George M. Smith edits a story for the Wheaton Daily Journal sometime in the late 1940s.

The Internet killed the newspaper.

No, it’s the economy, stupid.

Or overleveraged publishing chains. Left-wing columnists. Whatever the cause, change is in the air of the publishing world, but it’s blowing faster than ever.

From the cover of Time magazine to a slew of bloggers, the changes sweeping the news business are an untiring meme lately.

Newspapers big and small are stopping their presses, not to replate with the latest breaking scandal, but to lay off their staffs, shutter the doors, retire the nameplates.

It may be news, but it’s not new. My family has been involved, off and on, in the newspaper game for more than a century. Each generation saw shifts in society and advances in technology challenge their publishing acumen.

My great-grandfather got into journalism in 1900. George M. Smith began writing for the Naperville (Ill.) Clarion fresh out of high school. After attending Wheaton College, just outside of Chicago, where his father taught, he worked his way through a succession of reporting jobs.

In 1913, he purchased the Du Page County Tribune, a weekly in Wheaton, setting himself up as editor and publisher.

Printing a newspaper in those days was a labor-intensive operation. Every line of type was set by hand, using individual die-cast metal letters, thousands per page.

Hot lead and Linotypes

In 1915, the Tribune purchased a new typecasting machine – a Linotype. Headlines still had to be made up by hand, but the body text of stories was cast in lines – slugs – by molding hot lead. Linotypes were complex mechanical contraptions, prone to breakdown, with 90-character keyboards.

The paper was successful under George’s leadership. To speed production, he invested in another. In 1933, in the midst of the Depression, it became a daily, and the nameplate was changed to the Wheaton Daily Journal. A subscription to the solidly Republican paper ran 5 cents per week.

My grandfather, Robert Smith, followed in his dad’s footsteps, writing a column for the Journal, and studying journalism at South Dakota State College – where he met my grandmother Eileen.

She’d been active in her high school newspaper, which was a full page in the local Milbank (S.D.) Herald Advance, printed every week. She studied printing and journalism at South Dakota State before graduating in 1938.

“There were not that many women in printing – really just a few of us in the whole field of journalism.

“At the college, we set some type by hand, but mainly with the Linotype. Working the hell box (where miscast slugs and wrongly-set type were discarded, to be sorted out later) wasn’t much fun. We had to go through and pull out all the letters and put them back.

“Everything was done by hand. The letterpress was hand-fed, which was a lot of work.

“Bob was very good at setting type. I suppose it came easy to me. I’ve been able to do a lot of computer work – at the museum and such – because of it, using a different keyboard than a typewriter.”

They both put themselves through college working for the college press – writing, proofreading, making up pages.

World War II came soon after my grandparents graduated, interrupting Bob’s endeavors in journalism with a stint in the South Pacific for him and California for Eileen. Two boys also arrived, my uncle Joel and my dad, Steve.

After the war, the Wheaton Daily Journal responded to its growing market.

“Everybody brought two papers – the Chicago paper (Tribune) and the Journal. People were working in Chicago, taking the train in.”

Many commuters began to identify more as Chicagoans than as members of their formerly sleepy suburbs. The ubiquity of radio and growing television market – pioneered in the ’30s by The Chicago Daily News – challenged the small suburban publishers.

George Smith died in February 1949, having spent his life putting ink on paper, telling stories.

My grandfather and his two brothers stepped in to run the family business. Bob took over as editor, the others managing the business side.

Hand-set to high-tech

While the presses weren’t hand-fed anymore, pages were still cast in hot metal. Steve Smith – my dad – recalls the press room as a noisy, messy place.

“My father used to come home with burns” from working on the Linotype, he recalls. “You talk about a complicated machine. And that was a tough bunch of guys. He had a crown on one tooth from getting hit with a wrench by a pressman.”

The changing business and inevitable conflicts among the brothers led to a sale of the Journal in 1953.

Bob went into teaching, first for a local high school, eventually becoming a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. Before he died in 1975, he was working to move the college’s program to a new computerized system.

From hand-set to high-tech, in a lifetime.

My dad went to college to study printing just as technology was shifting.

In the late ’60s, newspapers were moving to more-efficient platemaking processes and high-capacity web presses.

Colleges were still teaching outdated photoengraving techniques, even as the new technology penetrated the business. A career based on a fading process didn’t seem too viable.

Besides, the art department held more attraction. It didn’t take long for my dad to drop his journalism and printing courses.

My journey through journalism began in high school, where I learned how to type, badly, and paste up a news page by hand, using hot wax and type output from a primitive computer system at the local Prescott Courier.

After some schooling at the University of Arizona, I wrote and edited copy for a string of Tucson alternative papers whose names are mostly lost to history.

I served a stint as editor and publisher of ¿K? Magazine, an arts and culture monthly, in the mid-1990s. Despite the streamlining of the desktop publishing revolution, print publishing remained an expensive proposition.

Learning the code

In the late’ 90s, I moved into Web design, learning an alphabet soup of languages: html, xml, js, css and more.

A few years ago, the Citizen was kind enough to take me on, and eventually let me manage the Web site.

In the short time I’ve been here, the technology we use has dramatically shifted. From basic html pages to rich applications that feature video and databases, the addition of reader comments and forums, the focus of the Citizen online has changed along with the culture of the Internet.

But the impressive values of the Citizen staff have remained: accuracy, fairness, truth.

