Tucson reacts

Citizen Staff Report

The Citizen staff called area political, business and cultural leaders for their reaction to Friday’s announcement that the Citizen will cease printing a paper. Their comments follow:

“Well, it’s too bad it had to be you guys. I honestly have always thought the evening paper here was far superior to the morning paper.”

Bob McMahon

owner, Metro Restaurants

“It’s a sad day for our region. We’re losing an institution that was a watchdog of our local governments. We’re losing competition between newspapers that led to more aggressive reporting and better information. We’re losing a part of our history and our collective memory. The Citizen and all of Pima County deserved much better from Gannett.”

Ann Day

Pima County supervisor

“The Tucson Citizen is the oldest newspaper in Arizona. It’s a large loss for future readers and for us who have depended on the Citizen every day of our lives.”

Gabrielle Giffords

U.S. congresswoman

“That’s a dark day in Tucson’s history. The Citizen always gave balanced coverage. That has always been very healthy for Tucson. You lose a second voice, a second opinion. Two voices are better than one as far as I’m concerned.”

Jack Camper

executive director, Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce

“The presence of two daily newspapers in a city guarantees there will be accurate and objective news reporting. . . . The loss of the Citizen puts the responsibility on the Daily Star to do the task well. ”

Glenn Lyons

Downtown Tucson Partnership

“I just think it’s a real blow to the community, a real loss. I think it will diminish the level of balance and independent journalism that we need to keep the community informed.

“I think the Citizen has always done a good job of digging for the facts and making important information accessible. The quality of the local news reporting at the Citizen has always stood out. It’s a real loss.”

Karin Uhlich

City Councilwoman

As a small nonprofit theatre business owner it was writers like you, Rogelio (Olivas), and Chuck Graham that made a tremendous difference to our organization. The Citizen gave all live theatres in town an equal footing. The Citizen was willing to listen to a small organization in the Tucson arts community by covering or critiquing their next production. I for one, as an executive director of a 25-year-old community theatre, whose members worked thousands of hours to bring theatre to Tucson, will miss the Citizen for its support.

Priscilla Marquez

former executive director of Catalina Players

“Even when I was a reporter and anchor, one of the things I always told students was you don’t get all your news from television. I’m truly going to miss the Citizen. I always looked to the Citizen for clear, straightforward reporting of what was happening downtown.”

Nina Trasoff

city councilwoman

“As a Tucsonan, elected official and a proponent of citizen engagement, I am deeply saddened by the closing of our state’s oldest newspaper and will have the working families impacted by the shutdown in my thoughts during these though economic times.”

Rodney Glassman

city councilman

“Anytime you lose an institution in the media like a newspaper that’s been publishing more than 100 years is sad. There’s bound to be a void in the coverage. I understand the feeling of abandonment of employees, but also in the community, not getting information.”

Richard Elías

Board of Supervisors chairman

“The more media outlooks citizens have the better,” Romero said. “It’s really important that we have different perspectives from different newspapers.”

Regina Romero

Tucson councilwoman

Referring to the Web site, which will offer only opinion pieces: “That’s great. I’ll make sure I pay attention to that.”

“More and more people are getting their news online these days.”

Ray Carroll

Pima County supervisor

There was always something about the Citizen, something that set us apart.

What it always came down to was a staff that cared – cared about Tucson, cared about each other and cared about doing the best job possible, even as resources dwindled to nothing.

We were the scrappy underdog (hate that phrase), frequently beating the competition on breaking news and in sheer writing talent.

More important, we had heart. We always wanted to do our best, to be the best.

And we had fun. When I was moved to the “Big House” after working in our downtown office for years, I was assigned a desk in what had to be the most fun corner in the universe.

I was surrounded by irreverent, brilliant, funny and sometimes a bit dysfunctional folks. We pulled pranks. We got in trouble. Once we got so rowdy, Art Rotstein of The Associated Press tape-recorded us. We were appalled at our own behavior.

But we did the best journalism of our lives.

It’s hard to imagine Tucson without the Tucson Citizen.

But life will go on. It always does. News will happen. I just hope someone who cares as much as we did is there to cover it.

