This will be my last column for the L.A. Times. After four years, I'll soon be starting a stint at the Pentagon as an advisor to the undersecretary of Defense for policy.
Some might say I have a "new job," but because I'll be escaping a dying industry -- and your tax dollars will shortly be paying my salary -- I prefer to think of it as my personal government bailout.
Like everyone else whose livelihood is linked to the newspaper industry, I've been watching, appalled, as newspapers continue their death spiral, with dwindling circulations and thousands of layoffs. Here at The Times, the editorial staff is down to almost half the size it was in 2000. Often, as I've watched talented colleagues get the ax, I've suspected that I've only lasted this long because as a freelancer -- with no benefits and minimal pay -- I'm just too cheap to be worth firing.
Still, I knew it was time to pray for a government bailout in December, when my editor explained that because the paper's parent company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, I might not get paid for my recent columns. From a legal perspective, he told me, I wasn't a columnist -- I was an "unsecured creditor" of Tribune Co. (Along with other freelancers, I got paid in the end, but if I ever do this again, I'll be sure to ask CEO Sam Zell for some collateral first -- the title to his house, maybe.)
Of course, I'm not taking a government job only because I feel lucky to parachute out before some cost-cutter eliminates every last column. At this moment in history, I can't imagine anything more rewarding than being part of the new team that's shaping U.S. policy.
But as I say goodbye to my wonderful Times colleagues, I also can't imagine anything more dangerous than a society in which the news industry has more or less collapsed.
If newspapers become mostly infotainment websites -- if the number of well-trained investigative journalists dwindles still further -- and if we're soon left with nothing but the yapping heads who dominate cable "news" and talk radio, how will we recognize, or hope to forestall, impending national and global crises? How will we know if government officials have made terrible mistakes, as even the best will sometimes do? How will we know if government officials have told us terrible lies, as the worst have sometimes done? A decimated, demoralized and under-resourced press corps hardly questioned the Bush administration's flimsy case for war in Iraq -- and the price for that failure will be paid for generations.
