Tombstones

Do you remember the names of the great newspapers? I learned them in high school and college. When I was in high school, I would make a special trip to the local Drug Fair to get one of the five Sunday New York Times they imported.

Briefly, in Florida, there was a home delivery service, but that got knocked out. Instead, I had to time it just right to go to the local posh grocery store.

When I lived in Ghettoville, I watched a man steal the Sunday Times right off my front porch.

During the brief year I was a journalism major, I watched the graduating seniors head off to scummy lowest-tier papers in places where the population might hit five digits. We pitied them. We sighed at the inevitable procrastinators who stuck around for a graduate degree because they couldn't get a job. Period.

Then there were the grandes dames of the publishing world. The Washington Post. The Miami Herald. The Atlanta Constitution. The San Francisco Chronicle. The LA Times. Even the unlikely Sacramento Bee was a place to be desired because they kept on pumping out Pulitzer winning stories. And of course, the New York Times. And the Wall Street Journal.

If I look at my alumni magazine, I see "John Smith, class of 78. Communications major has been promoted to sales director of No-Smellee-Urinal Cakes." I wonder if John Smith ever had a chance to play for the majors. A number of people opted for law school a couple of years later.

The closest I ever got was writing a spec script for "Lou Grant".

And so it goes.