GABRIELLE FIMBRES

Reporter

My four underpaid, overworked years at the Tucson Citizen were, without doubt, among the most joyful of my career. The Citizen taught me how to report, how to write, and to honor the classic Finley Peter Dunn mandate to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

I last lived and worked here in 1985, so the smaller city I knew and the larger newspaper I loved have been gone for a while (though the beer garden at the Shanty is still strangely, wonderfully unchanged after 24 years). The Citizen of that era honored good writing more than most newspapers, thanks in large part to the influence of Dick Vonier. We took on ambitious stories, including an epic series examining the flood of Central American refugees in the ’80s that made Tucson a center for the Sanctuary Movement, and an investigation of flaws in a major child abduction and murder case. For the latter, I was personally gratified to be labeled “Inspector Closeau” by a sputtering County Attorney Steve Neely, who was angered by our findings.

The paper had some memorable foibles. One was the paper’s fondness for publishing animal tales on the front page, a proclivity I once demonstrated by stapling a year’s worth of such stories together end to end, producing a paper chain of doggy heroes and record-breaking snakes and cats that could carry a tune that ran from the break room bulletin board some 39 feet into the hallway. In typical Citizen fashion, another reporter was assigned to write a story about my little project (which I suppose was better than canning me).

The story about animal stories ran, naturally, on the front page.

ED HUMES

Former staff member

CITIZEN STAFFERS REMEMBER

This newsroom, since I arrived here in June of 2006, has always had great, great people. They’re pros; and they have always put the needs of the readers first. Tucson will be poorer for the newspaper’s folding because the loss of all that talent in one place.

WAYNE BAKER

Copy editor

My first job over 40 years ago was as a paperboy for the Tucson Citizen. I had a route that ran from First Street to 10th Street between Tucson Boulevard and Country Club.

In 1967 I got a job as a cub reporter for the Citizen and I ended up with the Pima County Board of Supervisors as part of my “beat.”

Covering Pima County back before the days of open meeting laws was a hoot. The three county supervisors would meet before the official meeting and decide the agenda. The guys let me in the room, but did not let my female counterpart from the Star inside. Being an afternoon paper with a deadline for the home delivery edition of noon, I’d often file my story about what the supervisors decided before the meeting was over, so the Citizen could beat the Star.

I got to experience the last days of the old-style newsroom. We used manual typewriters, and if the city desk didn’t like our copy, they’d wad it up and throw it back across the newsroom. The older reporters were grizzled guys with bottles of whiskey in their desk drawers. Nothing like the antiseptic cubicle newsrooms of today with glowing computer screens.

I didn’t last long at the Citizen after the night a military jet crashed into a supermarket on South Alvernon. In the midst of that chaos, I failed to get the names of a bunch of Air Force colonels who showed up the next day to inspect the smoking ruins who didn’t have their names on their jump suits, and Nellis Air Force Base (from whence they came) wouldn’t give up their names. So the paper had to run a picture with “5 unidentified colonels.” Officially I was told I “lacked a proper sense of immediacy.” So, off to law school I went to become a lawyer, a profession where immediacy is not a virtue.

HUGH HOLUB

Former staff member

In 2005, my brother, Dontia, was in his early 20s playing varsity tennis for San Diego State University, where he was set to graduate with a degree in psychology. Devastating news came during the late evening hours on Sept. 23: Dontia had been in a vehicle wreck that day and had passed. I left immediately for California. My family was not fully financially prepared for his passing and in speaking with my editor that week about requesting additional time off I told her about the difficulties my family was experiencing. That day, she informed the Tucson Citizen staff about the situation and the staff began collecting funds to help with the funeral expenses. Days later, the staff sent the funds to my parents. I have seen the Citizen staff do this with numerous others – whether it was for a newborn child or a devastating event. These are testimonies of what the Tucson Citizen family represent.

La Monica Everett-Haynes

Former staff member

When I arrived at the Tucson Citizen’s police press room for my first shift in December 1999, I carefully inched toward the one-room office and opened the door just enough to peek inside. I was visibly nervous; a big fish at the college paper, I was suddenly a nobody with a notepad, thrown into an internship at a professional news operation.

“Are you Dave Teibel?” I asked, my voice quivering.

The man put down a newspaper and adjusted his Coke-bottle glasses to get a closer look at me. “I am,” he curtly replied.

Knowing a bit about Teibel’s storied career in Tucson, I said “Well, it’s truly an honor to meet you, sir.”