This may well be the last piece I write for a daily newspaper. It leaves me with a bit of an empty feeling, sitting at my desk, preparing for the Citizen’s last edition, knowing that my family’s history with the printing press has stopped rolling.

The family paper, having changed hands several times through the years, continues as the Wheaton Sun – a suburban weekly that’s part of the Sun-Times group.

Yes, they’ve got a Web page.

And like many newspaper chains, the Sun-Times recently filed for bankruptcy.

I hope to carry on my ancestors’ legacy of reporting. Given the trend, that will have to be in some online-only capacity. I’ll miss the smell of fresh ink, but I enjoy the 24/7 challenge of keeping the news fresh.

No matter if it’s delivered by a paperboy on a bike, or via the never-ending stream of the Internet, it’s all about telling stories.

———

Ink in the blood

Many Citizen staffers have families with long histories in the newspaper business.

Alan Fischer’s father, George Fischer, was in the newspaper industry his entire life. He started as a carrier for the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald as a youth, and held a number of jobs there before becoming a pressman. He brought his skills here, working as a pressman for Tucson Newspapers from 1965 until his retirement in the late 1980s.

B. Poole’s mom, Norma Poole, and sister, Cathy Rowe, were typesetters for newspapers in Illinois during the ’60s and ’70s.

PK Weis’ grandfather PK Weis Sr. was a reporter for the Moberly (Mo.) Monitor in the early 1900s. Senior began his career as a printer’s devil when he was a young boy.

Polly Higgins’ grandfather Rathbun R. Higgins wrote a column called “The Stamp Man” for the Chicago Heights Star from 1948 to 1960 and resurrected it for the Columbus (Ind.) Republic 1967-82.

Garry Duffy’s father, Joseph L. Duffy, was an assistant to Roy Howard, of Scripps-Howard newspapers, in the late ’40s and early ’50s.

Fernanda Echavarri’s great-grandfather Jesús María Benítez Martínez, was a columnist for the local daily in Querétaro, Mexico, from 1973 to 1997.

Randy Harris’ grandfather was circulation manager of the Danville (IL) Press-Democrat from the age of 15. His mother was women’s editor for the Marion (IN) Chronicle-Tribune in the ’60s and ’70s.

Bruce Johnston descends from three generations of journalists on both sides of his family. Both of his great-grandfathers owned weekly newspapers in Canada; one of them brought the first Linotype into the country. The papers passed on through the next two generations in his family. One still publishes today, although no relatives still work for it.

Ray Suarez’s grandfather Edgar worked for TNI in the mailroom and advertising. Grandmother Beatriz was a switchboard operator, while Ray’s father, Stephen, worked in the composing room. Aunt Selina works in circulation for Gannett, while another aunt, Eloina, worked the switchboards. All told, Ray says that his family has put in 117 years working for TNI and the Citizen.

“Another socialist university,” harrumphed a reader, in response to coverage of President Obama’s commencement speech Wednesday at Sun Devil Stadium.

Well, yeah. Public education is socialism. Knee-jerk responses to the s-word miss the point that collective financing works for some things. Just not everything.

The president’s pep talk urged grads to make the most of what they’ve got – the very soul of capitalism, to my mind.

He also gave a nod to late launchers: older adults driven to new success relatively late in life.

With the end of the Citizen on Saturday, staff members are learning what a luxury it was to be themselves and dodge most bureaucratic busywork. In keeping with Obama’s ethos, I consider skills learned here an investment.

They’ve been part of my compensation. I still want the check, though.

Redefine success, Obama tells ASU grads

MONEY TALKS: Why, I wonder, do some people complain of being “forced” to learn a second language? That came up in comments about the billion-dollar boost Mexican shoppers bring to Tucson’s retail and hospitality industries.

It’s just a skill. You don’t have to develop it. But if other people do, they have a right to leverage that skill however they can.

Wednesday’s story about Mexican spending here spurred comments from readers apparently hostile to the whole idea of . . . Mexicans.

The shoppers are not here illegally, and they’re not immigrants . . . so naturally, the story brought out reader reaction to illegal immigration.

Get over it. We’re an hour from the border.

Mexican shoppers add $1B to Tucson economy

OPEN BEATING LAW: It’s illegal for a quorum of a public body to meet in private. I didn’t know until this week it was also illegal to try to seek consensus by polling your colleagues in twosies. Apparently that’s so, according to the state Open Meeting Law.

The issue came up Tuesday in relation to Councilwoman Nina Trasoff’s efforts to find a fix for Tucson’s budget.

Late local pol E.S. “Bud” Walker defended secrecy succinctly: “When the press finds out, they blow the whole program.’”

He put his faith in smoke-filled rooms, and provided the Pall Malls.

Now they’d be breaking the law by lighting up.

City budget talks derailed by open meetings law tiff

Our Opinion: Council’s talks likely violated Arizona Open Meetings Law

PACKING: How do you balance the right to bear arms with a property owner’s right to have no guns on the premises? A state House vote Wednesday favored fans of firearms.

It seems reasonable that if you have the right to carry a gun, you have the right to keep it in your car. But – is it carrying concealed to stash it under the seat? And if it’s in plain view, could that incite theft?

Then there’s the Arizona heat. What would it do to ammo?

Cigarette lighters can explode in hot cars. One took the windshield out of my VW wagon.

I’m not packing – except for cleaning out my desk.

House OKs bill to allow guns in parked vehicles

DefensiveCarry.com discussion on car heat

SPEED KILLS: Dang! Now there are 10 more places I can’t speed.

