Category: Journalism

Help!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
“Won’t you please, please, help me?”

Is the pen the writer? The brush the painter? The motor the cyclist?

Grumbling over coffee about the lack of interesting reading material online — just about any old thing that wasn’t about fascists, eejits, or fascist eejits— I stumbled first across a piece about artificial intelligence worming its way into the handmade world of ’zines, and then another about bearing your own burdens from the deep, deep well that is Mike Ferrentino.

Lo’s letta.

I appreciate ’zines, with their homemade artsy feel. In January our friend Lo sent us a tiny one she’d made, about the size of a hang tag, that was miles above the tired old “What we’ve been up to” family newsletter.

The niche seems to share some DNA with the underground newspapers I enjoyed Back in the Day®. I did a little cartooning for a few of those, and even helped start a short-lived one while wrapping up that B.A. in journalism from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.

This may have followed my ouster as cartoonist for the college newspaper following a series of mildly vile attempts to bring Bay Area Rip Off Press-style hijinks to Weld County. My derivative bullshit failed to dollar up on the hoof in cattle country.

And the new venture somehow managed in short order to crawl right up the arse of some student-government numbnuts who threatened a lawsuit over a bit of unpleasantness we’d published.

“Good luck with that,” I said, referring him to our paper’s masthead, in which my dog Jojo was listed as editor. “Not only are you a public figure for the purposes of this story, but my dog is the editor. You’re the only person I can think of who is taking us seriously.”

Still, one longs to be taken seriously. Or at least laughed at for the right reasons. Also, paid. The Revolution was not only untelevised, it was underfunded.

So I left handmade hellraising for “straight” journalism, overstayed my welcome there, and now, here I am, a half century later, comfortably underground again and still waiting on the Revolution.

• • •

Blogging the way I do it has some ’zine-like qualities, I think. But what once was called a “weblog” actually has its roots in “journaling,” another handmade, offline sort of pasatiempo that’s enjoying a comeback of sorts. Though like everything else you can take it digital if you must — your iPhone has had a “Journal” app since 2023.

George suggested I start keeping a journal, and Lord, have I ever kept ’em.

I started keeping a journal in 1974, at the urging of George Gladney, then a reporter at the Colorado Springs Sun. In the Year of Our Lard 2026 I have 15 pounds of them, a cardboard box overflowing with old-school composition books defaced with ballpoint graffiti. And what a ’zine they would make, if anyone could decipher my scribbling (cursive early on, block lettering afterward).

The cops could clear many a cold case on the evidence therein.

“Honey, you’re making a scene!” Herself would exclaim as the John Laws burst through the door.

“No, I’m making a ’zine,” I would quip as the cuffs went on and the flashbulbs popped.

Those bracelets would come off again, and quickly, too, thanks to various statutes of limitations and a general unavailability of surviving/credible witnesses.

And then I could forget about ’zines and get back to the blogging, which I’ve been beavering away at since the Nineties, shortly after I abandoned newspapers for freelancing — basically trading one boss and regular paychecks for several bosses and “It’s in the mail. …” — and thought it might be fun to be my own underground, unpaid, hands-on publisher again, if only as a sideline.

Sadly, my editor Jojo was long gone, and his daughter Fuerte had no interest in journalism.

• • •

In the Nineties scribblers didn’t have to worry about A.I., unless they’d read a lot of science fiction. Some of us were short on intelligence of any sort, artificial or innate. My comp books and Bics got demoted from deep thought to training logs as I acquired a series of Macs, modems, and text editors. I taught myself some basic HTML, paid a rural hosting outfit to house my monstrosity in one of their cages from which it could screech and throw shit at passers-by, and hey presto! A blog.

The rest, as they say, is history, and quite a bit of it. My earliest efforts are lost in cyberspace, but the Archives contain about a quarter-century’s worth of bloggery in various states of decomposition.

What I brought to my little peepshow in the virtual carnival was decades of experience in newspapers and magazines as a reporter, editor, and cartoonist. I turned pro in the journalism racket just as newspapers were stumbling through the transition from hot type — for-reals hot, lines cast in lead by a clanking Linotype machine — to cold type, which meant computers. The times they were a-changin’.

Your Humble Narrator in the Mitchell High School Echelon‘s newsroom, circa 1971.

And once the Internet became A Thing, and those computers evolved from rumbling gods behind locked doors to perky little desktop numbers that anyone could own for the price of a decent used car, they were a-changin’ again. If you wanted to keep your head above water you had to go with the flow.

