Back in my day, you banged out your journalism on a Precambrian manual Royal that weighed more than a Yugo, and was about as dependable. If you wanted to rearrange your copy, you cut it up, using scissors, and put it back together, using tape, then you handed it to a typesetter, and that's the way it was. This would've been 1985; I don't expect some of you kids to understand.
Including that first job, at the Henderson Home News, and this last one, here at City Cast, I've worked for nine publications in this town, some more than once. Four are now defunct, a few are merely funct, and a couple keep doing good work in a business sinking faster than a tissue-paper boat. I started out making a laughable $250 a week, and earn a little more now — at least for the rest of today. After that I'll be cashing Social Security checks much closer to those 1985 amounts. I'm retiring.
For me it's been 39 years of — uh, yes, you in the back, you have a question? Have I written about celebrities? Sure, a few. Penn Jillette showed me around his house, secret rooms and all. I talked with Don Rickles, Bill Maher, folks like that. But they (or their publicists) want to control the narrative, and, brother, that's my job. As a reporter and editor, I was drawn to more complicated stories that delved into the decidedly mixed blessings of living in a metro area that continually reconfigured itself like a demented Rubik’s cube. (Also, stories that would let me max out my pun capacity.) I wrote a lot about artists and poets and musicians, trying to figure out how cool people made a life here, in case I accidentally achieved coolness. Somehow I managed to avoid joining the more lucrative world of public relations. To then wrap it all up in a jewel box like City Cast is more than I would’ve hoped for.
Mine hasn't been a perfect career, of course. I wrote and assigned some terrible stories, played subjects for laughs when I should've tuned in to deeper truths, maxed out my pun capacity. Thankfully, many of those mistakes snooze in pre-internet archives or behind dead links, and all that's left now is to put a period on my, er, legacy, which was best summed up by my wife: "You've dragged down the dress code at every job you've ever had." I'll take that as a career epitaph, and maybe on my tombstone, too — hopefully many Social Security checks from now. (Note: Meantime, I’ll still freelance around town, notably as Desert Companion’s “writer in residence” this year.)
Anyway, that's that. Back in my day, you'd type "-30-" at the end of your stories. So I'll just say thanks so much for reading, please keep supporting this newsletter and podcast, and journalism, too, and -30- -30- -30-.
➕ Remembering Las Vegas’ alt-weekly heyday. [Hey Las Vegas 📧]