Caught on candid camera at Oracle and River a few months back, I started slowing at the yellow light, scared of getting another ticket.

I haven’t. Big Brother modified my behavior.

Pima County gets in on the act this weekend, with a warning period to start Monday.

Traffic enforcement saves lives. OK by me. One question about my neighborhood, at La Cholla and River:

Why does River have two left-turn lanes onto a street with one southbound lane?

Speed camera test starts Friday; warning period will be Monday through Saturday

PHOTO SHOOT: Some folks think President Obama is posturing in his attempt to keep photos of abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan under wraps.

He explained his turnaround by saying earlier photos led to “appropriate actions” against “a small number of individuals.”

“Appropriate.” The new fascism.

Arizona’s John McCain twittered approval of Obama’s stance.

The fear: That the images would fuel anti-American actions in the Middle East.

I figure the people who would hate us already do.

No matter how stupid the soldiers who did the deeds or made those pictures, Arabs and Afghans know how much worse it could be. This is not My Lai.

Release them. We don’t have to post them on the Net.

Al-Jazeera will take care of that.

Obama will try to block release of abuse photos

It’s the uncertainty that’s driving me and many other members of the Tucson Citizen staff batty.

Will there be a Tucson Citizen tomorrow? Will somebody buy the paper? How many staff members will the buyer retain? Will the paper the buyer puts out bear any resemblance to the current product? Will we still get our severance pay from Gannett if a new buyer fires us?

And for those among us fortunate enough to have secured other jobs, can we hang on long enough to get our severance pay? Or will this drag on for weeks and months?

The Tucson Citizen, for those who haven’t opened this paper in the past two months, is slated to be closed or sold. At the moment, the paper is operating day to day.

A day-to-day existence is no way to live. It’s demoralizing and exhausting.

But just when I thought I couldn’t take one more moment of it, I received something really special in my e-mail box.

Norma Sykes, a longtime Tucson resident and Tucson Citizen reader, shared her memories of the newspaper with me in an e-mail that arrived Monday afternoon. It reminded how much the Citizen has meant to this community. The newspaper has been a part of Sykes’ life for as long as she can remember and as she puts it, “that’s a loooonggggg time!!”

Sykes wrote the letter shortly after the possible closure of the Citizen was announced in late January. Here is the letter in its entirety:

“As I read the Tucson Citizen this past Saturday, I thought about sharing some of my memories with other faithful readers. The Tucson Citizen has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I grew up in Bisbee, Ariz., along with 10 brothers and sisters (her maiden name was Manjarres). Our parents had the Citizen delivered back then by a paperboy. This is a hint as to when I was growing up! My dad read the paper every day at the dinner table after eating his meal. Even with such a huge family to support, keeping up with news was apparently very important to him.

“As I entered my teen years I learned that the best time to ask my dad for permission to go somewhere (usually some place I knew he would say no to) was to ask him while he was engrossed in some important article he was reading. He would mumble, “uh, uh” or “yeah.” I would rush to get ready and return to the kitchen to say bye to my parents. He would look up and say: “Where do you think you’re going?” I would say, “You said I could go . . . He would say, “when?” I would respond, “a little while ago, you were reading the paper.” Then he would say, “Don’t ask me for permission when I am reading the paper!!!” But he would not renege on the permission and I would rush out to wherever before he changed his mind.

“Now I will be giving another hint of my age when I say that I, and all my siblings quoted articles we read in the Citizen for our research on varieties of subjects throughout our years of education. This was way before anyone had a computer or the Internet was such an integral part of our lives.

“My father passed away 21 years ago. My mother relocated to Tucson when my youngest sister came to the U of A. She lives in Oro Valley now. A few years ago my mother fell and broke her arm. Unable to be put in a cast, her arm was put into a sling secured to her body, which made it difficult for her to bend over. I called to explain the situation to customer service at the Citizen. From that day on, the delivery person placed her paper in a bag and hung it from the handle of her security door. Mom enjoys reading the paper daily and we often discuss news we’ve read. She also keeps all of us up to date on what is on sale from the Wednesday grocery fliers.

“As I read every paper that I still receive, I often think that it may be the last one. What a sad day that will be for many of us longtime Tucson Citizen subscribers. My best wishes to all the loyal and hard-working staff at the Citizen that have been an integral part of many lives. The loss of the Tucson Citizen will leave a void for many which no other can fill.’”

Sincerely,

Norma Sykes

The Citizen’s future remains uncertain. But for those of us who have been part of its past and present, there is some comfort in knowing that what we did here mattered.

Thanks, Norma.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com and 573-4582. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

Examples of some of the items from the Berlin Airlift

The Berlin Airlift of 1948/1949 was many things. It was the first major clash of the Cold War. It was one of the greatest humanitarian efforts of all time. It was a clever solution to a problem that easily could have led to bloodshed.

“I think the alternative looked very close to World War III,” said retired U.S. Air Force Gen. T. Ross Milton.

The 93-year old resident of the Splendido retirement community in Rancho Vistoso was chief of staff to the general who organized the massive effort.

Starting Tuesday and lasting through May 10, the Pima Air & Space Museum, 6000 E. Valencia Road, is hosting a traveling exhibit commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift. “The Berlin Airlift – A Legacy of Friendship” tells the story of the airlift through text and historical black-and-white photos.