I expected to hear “Nice to meet you, too.” That’s what normal people say.

Instead, he groaned and put his feet on the desk, opened his newspaper and proudly muttered, “Yes . . . yes it is.”

That brief conversation scared me half to death and I nearly quit on the spot. But then, somehow, we began to click.

Over the next three years, this wonderful man – part pit bull, part teddy bear – helped craft the person I’ve become today. He did the same for dozens of rookies before and after me.

DAVE CIESLAK

Former staff member

One top memory: Arizona softball coach Mike Candrea leading Team USA to a gold medal in softball at the 2004 Olympic Games in Greece. His team dominated, not that it was a surprise in going 9-0 and outscoring opponents 51-1. What struck me, though, was his humility, poise and pride in the journey. It came just five weeks after his wife, Sue, died of a brain aneurysm while on the pre-Games tour.

I remember him in the dugout, hand on chin, taking in the team celebration on the field. Heartfelt and memorable.

“I thanked them all for the greatest moment of my life,” he said at the time. “I love this team.”

And, through it all, he didn’t get a medal. Coaches don’t get medals.

“That’s not what this is about,” he said.

STEVE RIVERA

Sports reporter

Nothing in my 21 years at the Citizen has been personally more life changing than covering the Tucson International Mariachi Conference.

My first encounter with the conference showed me that this was a world-class tradition with instrumentalists and singers to rival the best orchestras and opera companies in the country.

But in time, I realized that I was watching history unfold before my eyes as Mexican-Americans recast their self-image through their culture and set sail toward a future of higher education and pride in their personal and collective accomplishments.

What seemed at first concerts and workshops became the seeds of the transformation of a people, and it was my good fortune to be there to write about that historical pivot point as it was unfolding.

DAN BUCKLEY

Reporter/videographer

JUDY CARLOCK

jcarlock@tucsoncitizen.com

I walked on fire for this place, a piece of cake compared to guessing which day we were going to die. Or not. Buyers invited to visit the place didn’t bother. We continued “day-to-day.” Just like real life.

My career here started in 1980, after a decade of change as tumultuous as this one. The Citizen had moved, changed owners and converted to computers.

At 20, spoiled for honest work by a stint at a college paper, I drove to 4850 S. Park Ave. to talk to my uncle’s poker buddy. Then-Features Editor Dick Vonier told me what my creative writing degree was worth and sat me down at a typewriter to rewrite my résumé.

Seventeen years later a couple of co-workers and I sat at Dick’s kitchen table, trying, though not very hard, to talk him out of his last bender.

This by way of saying the Citizen has been, if not the love of my life, by far my most enduring commitment.

Just ask my ex-husband.

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS: I got a job as a clerk and begged copy editors to let me write headlines. One of them, known for once accidentally setting his hair on fire, ended up in a coma. I offered to fill in. How was I supposed to know he’d died that morning?

After that, the bosses found me an editing position. I started with the new section Calendar and in 1983 was made editor of Bulletin Board, a weekly zoned publication delivered to all area households.

For arcane legal reasons, Bulletin Board had to be an “edition” of the Citizen, outside the ordinary chain of command. I couldn’t, by law, have a boss.

Leaving me free to work my own hours and follow real reporters around. Especially one.

DUCK AND CHICK: This guy walks in with a brilliant magazine-length piece and Dick tells him we can’t use it. He goes home, writes another brilliant story and comes back the next day. This one ran, and Chuck Bowden was hired.

Bowden tolerated me as a kind of apprentice. I’d tag along on interviews and he would invent assignments for me, even dragged me to the gym. Journalism takes stamina.

Chuck and Dick and Picture Editor P.K. Weis were among my many mentors, illustrating every day the power of observation, language and frozen instants in time.

When I wrote a front-page piece about a storefront dance club, an editor attached a snotty comment: “Non-Bowden byline CQ (correct).”

I took it as a compliment.

DESK HOPPING: I had skipped the usual reporter-to-editor sequence and needed to back up. I covered the county and city ably enough but rarely with the grit and patience to do it expertly.

We started to lose our investigative edge when our most hard-nosed reporters – like Jim Wyckoff and Mark Kimble – became editors. All of us had a learning curve. Frustrated by the “he said, she said” rhythm of reporting, I longed to get to the bottom of things but rarely did.