Which brings us back to the process of creation, and how — for me, at least — it’s changed since I submitted that first cartoon to the Mitchell High School Echelon back in 1971.

• • •

I had only ever been a cartoonist.

Self-taught, of course. A comics junkie from jump. Superman and Batman, Mad magazine, Bill Mauldin, Herblock. I learned that you draw in pencil so you can erase your mistakes, and then try very very hard not to make more mistakes when you finally ink the penciled sketch because then you have to start over. Add ink washes or sticky halftone film to achieve shades of gray; use watercolors or colored pencils to go full Disney.

Luck of the draw.

But mostly I stuck to pencil, eraser, and black ink on paper because (a) I fucked up a ton, and (2) anything that got published was going to be in black and white anyway. Simple.

So I was I. Lord, was I ever.

And one day I found myself hired as a copy boy at the Sun, stripping wire-service copy from the teletypes, walking photos to engraving and page proofs to the copy desk, and waiting to be recognized as the next Pat Oliphant, who was then at The Denver Post.

Shortly after I’d proved competent at the basics the city editor handed me a press release to rewrite.

“But I don’t know how to type.” I said.

“Better learn,” he replied while walking away.

So I learned. My typing style remains unique, three fingers on the left hand and two on the right. Oddly fast, but a thing of beauty it is not; “touch typing” in the sense that each of those five fingers will eventually touch a key. The endless rewrites ordered by the city and/or copy desks were heavy lifting for a rookie scribe who couldn’t even fucking type, pounding away at the keys of a manual typewriter that was probably past retirement age when Damon Runyon was learning the newspaper racket down south at the Pueblo Star.

Nevertheless, I persisted. Learned. And adapted.

• • •

A few years and one B.A. in journalism later I was at the other newspaper in town — not as a cartoonist, but as a reporter — and I was delighted to see computerization finally rear its ugly head. Instead of going 10 rounds with that typewriter I could do a brain-dump into the terminal, then root through the pile and pick out a few shiny objects that might amuse an assistant city editor. If they didn’t, the rewrite would be a lot faster. And they couldn’t wad up my copy and throw it at me anymore.

Some of the veteranos in the Gazette Telegraph newsroom were less gung-ho. They would pound out their reports as per usual, on their ancient typewriters, and then with hard copy in hand retype them into their computer terminals as smoke billowed from ears at the city desk. Eventually the typewriters were removed. Some of the typists, too.

Forty-nine years, five newspapers, and countless magazines later I have written and/or drawn on just about everything using whatever was handy: pencils, pens, crayons, and keyboards; comp books, reporter’s notepads, bar napkins, and hotel stationery; manual and electric typewriters, dumb terminals hooked to mainframes, Macs connected to the Internet, and iPhones. Even shithouse walls.

Writing is never easy, because I have read so much of it, by more talented people. But it has become easier, with the advent of computers, and especially the laptop, which liberates you from the desk. Tip over the cranium wherever you are, let its contents spill out onto that solid-state floor, then root around in the pile until you find what you need.

A 14-year-old hammer and chisel: My 2012 MacBook Air.

It should still feel a lot like work. Sweaty, irksome, a daylight-burning, down-the-rabbit-hole time-suck, just one goddamn thing after another. Michelangelo looked at a block of marble and saw David within. But he needed a hammer and chisel to get to him. Got his hands dirty.

I’m no Michelangelo. Just some fool with the brain farts in search of a few perverts who like the smell. Pull my finger! And I’ve tried to choose my tools wisely.

For instance, while I love me some laptop and text editor, I hate spellcheckers and grammar widgets. If I want something looking over my shoulder I’ll get a parrot. I do my own stunts, bub, and I work without a net. Now stand back and watch. Gimme room!

The cartooning got a little involved there for a while, once color became available. I needed a flatbed scanner and a lot of pig-ign’ant careening around in Adobe Photoshop to deliver 300-dpi CMYK images to the masses. But the ideas all came from the same old place (behind the increasingly powerful spectacles), and first sprang to hideous life using the same old tools (paper, pencil, pen, and ink).

My office in Bisbee, Ariz.

Between you and me, I think the march of progress developed a hitch in its gitalong a few years back. I work on a 14-inch 2024 M4 MacBook Pro now, but it’s no great improvement over my 11-inch MacBook Air, which dates to 2012. Better display, faster processor, yadda yadda yadda. I write a blog using a browser. I could do it with an iPhone from a tent. And I have.