“In 1948 and 1949, the United States and her allies saved more than two million men, women and children in West Berlin when the Soviets blockaded the city,” Bernard Otremba-Blanc, the German honorary consul in Arizona said in a written statement. “The Airlift created a legacy of friendship between the American and German people.”

The Soviet blockade began in June 1948 and ended May 1949. The airlift began in July 1948 and continued through September 1949.

Before the end of World War II, the Allies had agreed to split Berlin into four sectors, with the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain each controlling one quadrant. Berlin was deep in the Soviet-controlled part of Germany, but the Western allies expected to be allowed access to the city.

In May 1948, in an attempt to force the West out of Berlin and force the citizenry to accept communism, the Soviets blocked all rail, water and highway routes through East Germany to West Berlin.

The Americans weren’t going to leave, short of being of forced out by war, but the allied sectors of Berlin had less than two weeks of food and other necessities on hand to sustain its two million inhabitants.

With all other routes closed, the U.S. came up with the idea of bringing food and other goods into West Berlin by air.

According to a Pima Air & Space Museum media release, during the 11 months of the Soviet blockade, the U.S. Air Force and the British Royal Air Force flew a combined 277,569 missions over Berlin, delivering 2,325,570 tons of food, fuel and supplies.

Several Air Force veterans who played roles in the airlift now make their home in southern Arizona.

Retired Air Force Col. Bill Lafferty of Green Valley flew one of the earliest flights of the mission, although he didn’t know it until a superior told him so afterward.

“‘Congratulations. You just flew the first mission for the Berlin Airlift for the group,’” a colonel informed the young Lafferty.

Retired Air Force Col. Gail Halvorsen of Elephant Head is famous as the “the Candy Bomber” for his drops of gum and candy to the children of Berlin. Although the drops were initially unauthorized, the program got the approval of the brass and provided not only sugary treats but a morale boost to the people of Berlin. It was a sign that somebody on the outside cared about their plight.

“The candy represented hope,” Halvorsen said.

Milton, however, played an even more central role in the airlift. He served as chief of staff to Maj. Gen. William H. Tunner, who was put in charge of the airlift shortly after it began.

“Tunner was the guiding genius behind the way we got through that mission. I was his chief of staff, which I had been for three or four years, so I guess I was the number two fellow there,” Milton said.

The logistical challenges were enormous. At the peak of the airlift, planes were landing in Berlin at the rate of one every 45 seconds.

“We couldn’t have possibly done the tonnage that was required to keep Berlin alive without some innovative operational practices and we devised those as we went along,” Milton said. “You could look at the airlift as kind of a giant, endless belt of airplanes, all flying at the same speed, at prescribed altitude and if they missed their approach in Berlin, they had to come home. There was no tolerance for circling and making another approach. That would have broken the belt.”

The tremendous effort by American and British forces met the Russian challenge while avoiding all-out confrontation.

“I don’t know what would have happened if we had decided to force our way in on the ground,” Milton said.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

One of the hundreds of American planes like that flown by retired Air Force Col. Gail Halvorsen of Elephant Head lands in Berlin in front of children caught in the Soviet Union blockade.

Jim and Karen Kremsreiter, of Baraboo, Wis., look over the exhibits in the traveling Berlin Airlift exhibit at the Pima Air & Space Museum.

———

ON THE WEB

Pima Air & Space Museum: www.pimaair.org

Newspaper hawker Troy Corne uses signs to make his pitch at West Irvington and South Mission roads.

Newspaper hawker Troy Corne sets up shop every day on the median at West Irvington and South Mission roads, offering the Tucson Citizen and that other daily paper.

If you drive that way, it’s impossible to miss him because Corne doesn’t just sell the paper. He markets and promotes it.

Most hawkers stand on a corner with a stack of newspapers. Corne spends a half-hour each morning setting up an elaborate display.

He tapes the front page and other sections to milk crates and the traffic pole, so people can see what’s in the paper that day. He surrounds the pages with a collection of signs: “25 cents,” “Financing Available,” “Hot Off the Presses” and “All This Can Be Yours.” He decorates the display with small American flags.

I’ve always meant to thank Corne for the great job he does promoting the Citizen and interview him for a story. With the Citizen possibly closing March 21 after 138 years in business, there’s no time like the present.

Corne, 48, kept one eye on traffic for customers, never missing a sale as we talked for a half-hour on the median Wednesday afternoon.

The Tucson native and member of the 1978 graduating class of Rincon High School last worked as a cashier in a hardware store. In 2005, he lost his job, his wife left him and the bank foreclosed on his home.

Corne, who battles depression and migraines, said his health issues make it hard for him to get a regular job (although he’s open to offers). He had noticed the hawkers and thought that might work out for him.

“I had seen the guys out on the street and it didn’t seem like they were trying very hard,” Corne said. “I thought I could do better.”

He joined the hawker program, which provides the papers to vendors at 5 cents a paper. On a steamy summer day, about two weeks after he started selling the paper, he put out his first sign. It read, “Get yours before they melt.”

“It got a few smiles and it sold my papers,” said Corne, who eventually made Mission and Irvington his regular corner.

He has gained a cadre of regulars and his displays draw the approval of passing motorists. They usually give him more for the paper than his discount price of 25 cents.

“I love your corner,” one driver yelled as I sat talking to Corne.

Early on, Tucson police officers told Corne he couldn’t put his display up on the median or traffic poles. But that didn’t deter Corne.