I landed on the city desk and did a stint at USA TODAY as the token Westerner – and conservative. Just because I didn’t think every problem had a government solution.

Back here, two years on the features desk burned me out on managing people. I never knew where their jobs ended and mine began.

I fell hard in ’96, lost my driver’s license and joined Dick’s support group (he died in 1997).

And I got demoted to the copy desk. Finally I was where I wanted to be.

RECENTLY: From days to nights, copy desk to the city desk, back to the copy desk. Setting the alarm for 2:30 a.m. or 4 p.m. Ducking out of Thanksgiving dinner or arriving late on Christmas Eve – typical newspaper stuff.

And, for the past couple of years, doing this column, riding herd on the Web site and student teaching at Cholla High Magnet School.

On vacation or on assignment, I traveled and saw the world. I stay at home and see it too.

As long as I’ve worked here, I’ve learned. Whether I wanted to or not.

NOW: A few unemployed journalists may not amount to a hill of beans. Ninety percent of what we do is – not, fluff, exactly, but superfluous. Opinions, entertainment, sports. National news, available anywhere. Almost all of it free, not counting the Net connection.

But still we lose something with every demise. Newspapers have the staff, if not always the will, to ferret out embarrassing information local governments don’t want published. To pursue documents revealing whether Lute Olson got special treatment. And to hold big businesses – like Citizen owner Gannett Co. Inc. – at least somewhat accountable for previous statements.

Thanks to Assistant City Editor Mark Evans for reviving that hunger here.

Financing the dogged tenacity to nail that stuff is a lot more important than polishing prose or rewriting press releases.

A born cynic, and most days I still believe: Truth will find a way to be told.

I just don’t know how anymore.

MARY BUSTAMANTE

mbustamante@tucsoncitizen.com

In 1957, when the Tucson Citizen set out to pick the top high school student in the city that year, the editors may have thought it was possible to choose just one teenager who was the very best.

What this project has proved through more than half a century is that local schools are filled with caring, intelligent, thoughtful young people who have been, and will continue to be, fabulous leaders and contributors to our world.

Many past winners have gone into law or medical professions. Some have taken jobs that help the underprivileged.

Sari Horwitz, the 1975 Student Achievement Award winner and an investigative reporter at The Washington Post, has won three Pulitzer Prizes, the most recent just last year. She was nominated for one this year, as well.

The nomination was for a 13-part series with another reporter on the murder of Federal Bureau of Prisons intern Chandra Levy. The series prompted Washington, D.C., police last fall to reopen the7-year-old case. In early March, they arrested a man the stories had focused on.

The top journalism prize last year went to the 11-member Washington Post team Horwitz was on that covered the Virginia Tech shootings, the deadliest campus massacre in U.S. history.

In 2002, she won a Pulitzer for a series uncovering the District of Columbia government’s role in the deaths of children placed in protective care. In 1999, her first Pulitzer, the Pulitzer board’s Gold Medal for public service, went to Horwitz and four colleagues at the Post for a five-part series on the high rate of police shootings in the District of Columbia.

Winning such big awards hasn’t kept her from remembering the one she received from the Citizen almost 34 years ago.

As a senior at Tucson High, it was the biggest award she had ever won.

In 1975 she was a teenager who had never been back East and was more than a little nervous to know that in a few months she would be on her way to Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia.

“The big award from my hometown newspaper and the front-page story about me sent me off with confidence,” she said.

Horwitz, who graduated from Bryn Mawr and then from Oxford, said she is sad to see the end of the Tucson Citizen, and the end of the Student Achievement Award.

“In these hard economic times, especially in the newspaper business, it’s wonderful to see that the hometown newspaper continued to give out these awards. It’s a big honor for the recipients and their families,” she said.

The Citizen used to give winners watches. For a brief time, it changed to gift certificates, and, in the last few years, $500 scholarships.

It rarely was easy to choose who would get that scholarship.

By the time we got to the handful of finalists who would come in for interviews, we were overwhelmed by the breadth of knowledge and experiences one young person could cram into four years of high school. In 2000, 2003 and 2005, the Citizen chose two winners each.

In just the last few years, we have had winners who have started organizations, been to Africa to teach children English, and had to flee a hostile homeland for speaking out against political injustice.

We expect that among our winners, we may have a future chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation, and maybe even a president of Iraq.