So, if I ever run out of things worth saying, and interesting ways to say them, I won’t acquire some RoombaRite 9000® to hoover up all the words on the Internet and empty its bag into this blog. A.I.? N.O. It’d be like bolting a motor onto one of my Steelman Eurocrosses. Ferrentino and his father got it right: If you can’t lift it, don’t drive it.

No creative sort ever goes it completely alone, of course, unless they have a paper ranch, an ink well, a canvas farm, and a paint horse (har de har har). Find the lever and fulcrum that suit your needs and see if you can move the world. Without breaking it, if you please.

It doesn’t matter how you do the work as long as you do the work.

When HAL runs HR

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
“I know you still have the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. But. …”

I’m rarely gobsmacked by journalism lately. Familiarity, contempt … you know.

But damme if this piece from Josh Tyrangiel at The Atlantic ain’t a sure-’nough stem-winder.

The question is “What will A.I. do to jobs?” And the answers come from right, left and center, from tech CEOs to academic economists to Steve Fucking Bannon — yes, that Steve Fucking Bannon.

It’s smartly reported and cleverly written and the accompanying graphics from Stephan Dybus are top notch.

You will probably not find the story comforting, as it considers the irksome human factor’s effects, if any, upon the Rise of the Machines. The long and the short of it is that where job security in Meatworld is considered, A.I. will either be just ducky or something like a pickleball dustup in Florida.

Just another ink-stained retch. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments
One of Your Humble Narrator’s clips from The New Mexican, circa 1991.

I suppose I should be raving about what’s happening to The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and just about every other newspaper or magazine in this misbegotten country.

But hey, if we’re going to be dumb enough to elect a venomous orange man-baby as the Pestilence of the Benighted Snakes — twice! — I guess we deserve to be pig-ign’ant of what he’s doing, too.

Anyway, the only thing raving about shitty newspapers ever got me was an invitation — more than one, actually — to leave the one I was raving about and drag my surly ass off to some other shitty newspaper, posthaste, s’il vous plaît, don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya, etc. I managed my final escape from The New Mexican in 1991, one step ahead of the publisher’s spike heel, and that was that.

You regulars know the story. I had joined that paper in 1988 as a copy editor, then cycled (har de har har) through a number of gigs — assistant sports editor, assistant features editor, and finally features editor, doing a little cartooning and cycling reportage on the side — before taking it on the Jesse Owens in ‘91 to do as a freelancer what pretty much every Damon Runyon character did on Broadway, to wit: “the best he can, which is an occupation that is greatly overcrowded at all times. …”

Boy howdy.

Still, 15 years of newspapering set me up pretty well for freelancing, because while I wasn’t exactly great at anything, I had learned to be OK at a number of things: writing hard news, soft features, and commentary (and fast, too); editing other people’s work and proofing pages; drawing cartoons and taking photos. I would try just about any old thing for any old crook who could spell my name right on a check and remember to mail it while I could still remember what I did to earn it.

So there I was, just doing the best I could and plenty of it, because freelancing paid less than newspaper work, and the kind of newspapers that would hire a hairy pain in the ass like Your Humble Narrator didn’t pay shit. If you wanted to get a raise, you had to move to another newspaper, and without being kicked, too.

Or maybe that was just me.

Happily, freelancers basically pioneered the concept of “remote work,” which kept my pain from manifesting itself daily in various editors’ asses. For a while, anyway. I developed a long reach. Nevertheless, I managed to log 30 years as a freelancer, twice the time I spent raving my way through a half-dozen Western dailies and one weekly outfit, and only had to move four times.

And newspapers taught me how.

I liked newspaper work, when I wasn’t hating it. The people were smart, except for the ones who weren’t, and you could try your hand at damn near anything unless you wanted to get paid more for it, in which case nix. The shift was basically hours of fuck-all peppered with seconds of cardiac arrest and/or stroke and we had to remake the entire fucking product every fucking day.

And no do-overs. Once your mistakes were off the press and soiling the readers’ greedy little paws they were yours forever, like misspelled tattoos.

God, it was fun. Except when it wasn’t. But sometimes even then, too. Plus it fed and housed me for 15 years, and set me up for the next three decades.

So fuck Jeff Bezos anyway.

Fourth and long

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
“Holy hell, hon’, better start filling the sandbags.”

Winter finally came a-calling yesterday.

More of a “ring the doorbell and run” deal, actually. Left 0.06 inch of rain on our doorstep instead of a flaming sack of dog shit.