“I called their supervisor and I was really respectful about it. I explained what I was trying to do,” he said, adding that the police have left him alone after the call.

The average hawker sells 20 to 30 newspapers each day. Corne sells 70 to 80 on Mondays and Tuesdays and about 100 Wednesdays through Sundays. He focuses on selling the Citizen, but sells about a dozen issues of the Arizona Daily Star each day and, of course, sells only the Star on Sundays.

Corne doesn’t have marketing experience but he has an innate understanding of how to sell the paper. He prominently displays the grocery ads on Wednesday and Calendar section on Thursdays. When sales are slow, he doesn’t pack up and go home. He just lowers the price to 10 cents.

Mark Torres, single copy sales manager for TNI, the company that prints and distributes the Citizen and Star, said of Corne, “He’s got to be one our top five salespeople.”

Corne’s income varies greatly. He makes anywhere from $30 to $100 in a day. He said his four children, all young adults, are embarrassed by his job. But he makes enough to keep a roof over his head and support a son who still lives with him.

“Ever since I lost my house, we haven’t had to spend a single day on the streets,” Corne said. ” I haven’t had to go to a shelter or get a food box.”

Once the Citizen stops publishing, Corne will get to his corner earlier in the day and focus his efforts on selling the Star.

I’ve often wished as I’ve driven past Corne on the median that people much higher in the Gannett food chain had his passion for and belief in our product. I told Corne I’m appreciative of his efforts.

I’ll share his response even though it will provide a cheap laugh for the Citizen’s harshest critics.

“My mother said, if all you do is shovel s***, be the best s*** shoveler you can be,” Corne said.

Folks, I can assure you from the sincere affection that Corne expressed for the Citizen that he wasn’t comparing this newspaper to excrement. He was exhorting the value of doing the best job you can, which is what the Citizen staff has strived for as long as I’ve been here and, I’m pretty sure, for the 100-plus years before that.

“I’ll be sad to see it go,” Corne said. “We got the Citizen when I was a little kid. My grandmother was a subscriber. It’s how I learned to read.”

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767.

Newspaper hawker Troy Corne sells about 100 papers per day from Wednesday through Sunday.

Newspaper hawker Troy Corne uses signs to help his sales.

Ariana and Tyler Payne

Citizen staffer Judy Carlock review’s the week’s events with a personal twist.

Christopher Payne is innocent until proved guilty. But even his defense team appears to be conceding some facts that make acquittal a longer shot than a trip to Mars.

If he is found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of his daughter Ariana, 3, and son Tyler, 4, the jury will decide if he lives or dies. The “aggravating” factors – extreme cruelty and the age of the victims, for example – will be invoked in favor of execution.

Given the layers of appeals Payne could claim, even a death sentence would mean years more of life for the man accused of imprisoning his children and starving them to death.

Given the percentage of criminals abused as children, prison might prove harder on Payne than execution.

Along with the “aggravators,” juries consider mitigating factors. I can see one tiny sign of humanity.

He arranged to have at least Ariana’s remains put in a storage locker. He could have just buried them. They were so small.

Payne houseguest may have heard child’s cry

JAN’S PLAN: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer frequently refers to an “inherited” budget debacle, apparently a stab at former Gov. Janet Napolitano.

Fair or not, Napolitano did leave Brewer holding the bag.

The Republican governor surprised me this week with a proposal for a temporary tax increase and a frank reliance on federal stimulus money to make it through the rapids of the recession.

No one has accused Brewer of being a liberal. Whatever the fate of her plan, it beats immediately dismantling the apparatus of state in a way that does irreversible harm.

Yeah, I know it’s taking money out of one taxpayer’s pocket and putting it in another. It sounds like a shell game because it is a shell game. But this isn’t about common sense.

It’s economics.

Brewer tax-hike plan gets tepid response

CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT? The capture of a border-area jaguar by Game & Fish officials and its outfitting with a tracking collar may have stressed the animal and aggravated kidney dysfunction, which eventually forced euthanasia of the 17-year-old big cat.

Given that it is just about the only jaguar seen this far north in longer than anyone remembers, it’s possible that like Rudyard Kipling’s kitty, this cat walked alone.

Wildlife activists protested Thursday at local Game & Fish offices. Others countered that the cat’s main population lives in Mexico.

I hope so. Losing big cats makes the planet poorer.

Jaguar’s death prompts protest at Fish and Wildlife

PAPERED OVER: Even without hot lead type, newspapers are physically harder to produce than the flickers of light that make up the substance of the Internet.

Gannett Co. Inc. apparently introduced an odd element into the sale of the Citizen. Reportedly, it invoked a condition that the buyer continue printing a newspaper.

But as the company wants to keep its share of the “Joint Operating Agreement” – allowed by Congress specially to make printing two newspapers feasible – this new twist makes one wonder: Gosh, does Gannett really want to sell the Citizen?

Some have said they would consider buying the paper as a Web-only operation.

The company didn’t want to talk about it this week. Don’t ask me. I just work here.

Last I checked.

Justice Dept. questions potential Tucson Citizen buyers

OCTOMOM: Against all odds, octuplets born to Nadya Suleman are doing amazingly well. Good. Suleman, 33, conceived the octet in vitro, as she has with five other births producing six babies.

Anyone who’s caught a glimpse of her can tell she’s excitable. She’s also news.

A 911 tape released this week revealed her to be frantic and saying she was going to kill herself when her 5-year-old briefly disappeared. A dispatcher suggested she might not want to say that in front of her other kids.