Super families

Throughout the past 51 years, a handful of families have been great producers of students nominated for the award. Two pairs of siblings have won the award. And four times one family has had a winner (or winners) and a finalist.

Duoc Ngoc and Nga Thuy Duoug, both high school teachers in Vietnam, and their children fled that war-torn country and came to Tucson just before the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Daughters Thuy Ngoc and Thu Mai won in 1988 and 1990, respectively, and son Quang was a finalist in 1989.

T. Herman and Teddy K. Moore raised two winners, Julia in 1980 and Eric in 1984. Gabriela and Frank Konarski’s son John was one of two winners in 2000 and daughter Patricia was a finalist in 1998.

When we were interviewing Jessica (Miller) Hartley in 2007, 10 years after she won the award, her sister, Rebecca Miller was one of our finalists. Their parents are Dane and Mary Miller.

Another Vietnamese family, headed by Ho Cam Thai and Canh Thi Phan, had a daughter, Hong Anh, who won in 1996 and a son, Hai Anh, who was finalist in 1993.

Early on, before we named finalists, the Rev. John and Hazel Coatsworth had three children nominated: David in 1966, Wendy in 1972 and Cindy in 1977. David won the award.

Super schools

Catalina Magnet High has had the most winners, 11, from the second contest in 1958, won by Robert Kirk Young, to the 2004 winner, Mariana Gramajo-Sherman.

Tucson High had the second-most winners at seven: The first winner from THS was Emma Gee; its most recent winner was Katherine “Kata” Pettit in 2003.

Desert Christian High School, whose students rank extremely high in volunteerism, had two winners in the past three years: Carina Groves and Ali Rawaf.

The contest is the longest project the newspaper has had in its more than 138 years of publication.

In 1964, Jon Hoffman said he wanted to become a dentist. He did, practicing here for 31 years before retiring in 2005.

The award “made me feel very good about myself. I had worked very hard to earn it.” And 45 years later, “I still have the watch the Citizen gave me. It’s had a lot of wear, but I can still read the inscription.”

Some who didn’t win have lived up to the promise we saw in them as nominees. Hundreds of them, we’re sure. We’ve heard from a few.

Lauren Johnston Lowe, a 1998 nominee, guards children’s rights as a lawyer in the Child and Family Protective Service division of the state Attorney General’s Office.

Jack Gillum, a 2002 nominee, is database editor for USA TODAY, the nation’s largest newspaper, with a daily readership of more than 3.5 million.

We thank all the nominees through the years who showed us what teens really are like and how they planned to make our world better. We’re sad we cannot bring you many more years of examples.

‘And I still have the watch the Citizen gave me. It’s had a lot of wear, but I can still read the inscription’ (which has his name, the year and the name of the award).

JON HOFFMAN,

1964 winner, shown in a photo that ran with a story on what he was up to 10 years after being named the Achievement Award winner

52 years of scholars.

Year: Recipient, School

1957: Emma Gee, Tucson High

1958: Robert Kirk Young, Catalina

1959: Russell Sidney Nielsen, Sunnyside

1960: Margaret Ann King, Salpointe Catholic

1961: John Moffatt, Catalina

1962: James R. Davis, Catalina

1963: Joel M. Vavich, Tucson High

1964: Jon A. Hoffman, Catalina

1965: Diana Lee Baum, Flowing Wells

1966: David R. Coatsworth, Pueblo

1967: Jennie Tom, Flowing Wells

1968: Douglas Barry Wilson, Rincon

1969: James Wood, Salpointe Catholic

1970: May Gin, Flowing Wells

1971: Carol Gilman, Catalina

1972: David Galligan, Catalina

1973: David W. Quinto, Canyon del Oro

1974: Douglas R. Linkhart, Palo Verde

1975: Sari Horwitz, Tucson High

1976: Mark Barker, Amphitheater

1977: Thomas R. Harrell, Tucson High

1978: Wayne E. Yehling, Tucson High

1979: Bari Weick, Tucson High

1980: Julia Elise Moore, Amphitheater

1981: Heidi Van Voris, Sabino

1982: Lynn Marcus, Catalina

1983: Daryl Clarke Johnson, Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind

