Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 23:36:13 -0400
From: Juanski@aol.com

Hi:
Thought you might like to read my "farewell" column, which was published by
The Houston Press this week:

     In the opera Harvey Milk, the assassinated San Francisco supervisor is
given an opportunity to observe the city's reaction to his death.
     "I have let you see it with your own eyes," the Messenger tells Milk,
"Though you may not cross there."
     In a perverse sort of way, I feel as I've been given a similar
opportunity by
the Houston Press's offer to print  "the farewell column you would have
written
for The Post had you been allowed," in the words of the Press' editor.
     So, how does it feel to be given such a rare chance to be a walking-dead
columnist, free to write one more time but forbidden to cross into the real
world
of living, breathing journalism?
     Pretty damn crummy, if you must know.
     And you must know. I understand that. We all understand that. We know
you're curious. We know you're concerned. We know you have to ask the
questions.
     "When did you find out?"
     "Did you have any idea?"
     "What are you going to do now?"
     "What?"
     "When?"
     "How?"
     "Why?"
     And we have to answer, not just because we know you have a right to be
curious, and not just because we appreciate your concern, but because we need
to see whether if, by responding, we can make some sense out of something
that
doesn't -- can't, won't -- make sense.
     Well, that's what we tell ourselves anyway. The truth is that it all
does
make sense. It's a simple equation: You take a healthy paper and over the year
s
refuse to invest in the product and concentrate instead on erecting a fancy
building and installing fancy  equipment and you pretend that your
competition
is not kicking your butt and pretty soon you're going to have to close that
sucker
down -- or find some suckers of the human kind to take it off your hands.
     That's exactly what the Hobby family did. For years, they had the city's
No.
1 paper, the morning paper. Industry logic dictated that they would be able
to,
over time, run the afternoon daily out of town. But that was not to be. It
wasn't
that the Chronicle had a superior product -- it never has -- but because
somewhere along the line one smart Chronicle manager decided to concentrate
on classified advertising and circulation, a smart formula for a city that
was
about to become Boomtown, USA. It doesn't take a Harvard MBA to figure out
that a newcomer to a city is going to pick up the one with the most
classified ads
to help him find a job, an apartment or a house for sale. And once he settles
down, he keeps on reading the same paper, not because it's better, but simply
because he's familiar with it. And when you have hundreds of thousands of new
arrivals, all doing the same thing, the paper with a puny classified section
doesn't
stand a chance.
     So The Post had been dying for decades. It would have died years earlier
had the Chronicle ever figured out how to put out a decent product. Dean
Singleton was simply the insecure guy with the inflated ego and
under-inflated
pocketbook who thought he could do what the Hobbys and the Toronto ("Take
their pension plan and run") Sun people could not. To assign him the grand
role
of Houston Post slayer would be to give him too much credit. He was merely
the
one who got the nasty chore of pounding a stake through the paper's pitiful
heart. That he chose to do so in the most cretinous and cowardly manner
possible was his most unforgivable sin.
     In an interview with the Dallas Morning News, Singleton said he opted
against allowing us to publish a final "farewell" issue because he considers
such
editions "pathetic."
     Pathetic? To whom? Certainly not to the several hundred thousand loyal
readers who would have loved a keepsake of the paper they had stuck with
through the years. Certainly not to the hundreds of employees who would have
loved an opportunity to thank those readers by putting out the best final
edition
possible.
     A man whose trademark is putting out pathetic papers did not want to
allow one final pathetic edition? Give us a fucking break! And is there a
single
person in Houston who gives a flying frog what Dean Singleton thinks?

  * * *

     I was probably the last person in Houston to hear of The Demise of The
Houston Post. I had jury duty Tuesday, and  I was unable to escape the Harris
County Courthouse until about 1 p.m. The first thing I did was check my voice
mail from a pay phone at the courthouse.
     "Juan, I just want to let you know how sorry I am . . .," said the first
message. Subsequent callers expressed similar sentiments. None said what they
were sorry about, but I knew what had happened.
     As soon as I arrived at the Fort Hobby parking lot and saw  colleagues
piling stuff into their vehicles I knew  there would be no more Houston
Posts, not
even a farewell issue.
     My first reaction was to play tough guy. If I put on a stoic face, I
would
escape the pain of having to deal with the stark reality of No More Houston
Post.
It worked for a while. It worked while I went through my desk drawers and
files
and put what I wanted to keep in boxes and dumped everything else on the
floor.
     "It's just another business closing," I said harshly to a young former
Post
intern who called to express his dismay. "It happens all the time."
     "But it's a newspaper," he pleaded. "It is different. It has to be!"
     "Well, it isn't," I responded, and at that time I truly believed it,
 because I
had forced myself to believe it. If I could convince myself that the end of
The Post
was no different than the closing down of say, a General Motors plant, I
wouldn't
have to deal with it as a personal loss.
    But then I walked to the fax room where somebody had taped to a glass
wall
a number of faxed anguished messages from readers and the pain became
overwhelming and the tears started flowing. An unfortunate co-worker who
happened be walking by was saddled with the chore of holding me as I tried to
regain my composure.
     That sense that the closing of a newspaper is something special was
reinforced that evening when I got home. I turned on the computer and clicked
on to my E-mail. Waiting for me were messages from about 50 readers, some old
E-mail friends, others total strangers.
     "I started reading The Post when I was in fourth grade," said one. "My
dad
called to commiserate. He's 69 and delivered The Post when he was a kid. I'll
miss
you and my quiet mornings with The Post."
     Similar sentiments were expressed over and over again.
     So yes, the death of The Houston Post is a bigger event than the death
of
another business. Unlike most other products, newspapers speak to people
daily,
they touch people's hearts and they make people angry.
     And they are missed.
     For a while, at least. Eventually, most of Houston will forget that
there ever
was a Houston Post. Every now and then, somebody will say, "Remember Juan
Palomo?" or, "Remember Bonnie Gangelhoff?" And somebody else will say, "Oh
yeah, didn't he/she write for that paper that closed down?"
     Back to Harvey Milk:
     "See how your shadow precedes you at sunrise," the Messenger tells Milk,
"then lingers behind you at the end of the day."
     For the four years, six months and 10 days I was a columnist for The
Post,
writing 450 columns, it was a shear joy seeing that shadow before me each
morning.
     Now that sweet, sweet shadow  lingers behind me. It's time to find
another
one. Thank you, Houston.