Can this single, unemployed mom cope? Will she keep her babies? State officials may have no legal grounds to take the California kids.

Yeah, women used to fairly commonly produce 14 kids. But eight newborns at once? Nadya: Get real.

911 tape: Octuplet mom frantic when son disappeared

Judy can be reached at 573-4608 or jcarlock@tucsoncitizen.com. For more on these stories, see this column at www.tucsoncitizen.com.

Hardly anyone noticed, which shows how much attention I get.

Barnett did detain a group of citizens in 2004, and got sued. In that case, he was ordered to pay $99,000.

This week, Barnett was ordered to pay $78,000 in a civil case stemming from another 2004 incident.

Online readers were quick with comments about the legal system and illegal immigrants:

“Maybe these skanks will return to Mexico and live a life they are not used to. May they all bake in the flames of Hell.”

So much for Christian charity.

The Tucson Citizen Web site serves as a forum for a core contingent of anti-illegal-immigration stalwarts. They’re not all bigots, but some are. When we fold, they’ll find other online venues – or start their own.

Maybe MyRace.com. Or InYourFacebook.

Jury says ranchers didn’t violate immigrants’ civil rights

UBEA EST MEA? Late columnist Mike Royko touted that as the informal motto of Chicago. It means “Where’s mine?”

Plenty of people asked that when details of a housing bill were spelled out as President Obama visited Phoenix Tuesday. Same with the stimulus package. Even if you disagree with the concept, it’s hard to say no to the dough.

Most encouraging: Obama’s 1,000-watt smile at Arizona’s frosty governor, Republican Jan Brewer, who also cracked a grin.

Some 7,000 Tucsonans may need help to avoid closures. Not me. Not yet.

Rescue for homeowner takes multiple forms

CHOP CHOP: Through sheer lack of imagination I’ve been at the Citizen 28 years – all because my uncle played poker with the features editor.

They’re both dead now, and here I am.

Not for long. The paper will likely cease production March 21 – Iranian New Year and the second day of spring.

We reported thoroughly on our own demise in Friday’s paper. As one who has watched the dismal decline in circulation, I’ll leave with a measure of grief.

Mixed with relief.

Citizen likely to close March 21

SEX ED: Colleague Anne Denogean wrote this week of a sensible sex-ed bill that will never see the light of day in our Legislature, which has been chiseling away at abortion rights.

I figure if kids are old enough to do it, they’re old enough to look it up. Though on the Net, they might have to scroll through 10,000 pages of porn before they get to WebMD.

That will give them an education – a bad one. Not what state Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Phoenix, had in mind.

Meanwhile, a local weekly claimed a bill would allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth-control pills. Not exactly. “Morning-after” pills target a fertilized egg, keeping it from getting a tiny toehold in the womb.

If a pharmacist really believes that’s murder, should he or she have to participate? There must be another way deliver such services.

Denogean: Democrat’s sensible sex-ed bill will never see the light of day

PRIORITIES: The Citizen doesn’t look so bad compared to alleged cable “news” channels that milk one story for 24 hours or more. This week, another missing toddler: “Where’s Haleigh?”

All too likely, murdered. And though it’s news, it crowds out a lot of content.

Like, where’s Swat? That would be Pakistan, where leaders have made a truce with the Taliban, allowing the enforcement of “Islamic law.”

These male chauvinist thugs are to Islam what Arizona’s polygamists are to mainstream Mormonism.

And Pakistan is supposed to be our ally.

Pakistan’s truce with Taliban may hurt U.S. effort

New troops in Afghanistan to try breaking ‘stalemate’ with Taliban

CALL IN THE CAVALRY: My conservative father, in the 1960s, argued to the Supreme Court about the Citizen’s business arrangement. He lost.

Congress then took up the cause, and made it legal for separately owned newspapers to share a press.

He also helped found the Council on Abandoned Military Posts, now the Council on America’s Military Past.

State budget cuts that affect parks may hurt efforts to preserve that history.

This seems like an area where the private sector could step up. Couldn’t well-heeled history buffs form a foundation?

Maybe they already have – I’m no expert. But one reason the private sector may stay out of these efforts is pretty simple.

Under big, benevolent government, it’s sometimes hard to get a chance.

List of state parks that may close grows to 11

Editor’s note: Judy Carlock catches you up on the week’s news – with her own spin. Contact her at 573-4608 or jcarlock@tucsoncitizen.com.

Last week, with no illusions that what I’m doing is mere spring cleaning, I began clearing my desk and file cabinets of 15 years of clutter.

For those who haven’t heard, it’s more likely than not that the Tucson Citizen, established in 1870, will publish its final edition March 21.

I’d be embarrassed to document my hoarding tendencies if I were the only slob here. But newsrooms are notorious for their filth, and the Tucson Citizen is no exception. Just about every desk is covered in old newspapers, documents, books and soda cans.

The government may have to declare this place an EPA Superfund site after we’re gone.

It actually was kind of liberating to chuck out a couple hundred dusty old files. But that was just the start of digging my way out of here.

From one drawer in the newsroom’s communal filing cabinet, I pulled out a collection of medical books from the five years I spent as a health beat reporter and delivered them to the “free” table in the break room.

A recent edition of “The Merck Manual of Medical Information” was quickly scooped up by the office hypochondriac, who also took “Before the Heart Attack” and “Breast Cancer: The Facts You Need to Know about Diagnosis, Treatment and Beyond.”

