Jim Murray was my favorite. I came of newspaper reading age in suburban Los Angeles. The sports section was my entry. Murrays column came first as I grew up and again in Santa Barbara, hungry for my favorite section of The LA Times at the fire station, also prized by most crewmates.
I learned a few years later how he did it, his true heft on the staff, from an old alcoholic reporter at the mountain town paper I edited in northern California. My colleague had reported for The Times back in the day, sharing a Pulitzer for coverage of the 1965 Watts riots.
Murray was such a star he pioneered remote work, from the beach. My source, who I should be ashamed to say I plied with gin and tonics at the Capitol Club across the street from the paper, told me Murray would speak into a recorder and at the end of the day drop it off for an assistant to type up, pitch perfect every time.
I came to love Mike Royko, the irascible columnist in Chicago who often spoke through imaginary working class slob Slats Grobnik, employing fictional conversations to lay down uncomfortable truths. Royko was tough, totally unfair, hilarious.
But mostly I was into the essays in Outside before they got caught up with making money. Tim Cahill and David Quammen. I wanted to write like them. And like the writers in Newsweek and Time, the news articles columns at root, reporting with a voice.
I appreciated the caustic wit of Ann Coulter, whew, and Maureen Dowds one-liners. But I gravitated more to David Brooks and Thomas Friedman, more inclined to teach than excoriate.
For a time the king was Mitch Albom, while I was city editor in Holland, Mich., and then news editor in Benton Harbor-St. Joseph an hour down the shore.
Albom, sports columnist of the year from Detroit every year before making his millions in sappy novels, had endless imitators throughout the state and into Indiana, though that ended around the Illinois state line. Something to do with FIPs, the I always meaning that other state between those two. I learned this from my wifes family in South Bend, Indiana, and editing The Daily Gazette in Sterling-Rock Falls, Illinois prairie country where directions to a town 14 miles away once were ride due south for five miles and turn west at the tree. The only tree.
I always liked Charles Krauthammer of The Washington Post, too, though I didnt realize it until listening during commutes between Grass Valley, California, and Lake Tahoe to the audio version of commentaries his son had finished gathering posthumously into a book. Different politics, and we didnt share world views or a taste for city life. But I dug his pieces. They made me think, mainly about why exactly we disagreed when he seemed to make so much sense. Heres a worthy exercise I wish a lot more of us indulged in.
I was sad to read Paul Menter had had enough, and last week would be his last column. I dont care that he wrote in the wrong paper. I read them both, happy for the chance.
As with Krauthammer, we didnt have to agree. We probably dont on anything. Same with the Red Ant in my paper. He grumped and she stings while treading the same governments always wrong path. We all have our fixations.
Some moan as if ready to leave, though you know they wont, moaning being easier, more satisfying. Some laser in on topics energy, local government, service, nature, life, wine, relationships, and who doesnt crave more on that last? Myself, though, I tend to go most for the one-off pieces with heart or heat in them.
Of the regulars, I resonated with Lo Semples recent take on Aspens soul, something he expressed as up to the individual to generate rather than dwelling on done-to helplessness.
Crochety is fine. Seen-it-all Tony Vagneur somehow accomplishes this with wry good humor. Sure its all gone to hell n back, but there are horses to catch, grandsons to watch, and life aint stopping, neither, just because age finally snuck up on Tonys generation, too. Go figure.
My favorite of all isnt even a person I can name. Some crap like Paul E. Ana. Get it? A new colleague explained the tradition with a shrug when I began. I probably rolled my eyes.
But then. Hey, this sentence is pretty good. Sos this one, and this one. A laugh, an anecdote, wit, charm, a point. I left completely converted, a new fan. Its really, really good, week in and week out. Occasionally sharp, never sour.
One of the most searing single pieces for me ever was Andrew Parrotts raw personal look at the burdens of people who must somehow negotiate living with the next psychiatric break always looming, as if life werent hard enough already.
Speaking of searing and sharp, I dont think Ive encountered a more barbed wit than Meredith Carrolls. Wicked, funnier than Royko, a handle for phrasing like Murray, at least as bright as Krauthammer. She was a regular for The Times and for a while had a column in The Denver Post, before their long retreat began.
I read her in Vail, and but for being a such cheap bastard might have run her there. Maybe a shocker, though: Vail has about as much enthusiasm for the musings of an Aspen local as Aspen would have for another of my favorites, Richard Carnes. One of his recents, sigh: At least were not Aspen.
Our petty little rivalries rob us of so much.
Aspen Times Editor Don Rogers can be reached at drogers@aspentimes.com
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Rogers: A life informed by the columnists - The Aspen Times