AP Photographer Lou Krasky -- A Remembrance

CORRECTS that Lou joined AP in 1968, not 1986.

I'm sad to report today that longtime AP photographer Lou Krasky has died at 86.

Services are Tuesday noon at Shives Funeral Home on Trenholm.

https://www.shivesfuneralhome.com/m/obituaries/Louis-Krasky/MemorialEvents

Lou joined the Columbia, SC, bureau in 1968 and retired in 2004. For nine years as news editor I had the pleasure -- no, the honor -- of working with "Krasky" (a bit of affectionate shorthand from our shared NY City upbringing -- it seems sadly appropriate that this is where I am writing this today).

Lou knew everyone and was warmly greated by governors, senators, and pols of all stripes when he showed up. He also was a journalist in the truest sense with an eye for who was where and what was out of place. The result was that he saved all our bacon more than a few times by helping us grab a tough interview or sidling over and whispering, "Hey, you may want to ..."

He was a master at getting the tough shot and had a list of stringers and a rapport with them and member photographers that any photo agency would have killed for.

He defined the word "dependable." Whether it was coverage of a routine news conference or of Susan Smith; Shannon Faulkner, the first woman at the Citadel; the killing of Michael Jordan's father; the lowering of the Confederate flag at the Statehouse; or numerous hurricanes, Lou always had our backs. I knew I could concentrate on overall coverage and Lou would be transmitting or overseeing transmission of the exactly right photo at the exactly right time.

And, yes, he took pity on me by letting me golf with him.

As former AP colleague Jeffrey Collins said when he texted me the news, "They stopped making them like Lou."

Here is something I wrote when Lou retired in 2004.

https://commonsensej.blogspot.com/2004/10/krasky-has-left-building.html

John Means, "The Village Wordsmith" author, dies at 87

Got a sad note this morning from the nephew of John Means, who produced the widely read "The Village Wordsmith" newsletter for the staff of the San Antonio Express-News, that his uncle had died at 87.

The Wordsmith was also emailed around to those of us who were part of the editing fraternity. It was always a good read, with great information and examples. I still refer to some of them in my editing class. John was especially good with the dos and don'ts of military usage (which, given the concentration of bases around San Antonio, you'd need to be).

From his nephew, Sean P. Means, movie critic, reporter and columnist at The Salt Lake Tribune:


It is my sad duty to report that John, my uncle, passed away on Saturday in his home in Schertz, Texas, outside of San Antonio. He was 87. 

 John was a lifelong newspaperman, from his days as a cub reporter at age 17 at the Nashville Banner. He worked most of the 1960s at the Memphis Commercial Appeal, reporting on the Tennessee Legislature, among other things. After working as a congressional press aide for six years, he landed at the Washington Post copy desk for nearly two decades, until he retired to San Antonio in 1995. Even then, he couldn’t keep out of the newsroom, and worked part-time at the Express-News from 1995 to 2009 — when, at the age of 80, he took the buyout. 

John was an inspiration to me, to be sure, as he made working at a newspaper look both fun and important — both of which have proven to be true. Thank you for being a fan of “The Village Wordsmith.” I know he got a kick out of writing it, and knowing people were reading it.

My condolences go to John's family, and I'm saddened once again by the loss of one of the stalwarts of the editing trade.

In memoriam: John Shurr, journalist and AP bureau chief

I had the opportunity to work with three great AP bureau chiefs who had my back in my 18 years with the wire service, the last being John Shurr, with whom I spent nine years in Columbia.

So I was saddened to hear of John's passing tonight.

It, unfortunately, was not a surprise; those of us who knew John knew he was in declining health, quite possibly from the Agent Orange he was exposed to during the Vietnam War.

John and I dealt with the craziness of Susan Smith, the madness of the James Jordan death investigation, women at The Citadel, numerous hurricanes, video poker, lowering the Confederate flag, the Republican wave that took over state government ...

Fun times, those.

And through it all, I knew I could always go to John for advice and support. It helped that we both had been in charge, at separate times, of the AP's Rhode Island office. In recent years, he and I would often exchange emails chortling at the continued parade of buffoonery by R.I. politicians and lamenting the slow, painful decline of the Providence Journal, at one time one of America's best local papers -- but sometimes overlooked as it was in the umbra of the major-major metros of the East Coast.

He's best known in South Carolina for his efforts on behalf of freedom of information, an indefatigable defender of the right of the public to know what its government is doing. And I would hope that in his honor, the Legislature this year would finally pass many of the needed changes to South Carolina's FOI law that include a quicker review process, more reasonable costs and a clear and certain window in which time records must be produced. (And, of course, there is the need to overturn the state Supreme Court's troubling decisions on meeting agendas and autopsy reports.)