1984: Eric J. Moore, Amphitheater

1985: Fong Sau Tom, Palo Verde

1986: Tinamarie Federico, Pueblo

1987: Flint Callaway, Sahuarita

1988: Thuy Ngoc Duong, Santa Rita

1989: Brad Alan Chvatal, Sahuaro

1990: Thu Mai Duong, Santa Rita

1991: Ross Crowley, Flowing Wells

1992: Shannon Clark, Catalina

1993: Wendelyn Julien, Amphitheater

1994: Francisco Manuel Hernandez, Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind

1995: Julie Martin, Desert View

1996: Hong Anh Thai, Catalina

1997: Jessica Miller, Flowing Wells

1998: Clair Donovan, Catalina

1999: Heather Ayn Davis, Immaculate Heart

2000: John Konarski, Desert View; Alia Gecobe Peera, Santa Rita

2001: Jennifer Musty, Salpointe Catholic

2002: Marcella Marie Acosta, Santa Rita

2003: Christopher Courneen, Pueblo High; Katherine “Kata” Pettit, Tucson High

2004: Mariana Gramajo-Sherman, Catalina

2005: Annalyn Rose Censky, Salpointe Catholic High; Kevin Joseph Lopez, Ha:Sañ Preparatory and Leadership School

2006: Carina Groves, Desert Christian High

2007: Amber Rose Horvath, St. Gregory College Preparatory School

2008: Ali Rawaf, Desert Christian High

Tucson native Edgar Suarez started his career as a newsboy selling newspapers on the street in 1936.

When he retired from Tucson Newspapers Inc. in 2003, he was 75 and had worked 62 years for the company.

He is its longest serving employee.

Suarez served in the Army for two years in the mid-1940s and TNI saved his job for his return.

In his last TNI post, he was a preprint coordinator in charge of scheduling and verifying the advertising inserts slipped into the newspaper before it hits the streets.

“I enjoyed it here very much,” he said at his retirement.

In his early years at TNI, one man ran the press, he recalled. “Now they need a lot more than that.”

Paul Gallegos

I grew up with the Citizen – Dad would buy it on the way home from work, or we would have a subscription. It generally flip-flopped depending on what year it was.

When I got to high school at Salpointe (class of ’90), the Citizen was my go-to for daily events and for research papers for class. Looking back, reading the newspaper actually helped me improve my reading – I see that as I try to get my own kids to read more. Having a daily newspaper in the house helps considerably. I remember reading the John Jennings columns and thinking “How funny is that?”

I even ended up taking karate classes with his daughter for a while – never making the connection that she was HIS daughter until years later.

My first “real” (non-University of Arizona affiliated) job was at TNI Partners, now Tucson Newspapers. I was the one that converted everyone’s PC from running Windows 3.1 and TECS2 to Windows 95.

I was the one that helped Joel Rochon move into the 20th century with everyone getting an e-mail address @tucsoncitizen.com.

I spent countless hours upgrading computers, showing people how to surf the Web, showing people how to use e-mail as a tool and resource, and even occasionally going to reporters’ homes and setting up their home computers to dial in to azstarnet.

There were occasional “My computer crashed and I need to submit my story in 10 minutes!” cries for help. Near the end of my tenure in Tucson, I had gotten into the habit of hanging around in the newsroom about an hour before deadline JUST in case someone had an issue that needed immediate attention.

I got to see the inside of the Citizen, the inner workings, and I was completely impressed. When I walked into the Citizen, someone ALWAYS said “Hi.” Didn’t matter who, and it was usually someone different every day, but you got the feeling that the Citizen was a family.

I got to see the real innards of a newspaper and finally understood the impact that a newspaper has on a community.

Meeting Corky Simpson and Steve Rivera and having daily conversations with them about things OTHER than sports – that was always a trip.

My then-fiancee (and now wife of 12 years) ended up getting a job at the Citizen, working in the library with Jeannie Jett and Charlotte Kenan. She enjoyed going in to work, and she has always told me that leaving there was probably her biggest regret in her professional life.

She knew it wasn’t ever going to be the biggest paycheck in the world, but that was a place that she could do an honest day’s work and feel good about herself for it.

I always had hoped that my kids would be able to someday go back and visit and really understand, “Hey, Daddy and Mommy used to work here,” and I’ve made a couple of visits before with the kids (as babies). But now, sadly, I won’t get that chance anymore.