“You’re never too old to get breast cancer,” she said.

She passed, as did the other ladies in the office, on “Stay Fertile Longer,” which apparently is a guide to getting pregnant into your eighties.

Maybe not.

From the nonmedical book collection, I happily sacrificed “Joe’s Law,” an autobiography of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, to the free table. You couldn’t pay me to keep it. But some sucker actually took it.

Another cabinet drawer was filled with old notebooks, a bag of clean medical needles and a box of unused petri dishes. Hey, you get weird things sent to you as the medical reporter.

Found on my desk was a lint roller, two tubes of hand lotion, a full bottle of iron pills that I’m supposed to take daily and a stuffed brown puppy that barks and whines when you press a button on its belly.

Inside my desk were two pairs of shoes and a bra. Sorry, no salacious back story involving too much tequila and a darkroom after hours. I just tend to take things off during the day if they become uncomfortable.

Two sets of CycleBeads also emerged and landed on the free table. CycleBeads help women track their menstrual cycles and avoid pregnancy. The color-coded string of beads identifies the days a woman is likely to get pregnant without protection.

A young colleague wanted to know if she should wear them around her head. I suggested they’d be more effective if she wore them around her knees.

Here’s an appropriate, if old, joke: What do you call couples who use the rhythm method? Parents.

To be fair, not all the clutter in a newsroom is garbage. Because we’re creative types – or just weird – we each have our collections of kitsch.

One co-worker kept a life-size, cardboard cutout of Shaun Cassidy beside his desk for decades after Cassidy’s 15 minutes of fame had ended. Another colleague has a tube-shaped bomb casing on his desk. Pinned to my cubicle wall is the X-ray image of a man with a long nail in his skull, just missing his brain, a work accident with a nail gun.

The picture serves to remind me that my worst day at work was never that bad.

Among the “important” papers that turned up during my end-of-a-career desk cleaning was a letter of congratulations for a companywide award I won for column writing in 2006. It was signed by the same suit who came here Jan. 17 to tell us that the Citizen’s 139-year run was coming to an end.

I haven’t decided whether to burn the letter in a March 21 bonfire or save it to include with my résumé if, as speculated by other local media, Gannett buys the Arizona Daily Star.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

The 5,000 job hunters who showed up at the Tucson Convention Center Tuesday drove it home. Gone is the guilty sense of relief – glad it’s not me!

Journalism has gone digital, and mainstream media organizations still struggle with making money on the World Wide Web. The junk aggregators and blathering blogs and navel-gazing narcissism of social networking may tell us what we want to know, but I for one still like someone vetting information for fairness, accuracy and all that jazz.

Maybe we’ll get it right some day.

In the meantime, pending the Citizen’s probable closure March 21, the company is offering us high-quality paper to print our resumes.

Leaving me to wonder: If print is dead, why does the quality of paper matter?

Thousands pack TCC for job fair

AX? TAX? FACTS? The state Legislature, eager to show how well it can do without popular former Gov. Janet Napolitano, appears to be closing in on a deal based mostly on cuts.

With a Republican governor, they’re free to do whatever they want without the threat of a line-item veto.

It’s not their fault they have that power in a year of plummeting sales tax revenue. Napolitano got a better job offer, so she left. Now she’s head of Homeland Security.

But the GOP should take care. Under three successive Republican governor-and-Legislature combinations, we chalked up two indictments, an impeachment and a giant government giveaway – an alt-fuel tax credit that had to be rescinded

A quick Net perusal tells me government is Arizona’s biggest employer. And our government is already smaller than most states’. An immediate $1.6 billion whack translates simply to this: More layoffs. Lots more layoffs.

Those laid-off government workers? They are constituents, too.

We’re not running on pure free markets or pure Marxist collectivism. Our government is a hybrid. Perfect? No. But it’s what we’ve cobbled together.

It’s easy to blow up a bridge. Harder to build one.

Arizona lawmakers to act to close shortfall

Thousands of students protest proposed university budget cuts

State may cut TUSD funding by up to $80 million

Arizona Indicators

DEFICIT HAWKS: Arizonans pay federal taxes, too. We’ll get some of that back. Though some lawmakers grouse about the strings that may be attached, they’re in no position to opt out of the Union. I don’t think.

So the hacking continues apace, as if we’re going to refuse our part of a big federal stimulus package.

Refusing federal money on ideological grounds qualifies as cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Legislators won’t lose face by accepting. They’ll save it. A good thing, in my opinion.

Somehow, some way – I really doubt government is going to make itself smaller. If we keep innovation alive without smothering initiative, we might get some bang for our tax bucks.

It’s worked before.

Grijalva, Giffords: Aim stimulus funds at workers, homeowners

Arizona lawmakers not waiting for federal stimulus

DRUG WARS: Meanwhile we go through all this trouble to seize perfectly good commodities – heroin, cocaine, marijuana – only to destroy them. Really, is that fiscally prudent?

We could sell it back to the cartels. Drop it over Afghanistan – screw up Al-Qaeda’s business plan.

If we were ideologically wedded to personal freedom, we’d sell it here. We buy into some government intrusion, except when we’re exercising our right to drive a 2-ton missile down Interstate 10.

Smuggling would still be illegal, so that we could seize the assets of the bad guys.

I hear the Border Patrol is hiring.