And as a result of his dedication, in the late 1990s the AP coordinated the first statewide FOI audit in South Carolina that found, as we put it at the time, agencies would get no better than a D if graded on the public schools' grading scale. We found all sorts of obfuscation and harassment, including police demanding IDs from and running the license plates of those requesting records. Sadly, things have only gotten worse.

That was John's public face.

But in the bureau, he was about as good a CoB (AP lingo for chief of bureau) that you could get. He was no more than 15 feet away in his glass-walled office, complete with the picture of his sailboat, his pride and joy, tossed onshore by Hurricane Hugo. (John got a replacement -- "another hole in the water into which you throw money" -- and he tried several times to get me to crew with him. But I always managed to avoid that -- his reputation as Captain Bligh was not entirely undeserved {grin}.)

 But John always gave you enough room to do your job.

Oh, there was no mistake he was paying attention, as evidenced by those occasional "got a minute" calls from the inner sanctum. But you could always count on the fact that when you needed the resources, John would blow out the budget and ask permission (or forgiveness) from AP's headquarters later.

Then there were the years when the AP bureau was like Switzerland, caught in the middle of the Columbia-Spartanburg-Greenville-Charleston newspaper war. There were some strong personalities involved, and afterward he and I would often joke about the S.C. Press Association meeting where the editors started challenging each other -- one had a tight grip on a chair he looked as if he were about to throw -- and John and I just knew, in horror, we were going to have to break up a fight. John, in his way, was able to calm everyone down.

And when the folks in New York thought they knew their jobs better than you, John never hesitated to remind them that -- under the old AP -- a CoB ultimately held the stronger hand and to back down.

That went so far as the AP's managing editor. A former ME who shall remain unidentified here (but every ex-APer knows) used to write a weekly review, a sort of after-action report, called "Dialogue." It was pretty much a one-way conversation, however. It praised "good" work and took bureaus to task when the ME or the general desk felt they had fallen short (often, as my fellow news editors observed, without asking for explanations).

After one winter ice storm, we got blasted. Long story short, our "story" was on the coast, where we knew high winds were blowing salt spray inland, shorting out numerous electrical transformers and leaving thousands dark. We had ice and some snow in the Upstate, but not as many people were affected - the storm that was panicking New York, which was expecting a direct hit, gave us only a glance. We were shorthanded, and I decided it would be foolhardy to call someone in on overtime and make them drive into those conditions. So we concentrated efforts on the coast and used the phones to gather some great material from the Upstate, so good that New York used two of the quotes in its national story. But we got nailed for not enough effort.

I wrote a lengthy challenge. But John summed it up with a short, pointed note to the ME: "Please cancel my subscription to Diatribe."

That was the kind of person, boss and colleague John was. He will be sorely missed. Karen's and my thoughts and condolences go out to his wife, Debbie. And I'm proud to have worked with a journalist's journalist.

RIP: Dan Lynch

Sad news from Fort Wayne that former Journal Gazette editorial cartoonist Dan Lynch has died.

Dan was on staff when I got there and was genuinely a fun guy to work with. He trundled off to Kansas City for a stint and Steve Sack, now in Minneapolis, took his spot for a bit.

But Dan returned to the Fort Wayne fold, poking fun at the city and its pols (which is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel), until a stroke sidelined him in 2001. I always liked his clean and to the point style.
 
I hope I still have in my files a couple of Dan's drawings that he graciously shared. Dan and his work will be missed.

Goodbye George Esper, a good friend

When one is knee-deep in trying to get the semester's newsroom up and running, it is easy to let the rest of the world go by until something jerks you like a cold shower on the back of the neck.

And so it was when I finally got a second to glance at things early this morning only to find my friend and former AP colleague George Esper had died.

The tributes have been many, and there's little I can add except to remember how I came to know George when he was in Boston and I ran the AP's Providence, R.I., office  There wasn't a time we saw each other in Boston that he didn't invite me into his office to chat, to lend some advice, to hear some gripe and shake a knowing head.

I remember one time I asked him to speak to Rhode Island's SPJ chapter on a Saturday afternoon. He not only drove down but did so early, suggested we get lunch, and spent more than an hour recalling current and past stories that had us both laughing and knowingly shaking our heads.

I had a chance to talk again with George, gee, maybe a year ago now, maybe longer - time becomes a gauzy thing sometimes.