We’ll take it. Don’t gotta stomp it out or nothin’.

Today dawned clear and cold, and the furnace and humidifier were harmonizing on what sounded like some sort of mariachi tune as I awakened just before 4 to “shake hands with the governor.”

“Are you getting up or going back to bed?” Herself asked as she set about her day.

“Back to bed,” I mumbled, and made it so. The next two hours of sleep were top shelf, curled up like an old dog under blanket and comforter. The news cycle can’t get me in there, with the phone locked and in silent mode. No wonder Miss Mia Sopaipilla loves the bed-cave I make for her every morning after coffee. And she doesn’t even read The New York Times.

The press is deep into “The Year in Review” mode now, which reminds me of the last time I went to a Broncos game at the old Mile High stadium, back in the days when the Donkeys would have had their hands full going up against a Pop Warner squad from Saguache.

Anyway, the Donks were getting their asses handed to them, by whom I can’t recall, and though there was plenty of time remaining on the clock, the stands were emptying faster than bladders overloaded by the industrial lager the fans were slamming to drown their sorrows.

In mid-exodus the PA gives out with a cheery, “And don’t forget to watch ‘Bronco Replay'” on whatever local TV channel was playing the piano in that whorehouse. After which some tosspot a few tiers downhill from us lurches to his unsteady feet, bellows, “Wasn’t it bad enough the first time?” and then tumbles down the stairs.

All these years later three hundred and sixty-five steps seems like quite a tumble, especially since I’m not wearing any protective gear — like, say, sinuses lined with cocaine, a beer-swollen liver, and a couple dozen extra elbees of adipose tissue.

So please excuse me if I skip the replay. It was bad enough the first time.

‘Genocide’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
“What’s in a name? that which we call a hose / By any other name would smell as sour.” Apologies to The Bard.

Man, did I ever have to take the scenic route to this post.

This morning as I scanned the news, I noticed a headline at The New Mexican‘s website:

“Delays, bankruptcy let nursing-home chain avoid paying settlements for injuries, deaths.”

This sort of revelation is always of interest to me, as I am of a certain age, Herself’s patience is not without limits, and I have seen my mother, her mother, and an old friend renting rooms in such places.

But I don’t subscribe to The New Mex, and didn’t bother trying to hurdle their paywall.

And then, in a sidebar beneath the main story, I saw the name of the nursing-home chain: Genesis.

Aha! As it happens we know someone who had a family member installed in one of their Duck! City facilities. This person failed to thrive, and the tales told did not recommend the joint as a comfy bench upon which to await the Greydog to the Hereafter, though it seemed a stint there might have made good training for a triathlon featuring Cormac McCarthy’s Road and Dante’s Sea of Excrement.

Our source called the outfit “Genocide.”

So I launched a quick search and hey presto: Turns out the piece by Jordan Rau was not by a New Mex scribe. It came from KFF Health News, the news arm of KFF, an endowed national nonprofit that calls itself “the leading health policy organization in the U.S.” (You may remember it as the Kaiser Family Foundation.) They have a very liberal reprint policy, but I’m just gonna give you the links and a free taste:

Once the nation’s largest nursing home chain, Genesis says it was spending $8 million a month defending and settling lawsuits over resident injuries and deaths in recent years. But the company is now poised to wipe the liability slate clean by seeking refuge in the most protective corner of the legal system for the nursing home industry: bankruptcy court. The Genesis case, one of 11 large senior care bankruptcies this year, illustrates how health care companies can dodge public and financial accountability for alleged negligence through delays, confidentiality clauses, and bankruptcy maneuvers, a KFF Health News investigation found.

It seems a bankruptcy judge has declined to sign off on one typical evasive maneuver (the sale of its nursing-home business, reportedly to an insider). Everything I was able to find on that was paywalled.

In other news, though the story mentioned three incidents in Duck!Burg facilities (Genesis has 10 of them here), and despite the ease of reprinting or citing KFF’s heavy lifting in this matter, I’ve seen nothing about this in the Albuquerque Journal, which has been otherwise occupied trying to make its grotesque website easier to look at and navigate.

A “Local” drop-down under “News” would be a plus. Recaps of gruesome murders in California and Australia I can get elsewhere.

And if I were a working editor instead of just another doddering old ink-stained wretch in queue for the Soylent Green treatment I might bookmark KFF Health News, too. The Genesis locations I visited today had full parking lots. Surely the visitors can’t all be personal-injury attorneys. Some might be subscribers visiting loved ones.