Ariz. detectives uncover pot house near Tucson

Fed seize drugs at border

Red-light cameras store video, too

HOW ‘BOUT THEM CARDS? Didn’t I always say they were headed to the Super Bowl? No. Thanks to the Internet I can make it look like I did.

Just go back to last week’s column, change it on the server and my digital tracks are covered, sort of.

In “1984,” George Orwell’s unlikely hero, Winston Smith, worked falsifying records at the Ministry of Truth.

Orwell didn’t imagine how easy it would become – or that we’d come to surveillance.

Finally, I love Big Brother.

On second thought: Forget I just said that.

George Orwell – Complete works

Steelers’ mild-mannered defensive guru a game changer

Warner’s Hall of Fame chances may be hurt by career lull

Contact Judy Carlock at 573-4608 or at jcarlock@tucsoncitizen.com.

Self-portrait of artist Ted DeGrazia

The snooty art critics of the world never had much use for Arizona’s most famous artist, the late Ted DeGrazia.

The Tucsonan didn’t have use for them either. He fashioned himself into an artist of and for the people. While never selling out, he sold his work to the admiring masses and made a fortune along the way.

Not too shabby for a boy born to Italian immigrants in the mining camp of Morenci on June 14, 1909.

Friday, the DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun opens its Centennial Retrospective featuring 100 significant examples of his work.

If you think you know DeGrazia because you’ve seen his oils of Indian children, think again. The sweep of his life’s work is astonishing for both the range of mediums and styles that he worked in – from oils, watercolors and sketches to ceramics, textiles and stained glass.

“We’re hoping that people get more of an idea of the breadth of what he did, in terms of working in all these different mediums and also that there is so much more to it than the reproductions that people grew up with,” said curator Kristine Peashock said. “For us, it’s a matter of getting people though the door. Then they can see for themselves.”

The retrospective will include many of the old favorites in the collection, including the 1957 “Los Niños” oil painting of children dancing in a circle, an image famously reproduced into a best-selling UNICEF card in 1960. But Peashock also has pulled lesser known works from the gallery’s vault, including, on public exhibition for the first time, “New York,” an undated oil depicting a street sweeper in in the foreground of a cityscape of grimy, gray skyscrapers.

By the gallery’s account, DeGrazia, who died in Tucson in 1982, graduated from Morenci High School at age 23 and “hitched a ride to Tucson in 1933 to enroll at the University of Arizona with $15 in his pocket.”

In 1941, Arizona Highways began publishing DeGrazia’s artwork, helping to launch his career and introduce legions of readers around the world to the beauty of southern Arizona’s native people and cultures.

In 1942, he studied under Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. Rivera was so impressed with the young man that he sponsored a weeklong show of DeGrazia’s work at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Orozco predicted DeGrazia would someday be one of America’s best painters.

But throughout his career, DeGrazia’s standing with the critics would be inversely proportional to his popularity with the masses.

“They thought that DeGrazia was simplistic. He painted little children without eyes. To them, he wasn’t a real artist. They didn’t see any value in what he was doing, said Lance Laber, executive director of the Gallery in the Sun.

“I think,” Peashock said, “that the art critics thought that was all he did and that it was kind of kitschy and didn’t look beyond that to the other work he had done.”

DeGrazia, she said, was a stubborn man who didn’t like art world politics. In the 1950s, he began building his own gallery in what was then the far outskirts of Tucson. The main gallery of the Gallery in the Sun, now listed in the National Register of Historic Places, opened in 1965.

“He said, ‘If nobody wants to display my work, I’m going to build my own museum to display my work,’” Peashock said.

At the gallery, which houses some 15,000 DeGrazia originals and attracts more than 50,000 visitors each year, you can see his more serious works. Among them are paintings that document the Yaqui Easter celebration and the stories of Jesuit missionary Father Eusebio Kino and Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.

DeGrazia was as much a historian and anthropologist as he was a painter, Laber said.

And let’s not dismiss his paintings of Native American children as mere kitsch. If you take a closer at these paintings in the environment DeGrazia designed for them, you’ll see they are more than just cute. In those paintings, as in all his work, he captured the sun-soaked pastels and swirling energy of the desert and the unique beauty of its natives.

“I always thought that DeGrazia’s work was beautiful,” said Bernard Siquieros, administrator of the Tohono O’odham Nation Cultural Center & Museum in Topawa, about 75 miles southwest of Tucson. “I thought just from his paintings that he saw something special in the children. . . . In fact, I was just commenting about one of our grandsons, who is 8 months old, and they came to visit my wife and me on Sunday. He had those big round eyes and I said, ‘You look like a DeGrazia baby.’ . . . I thought this must have been what DeGrazia saw in many of the children, their beautiful eyes.”

In some of DeGrazia’s paintings, the children have no facial features, as Laber noted. In others, the children have dark dots for eyes and mouths that look like sweet, black gumdrops.

DeGrazia’s work has yet to get the respect it merits from the art world, Laber said.

But his reign as Arizona’s favorite artist of the people remains unchallenged.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

Famed American artist Thomas Hart-Benton (right) was a friend of DeGrazia.

DeGrazia's O'odham legend

Artwork on display at the DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun. The gallery's Centennial Retrospective features 100 examples of Ted DeGrazia's work.

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IF YOU GO

What: “DeGrazia, 100 years, 100 Works”

Where: DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun, 6300 N. Swan Road

When: Opening reception is 6 to 9 p.m. Friday. The gallery is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily.

Cost: free