Journalism 101, Travels with Jay

In 1962 John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley was first published.  It wasn’t appreciated at the time. Steinbeck was known mostly for his novels, i.e. The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men.  Travels With Charley was a travelogue documenting his 1960 road trip across the United States with Charley, his Standard Poodle.  “What the hell is Steinbeck doing?” was the general consensus of the literary critics.  Not me.  I loved it.  But what did I know?

Now, more than sixty years later, the book is still around.  But I’ve got something better.  I’ve got Travels With Jay.  During the last couple of years, I’ve traveled with Jay Martin quite a bit.  He’s not a dog, I’m pretty sure.  He’s a journalist.  He’s the editor/publisher of Siskiyou News, the only newspaper that actually covers Siskiyou County anymore.  It’s available online at https://www.siskiyou.news/.  Also, the hard copy newspaper version is distributed every Tuesday to various locations throughout the county.

Up until recently my travels with Jay have been mostly around Siskiyou County.  For example, on August 2^nd we went to a community meeting at the Forks of Salmon Community Center addressing the Orleans Complex wildfires raging in the area.  The meeting was presented by officials from various federal, state, local, and tribal agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service, the Siskiyou County Sheriff, the County Office of Emergency Services, CalFire, California Interagency Incident Management Team 4, and the Karuk Tribe.  It was a productive meeting where a lot of frightened concerned citizens had a lot to say.

Last week I rode with Jay for nearly 600 miles, round trip.

He never stopped talking.  If you know him, you know what I’m saying.

We went to Sacramento, on a mission.  It was a tribute luncheon for another journalist, Dan Walters, who is maybe just a wee bit better known than Jay.  Dan Walters worked for the Sacramento Bee for nearly forty years.  Then ten years ago he switched to the newcomer publication, Cal Matters.  The event in Sacramento was to recognize Dan Walters’ fifty-year career as one of California’s most influential political commentators.  It was also a tribute to Cal Matters’ ten years of operation.

The luncheon was at the UC Student and Policy Center, next door to the State Capitol.  Jay and I had some time to kill so we walked around the Capitol grounds and neighborhood for a while.  A real pleasure for me.  It had been years since the last time I was there.

As a wannabe journalist myself I was interested in what Dan Walters had to say during his hour-long interview.  He responded to questions from people in attendance.  What follows are some of his answers on topics that are of interest to me.

Term Limits.  He was asked how he felt about term limits.  In November, 1990, California voters passed Proposition 140, establishing term limits for members of the California state legislature.  It limited a member to a maximum of three two-year terms (6 years) in the Assembly and two four-year terms (8 years) in the Senate, for a total limit of fourteen years.  In 2012, California voters passed Proposition 28, which modified that to allow a person to serve a lifetime maximum of 12 years in the state legislature, which can be spent in either or both houses.  Dan Walters’ comments: “The legislature became less a club of middle-aged white men … and much more reflective of California as a whole.  A good thing about term limits is that it made the legislature become more diverse, as California was becoming more diverse.”

One-Party Government.  Asked about “one-party government,” Dan Walters’ response: “It naturally thinks it doesn’t have to be answerable to anyone. Whether it’s the Trump White House or the Gavin Newsom governorship.  They can stiff you.  And what’s the penalty?  There is no penalty because it’s a one-party government.  One party government leads to secrecy and manipulation.  That’s true in California and its true in Washington … The opposition is powerless, the Republicans in California and the Democrats in Washington, so they can just do any damn thing they want to do, and they don’t have to answer to anybody.”

Governors Who Have Had The Most Profound Impact On California.  “I think the most interesting governor was the dullest, or maybe the second dullest, Pete Wilson … His public personality was quite wooden … I admired Pete Wilson for one reason.  He came into office really wanting to do something. He was a great proponent of what he called preventative government.  That you should have things that prevent problems from occurring, rather than having them occur and responding to them …  But he had the worst fortune of any governor … every single county in California was declared a disaster area at least once during his governorship … floods, riots, earthquakes …everything that could possibly happened in California happened during his governorship … he got stuck in the business of being a crisis manager …In terms of lasting effect, I think it would be Jerry Brown … he was a spoiled brat in his first term … he had a short attention span … the second term he came back as an engaged, mature governor who had things he needed to do and he did them.”

Social Media.  There was quite a bit of discussion about where legacy journalism is headed in a world where social media now has such a huge impact on how people get their information.  A specific question asked was “what do you feel the future of journalism is?”  Dan Walters’ response: “If you go on U-Tube there are about three or four U-Tube channels devoted to California politics and every one of them spews nothing but misinformation … it’s just crap, it really is … the conclusion, nobody really knows.”

Blurring Of The Line Between News Reporting And Opinion.  Do you have any thoughts on the columnists’ role these days?  “We columnists are kind of a strange species … There are not very many of us, for one thing … There is the old saw in journalism, ‘who, what, why, where, and when’ …  but the ‘why’ of it is the most difficult part … there are always people at the Capitol that will tell you why they are doing something, and they’re mostly lying to you, and you know they’re lying to you … but in the traditional story form, you’re stuck with that … writing a column, you can get into the ‘why’ and you aren’t necessarily limited to what the players in the game were saying … it’s a very difficult question to answer in the traditional story form … as a columnist, I’m mostly interested in the ‘why’ … what is the background, where did it happen, where does it fit into the historical context of other things …  what happened before and what’s happening now …how is it different … why is it different … things like that.” 

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