I knew he was in West Virginia at WVU, and it was one of those calls I kept saying I have to make - and one of those that always seems to get too easily shunted aside by other events - things that when we look back on them are truly trivial. George graciously took time to chat for half an hour. I'm glad I made that call. It was so good to hear his voice, one I will never forget and will always be sad to know is now silenced.

Les Anderson will be missed

Less Anderson, a longtime journalism prof at Wichita State University has died.

He's one of the good ones and will be missed. Links and details on the COMJIG blog.

One of the good guys, Tom Bardin, dies

I got a call a few hours ago to tell me, and now it's been confirmed, that Tom Bardin Jr., head of the S.C. Legislative Audit Council, has died at age 54.

He died while running in Beaufort, which is his hometown. He was apparently in town to visit his mother and was found by his wife, Angie, after his daily run.

Tom was a friend and former neighbor for many years till he and his wife moved up to Hilton along Lake Murray.

More than that, Tom was a friend to everyone in South Carolina who cares about honest, efficient government. He was truly one of the good guys. (See Post & Courier editorial of Aug. 31.)

Tom worked for the LAC in various jobs while I was at AP. He then left for a stint at the Department of Social Services before returning to head the council - the state's watchdog agency - in 2009, after I had gone to the University of South Carolina.

Tom was as straight-up a guy as they come. He and I chatted less frequently in recent years - the last time was about a month ago to congratulate him on his daughter's marriage. But while we discussed family, friends, the university and all those things you catch up on, the talk always turned to our experiences with state government and its various political figures. We exchanged some good stories and shook our heads knowingly, sometimes out of exasperation. But Tom also clearly was dedicated to making government run right.

He wasn't one of those on a "waste and fraud" witch hunt. But several of those whose agencies underwent scrutiny under Tom's steady hand likened it to having a proctological exam and root canal while giving a deposition - if it was there, Tom and his examiners were going to find it. That didn't make a lot of people in state government overly happy.

Most S.C. residents, especially those always bleating about taxes and spending, probably don't know who Tom was, if they even have a vague notion of what the LAC is. But they should stop a moment and take note, because he was one of those sometimes vilified "state workers" who, no question, was doing his best to work for them.

Our (Karen's and mine) sympathies go out to Angie; their daughter, Jill; and son, Tripp.

They also go out to those in this state who care about how things run. They've lost a champion for good government.

The LAC has been a bright spot with Tom and his predecessor and mentor, George Schroeder (who also had a brief stint as the state's first inspector general and will now be back at the audit council as interim director). Let's hope any successor is as good.

Update: Tom's obituary.

Obits: Killing the golden goose?

James Naughton is no stranger to the news industry. So when the former president of the Poynter Institute lashes out at newspapers for their policies on obituaries, I take notice.

I think Naughton has a point - they are about to choke the valuable - both economically and civically - obituary stream.

As prices go up, competitors surface. This is something publishers still seem to struggle with (but perhaps it's because for so long there was no pricing competition, so there hasn't been a good determination of market price yet).

At the same time, numerous metrics I've seen from newspapers show that obits is often one of the top entry points to their online sites.

Publishers are doing the same thing with wedding announcements. And as they price them out of range of the less well off, they also weaken their ties to the majority of the community.

Legal ads fall into the same category. Behind all the crocodile tears and protestations of civic accessibility from publishers whenever some agency or legislature considers putting legal ads online only, there is a simple fact - they are profitable and a guaranteed monopoly revenue stream.

The general newspaper tack has been to argue that people won't see them if they are online, they can be hidden away by ne'er-do-well government officials, etc. Yeah, perhaps, if each agency were left to its own devices. But centralized online sites could combat that. Egads, the newspaper industry even has its own. The difference is that online there could be several sites providing price competion.

But don't be fooled by the civic argument - it is as much, if not more so, an economic one.

(Here's a research paper from Newspaper Research Journal on the topic.)

First thing we'll do is kill all the obit traffic ...

OK, it might not be as prosaic as kill all the lawyers, but I was struck by Paid Content's report that one of Journalism Online's first clients to go public, the Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era, planned as one of it first tests to put its obits behind at least a partial paywall: In Lancaster, publisher Steinman Enterprises will charge readers outside the circulation area for access to obits, starting with a certain number free and then requiring a fee.

It's an interesting move, since obits are one of the most popular landing points at many smaller papers. But I'm not sure they are one of the most monetizable, at least not this way.

I don't know how many you'll get free, so it may not make a lot of difference (unless you are some kind of serial mourner or have some very large - and aging - family). But I have argued here before that the best way to make money off the out-of-towners would seem to me to be advertising from those who cater to the mourners. Using the Salon model, have them watch a 10-second ad for the florist and then have that morph into an "order here" button. Get the premium for pay per click.

