Johnson of Hyde Park 20 years ago. She is now my wife and the mother of our son, Grady, 15.
Along the way it dawned on me that, to quote a New Yorker cartoon, I'm getting "too old to be the youngest anything." I see this when the eyes of my fellow board members glaze over as I recount some yarn from the old days of Chicago, when newsrooms had typewriters, teletype machines, copy "books" of writing paper with carbon copies and endless shouts for "copy boys."
To quote the old tune by the Grateful Dead, whom I cheerfully interviewed when I was a college student reporter back in the '60s, what a long, strange trip it's been. Forty years have passed since I decided as a high school junior to pursue a career in journalism in the hope that, just maybe, I'd get to be a columnist. Be careful what you ask for, children.
My original dream was to cover movies, pop music or some other aspect of show business. Instead my desire to be an eyewitness to history's big stories drew me into urban affairs, race relations, education, housing and inevitably politics, which somebody famously called "show business for ugly people."
I cannot remember a time when I was not intrigued by politics. I'll never forget walking miles as a kid in 1960 to hear Richard Nixon speak from the back of a train in my hometown in southern Ohio. John F. Kennedy came too, but school officials decided not to let the kids out of school that day. It was an early lesson in political one-sidedness.
As a reporter, I tried to be fair and balanced. Now that opinions are my most important product, no one should expect me to be "balanced." I call things as I see them. But I still try to be fair. I can't tell you what to think, but I can strongly suggest things for you to think about.