So, what has the Citizen meant to me? The Citizen is a huge part of my life – it arguably shaped the person I am today, both because of what was printed, and because of the people behind it. Not many people can say that, and I take pride in knowing I’m in select company. I wear my Tucson Citizen baseball cap with pride. It’s blue (same color as those vaunted letters on the front page), hasn’t faded much, but it’s a great reminder of what examples I need to set for my kids.

Thomas F. Elias

The year must have been about 1938 when one of my older brothers decided I was too attached to my mother’s apron strings. He told mom and me I was to start working at the Citizen newspaper as a newsboy selling the paper.

My brother had been a newsboy but was now working inside. Giving out the papers and checking in the vendors was one of his duties. He had been recruited by two friends and neighbors, Frank and Ed Casanova. Frank later became circulation manager for the Citizen.

When the Casanovas took my brother to the Citizen, they signed him up as Mandrake, a nickname they gave him because of a “Beanie cap” he used. I was signed up under the same name. People thought it was a family name.

There was a code among newsboys at that time that was honored by the vendors. Some of the boys had “corners” or areas where only they could sell the paper. I was assigned to the Pioneer Hotel, the best “corner” of all. I am sure my brother and the Casanovas had something to do with that.

A corner across the street from the Pioneer Hotel, where Steinfeld’s and later Jacome’s department stores were located, belonged to the Carr brothers. They were the only African-American newsboys at the time. Their given names were Robert E. Lee and Daniel Boone.

While selling the Citizen at the Pioneer Hotel, I often saw entertainment stars.

One day the Pioneer Hotel bellhop captain asked me and my friend, George Arce, to pose with a tall gentleman for a still camera picture. He later gave us a picture copy each. It turned out the tall gent was Marion Morrison, better known as John Wayne.

I remember that when I started as a newsboy, the Citizen was located at a building that later became the Chamber of Commerce, in the area close to St. Augustine Cathedral. The newspaper at that time cost 3 cents, but soon went to 5 cents. Newsboys were better off when the paper cost 3 cents because you checked in 2 cents and kept 1 cent. Many people gave you a nickel and said “keep it,” so you made 3 cents. When the paper went up to 5 cents, you had to check in 3 cents and kept 2.

Close by the Citizen building and across the street from the cathedral was Brichta’s Service Station, which was a newsboy and carrier hangout. Some of us left our bicycles there while we sold the paper.

Many newsboys became carriers and office help, as with my brother and the Casanovas. Edgar Suarez sold papers during my time and kept working for the Citizen until his retirement. He must have worked there over 50 years. Some other relatives were printers at the Citizen: Cousin Albert Elias, cousin Arturo Moreno and his father before him, Francisco Moreno, who founded “El Tucsonense,” a Spanish-language Tucson newspaper. Most of Arturo’s 10 children worked for the Citizen in some capacity. The Tully family was employed for many years and there were others.

After 70 years of reading this newspaper, I will miss it very much. The sports pages through the years, especially when Corky Simpson wrote, were top-notch. The comics were for the most part superior. I still remember Blondie, Joe Palooka, Lil Abner, Dick Tracy and many more.

Some people say the paper became too liberal, others say it was too conservative. Older readers like myself just took it all in and formed our own opinions. I would say a contributing factor to the demise of newspapers is all the new electronic media. People now find it easier than reading a newspaper. I regret the loss of jobs for the staff and wish them well in relocating.

Adios. Au revoir. Auf wiedersehen. And goodbye.

DYLAN SMITH

dysmith@tucsoncitizen.com

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 to a slew of bloggers, the changes sweeping the news business are an untiring meme.

Newspapers big and small are stopping their presses, not to replate with the latest 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 social shifts and technological advances 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 contraptions, prone to breakdown, with 90-character keyboards.

The paper was successful under George’s leadership. To speed production, he invested in another Linotype. 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 in college before graduating in 1938.

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

“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 school 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 the 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 pressroom 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, 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.

What newspaper history says about the future of news

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 became a pressman. He brought his skills here, working as a pressman for Tucson Newspapers from 1965 until his retirement in the late ’80s.

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

P.K. Weis’ grandfather P.K. 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 Echávarri’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 (Ill.) Press-Democrat from the age of 15. His mother was women’s editor for the Marion (Ind.) 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. 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.