It seems to me there are other alternatives for getting obituary information. Put up a pay firewall, and are you actually losing potential, premium income?

Two remembrances of note

As I've said, I am woefully behind on several things, one of which is posting things here. Let me take a moment to rectify a small part of that.

There are two recent remembrances I'd like to invite you to read. These are not about famous people, though they had the fame (good or bad, you can decide) to have as relatives those who could write eloquent prose about them and had the means to circulate it.

They are stories of lives well-lived, full lives, reminders to us all in these often-crazy times of why we're here for the brief flash that biology or deity (again, your choice) allows.

The first is from Steve Yelvington, who lost his father, Rube, last week. As Steve writes: He believed his role in this world was to bring out the best in others. He didn't believe in violence, because that was a failure to solve problems peaceably. He once told me that if you fire someone, you've failed as a manager. He never owned a gun. In the worst of times in East St. Louis he consented to carry only a carpenter's hammer under the driver's seat of his Rambler American.

The second is from Mike King, Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist. Mike is a semi-distant relative, married to my sister-in-law's sister. He and I had an occasion to have a drink a long time ago when he was in D.C. Then I got busy, so did he. As things happen, we lost touch.

Then came word that his wife, Anne, died this summer unexpectedly. In August -- it seems so long ago, yet it's only 2 1/2 months -- Mike wrote a moving tribute. It sat in my inbox, and then I got busy, and lately I have been trying to figure out how to share it. Rube Yelvington's death, sad as it is, allows me to do that gracefully.

Hers is the soul of a teacher whose former students write in her obituary guest book about how important she was in their lives; they write about how she instilled in them the joy of reading, the importance of writing a daily journal and the fun of celebrating a hard week’s work on Friday afternoons by singing and dancing to Tina Turner songs.

Read, learn, sing, dance, laugh, love, live. These are the lessons of Anne King.

Click. Read. Think. Remember. The stories of two people who lived full lives. There are many others that ought to be told. But Rube and Anne had the fortune, or misfortune, of living with writers. I'm glad they did.

The Voice will be missed

As a former radio guy, of course I was insanely jealous of Don LaFontaine, the voice behind all those movie trailers.

He died this week at age 68. The few times I'd heard him "off" mike, like on "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me," he seemed like a heck of a guy. It was borne out in the Geico commercial, and this You Tube video is a fitting tribute (how many guys like this would knock off a voice mail announce message for people who just asked).

And the world is a little less mirthful place

Comedian George Carlin dies at 71.

Good links on Jim Thomsen's blog.

Rene "Jack" Cappon

I just got to see today the obituary for Rene J. Cappon, who died last week at age 83. (Things move slowly here in the hinterlands.)

Jack Cappon -- no one who knew him called him Rene -- was one of the quiet giants of this business. His obituary is headlined "AP writing ace," but he was so much more than that. Polly Anderson's lead on the obituary captures it perfectly when it describes him as "the word master behind some of its best writers."

I worked with him only occasionally, when he would make a bureau visit for a state members' meeting, the sporadic trip to help coach us or, occasionally, at an AP editors' gathering. Spending five minutes with Cappon was like spending four years in journalism school. He was of the "old school" AP -- full of great advice and of the wire service's legendary stories. But he was also all business when it came to getting the news, getting it right, getting it fast -- and getting it somewhere in the first three grafs.

(Hugh Mulligan, a member of the "Poets' Corner" stable of writers that Cappon presided over as AP Features editor, was another one whose appearance in your bureau was a time for learning and some good laughs.)

Cappon's 1982 book, "The Word: An Associated Press Guide to Good News Writing," will always stand as one of those works every budding journalist should read and every veteran should reread. Get an education on the language and writing in a volume so slim you can throw it in a briefcase or backpack and refresh yourself while traveling to an assignment. The AP reissued it as "The Associated Press Guide to News Writing: The Resource for Professional Journalists." But to me it will always be "The Word," with the almost-religious overtones rightfully earned (not to mention the spare, classy cover).

If you do nothing else, read its chapter on "Tone: The Inner Music of Words."

Some things change and move on -- and they should. But Cappon's advice on writing is timeless, and many things about the era he represents at the AP will be missed.

I have faith, though, that every time a journalist sits down to write one of those meandering, tortuous anecdotal leads that bury the news and too often these days pass for good "narrative" writing, a little voice will sound in their heads. "Get the news somewhere in the first three grafs," it will say. "We proved for years at the AP that it can be done and still produce a damn good feature story."

It will be Jack, one of the guardian angels of this craft.

An observation for the digital age

I am a jazz lover. I am overjoyed when I find a new jazz station online, especially one that doesn't play "smooth" jazz but the old classics. A few years ago I came across The Spirit, the tribute station to San Francisco's former KJAZ. I have spent many hours listening to it and the wonderful voice of Jerry Dean (whose pipes could only make a former broadcaster like me jealous).

Then it went dark -- just as the new Internet radio fees kicked in. I figured it was a victim. I clicked several times in the past weeks. Only silence.

Then tonight, one last time. Lo and behold, The Spirit (Shoutcast feed) was back. I was overjoyed.

The joy lasted just a moment as the station marquee scrolled across my Winamp player -- "In Memory of Jerry Dean, 9/07" it said.

That, of course, set me off on an online search, where I was able to learn from an iTunes discussion group what had happened (he died Sept. 5) and was led to a condolences book where I was able to post a message. (The book is there till Oct. 8.)

And as I was doing it, it occurred to me that this is an emblem of how our society has changed in just a short decade -- that a little old college instructor in South Carolina can enjoy the sounds of a great radio personality from California who he would never otherwise have met, learn of his death and express his condolences, all from a little box on his desktop.

Whether we want to believe it or not, we have all been brought closer together as human beings.

(I hope the Spirit stays on the air and I hope the Web site, which no longer has accurate URLs for the Shoutcast feed, is updated. Can you think of a more fitting memorial in this digital age?)

In memoriam: Bob Sievers

Word comes today that a former and dear colleague, Bob Sievers from WOWO in Fort Wayne, Ind., has died at 90.

I worked with Bob and the other great folks at WOWO (Jerry Hoffman, Dugan Fry, Bill Fisher, Art Saltsberg, Ron Gregory, Chris Roberts, Bob Chase, Ed Kasuba and many others) in the early 1970s, during the end of the station's heyday. There was a reason WOWO gushed green ink, and it was Sievers. He and Jay Gould and the morning "Little Red Barn" show brought in numbers that station managers would sell their mothers for.

Of course, being 50,000 watts full-time helped (the station no longer is 50K at night -- the Wikipedia entry on the station is pretty complete).

But Sievers was someone special -- yeah, corny, old-style, with a set of pipes aspiring radio folks would kill for. But most of all he knew people and cared about people. It came through on the air and in person. He always had a kind word for young staffers like me. The number of public appearances he did would kill many of today's DJs. And I never once saw him not stop on the street and have a chat and hearty handshake with whoever had hailed him. In these days of celebrity and glitz, you don't really know real celebrity unless you knew Bob.

I'm honored to say I got to work with him and knew him -- as I am about all the WOWO crew from those days. The station is a shadow of its former self, but Sievers' broadcast legacy will always be a little larger than life. The world is a little emptier for his passing.

RIP - Doug Marlette

We have too few sharp-penned editorial cartoonists in the world, and so sadness pervades with the word that Doug Marlette has died in a traffic accident in Mississippi near Holly Springs.

Marlette's history includes stops in Charlotte, Atlanta and, most recently, Tulsa.

Not only was he a talented editorial cartoonist, his Kudzu comic strip was one of the daily joys.

In memoriam: Joe Loy

I've been in a bit of a funk most of the day. It was just a brief on page three of the local paper that put me there. It said Joe Loy, assignment editor at WHNS-TV in Greenville, was killed while videotaping a traffic accident on I-85 in the Upstate.

Silly and stupid as it is, of course, you expect your fellow journalists to die, maybe, in a place like Iraq. Not on the side of a highway, surrounded by police cars.

I got to know Joe when I was news editor for AP. I was a former TV assignment editor, so I understood the job and the hassles. Yet Joe was always friendly and helpful when we called for assistance. He knew news. He was one of those people who made you proud to call yourself a journalist.

Police say it was one of those freak but preventable accidents -- some guy in a truck weaves in and out of traffic, cuts off a van and the van careens into Loy and the news van he was standing next to. Police say they're looking for a maroon truck.

Joe had a lot of friends. Judge for yourself from the messages of condolences on the station's Web site. Probably wouldn't even have remembered me. But to me, Joe was a great friend and a great professional. My deepest condolences and thoughts to his family and his co-workers, those at Fox Carolina -- but in many ways those of us who are journalists throughout South Carolina.

(The graphic is from the station's Web site. I trust WHNS will not object to my using it. You should see Joe as well as hear about him.)

Johnny Hart dead at 76

Johnny Hart, creator of the "B.C" comic strip that was sometimes controversial for its religious themes, has died at his upstate New York home.