THE FINAL EDITION

MICHAEL A. CHIHAK

We are as ill-prepared for newspapering’s demise as we were for economic meltdown. An odd comparison, perhaps, because we will recover from economic arrhythmia in relatively short time. Replacing the role of newspapers will take longer, and that threatens democracy.

Newspapers are democracy’s bulwark: constitutionally protected watchdogs. The Founding Fathers knew a free press would sustain democracy so included it among the Constitution’s foremost rights.

The Tucson Citizen’s death and the demise of other newspapers shake the frame upon which democracy sits. Without free-flowing information, the experiment Lincoln defined as “of . . . by . . . for the people” will not endure.

We inherited the right to self-govern, and keeping a check on those who presume to act for us is how we do so. Newspapers are the best at shining light on government.

The Citizen did it for nearly 139 years. Its death and the casting of its fine staff members into the economic diaspora are heartbreaking.

Saying newspapers brought it upon themselves is largely true, but not for the reason you think. Slant – perceived or real – isn’t a factor; newspapers of all political stripe are failing. Business avarice and arrogant resistance to change lead the blame list.

Retrospection hardly seems worthwhile, but please permit a bit of it. In the latter half of my more than three decades in newspapering, we emphasized business rather than news, boastful of being the only business mentioned in the Constitution.

That missed the point, because while newspaper owners made money, their primacy was to inform, watchdog, nurture democratic ideals and drive stakes into the hearts of faulty notions.

We changed for business. Now newspapering’s breathing is shallow and rattling.

New technologies turned newspapering into a piece of glass, dropping it to the ground to shatter. Newspaper bosses tried putting the pieces back together rather than recognizing each piece as a new opportunity. Now it’s too late.

Mass migration to millions of other information forums and the economic implosion are sending newspapers to death row. Don’t count on midnight pardons.

This threatens us because other forums are not yet able to support democracy – that is, self-government – the way newspapers have.

What Tucson TV newsroom, radio station or blogger will consistently watchdog local institutions? Even at its lowest level of staffing, the Citizen had Tucson’s second-largest number of reporters poking into the goings-on of public entities, more than the combined reporting staffs at local TV and radio stations, weekly publications and news blogs.

The Citizen has been part of the framework supporting democracy. Its demise threatens democratic balance, because other media entities don’t have the resources to pick up the slack, at least not yet.

Some say bloggers, tweeters and easy-to-dislike radio and cable talkers already have replaced newspapers. Don’t be deluded. The information frontier is still like the Wild West. Having the loudest opinion is de rigueur; possessing the facts is passé. Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly compete for narcissist of the week; Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann claim the market on fatuousness. They all have local counterparts, peddling exaggerations and distortions without checks or filters.

Millions buy in, affirming another Lincolnism: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time . . . ”

The contract we inherited as free Americans requires us to live up to the rest of his observation: ” . . . but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

The only way we can avoid being fooled is with unfettered, vibrant, believable sources of information. We must insist on them and help rebuild them sooner rather than later.

Michael A. Chihak was editor and publisher of the Tucson Citizen from 2000 to 2008. He now works in San Francisco as a communications consultant to nonprofits.

We changed for business. Now newspapering’s breathing is shallow and rattling.

Citizen Staff Writer
CHIHAK COLUMN

Editor and Publisher

How does one begin to thank everyone who has offered guidance in life?

The thought is daunting and the task more so, but here is my sincerest thank you in what is my final column as Tucson Citizen editor and publisher.

Family comes first. Thanks to my wife, Hilda Oropeza Chihak, standing strongly and lovingly beside me in all circumstances.

Thanks to my father, Frank A. Chihak and my late mother, Ofelia Islas Chihak, for instilling in me a thirst for learning, allowing me to be the first in my large extended family to enroll in college and earn a degree.

My heart and soul are filled with gratitude for:

• Those who taught me, including my college adviser, Professor Donald W. Carson.

• My first bosses at the Citizen when I was a high school sports correspondent: Bob Crawford, followed by the late Ed Jordan.

• My first bosses when I came to work as a photography and reporting intern when enrolled at the University of Arizona: Clyde Lowery, Tom Duddleston, Keith Carew, Dale Walton and John Hemmer.

• The late Jim Geehan, editor and publisher of the Citizen who hired me in 1981.

• Gerald Garcia, Citizen editor and publisher who promoted me to management in 1982.

• C. Donald Hatfield, Citizen editor and publisher who graciously handed me the reins upon his retirement on June 30, 2000.

• A newsroom full of top-flight journalists and professionals, past and present. Intelligent, hardworking and loyal, they have always made me look smarter than I really am and braver than I really am.

• The executives, managers and staff at Tucson Newspapers, who consistently find creative and efficient ways to deliver our information in print and electronically.

• Readers and online users. Good Lord, we would be nothing without you. Thank you!

Many people have served as mentors, advisers and friends in Tucson over the years.

Edith Auslander, Raúl and Corrina Aguirre, Lupita Murillo and Don Gutzler, Hank and Barbara Peck, Richard and Maria Miranda, Susan Small, Betty Geehan, Joel Valdez, Don and Charlotte Martin.

Liz Rodriguez Miller, Bill Holmes, Monique Soria, Raúl Bejarano, Sixto Molina, the late José Canchola, Clarence Dupnik, Ed Donnerstein, Ginny Healy.

Carlotta and Ray Flores, Jim Griffith, Ellen Hargis, John Huerta, Hank Oyama, Gina Izzo, Dot Kret, Michael Keith, Shirley and Jim Kiser, George Masek, Cele Peterson, the late Richard Salvatierra.

Jacqueline Sharkey and Bill Wing, the incomparable Esther Tang, her daughter Liz Tang, The late Rev. Charles Polzer, John Olsen, Virginia Yrun, the late Emory Sekaquaptewa and Mary Sekaquaptewa.

Surely, more than one name has been left off of this list, by no means purposefully.

In my heart and soul, there are lessons, love and the fondest of memories for all who have allowed their lives to touch mine.

Thank you.

Michael A. Chihak has retired after 38 years in the news business. His last day at the Citizen was Thursday.

Citizen Staff Writer
CHIHAK COLUMN

Scenes from the U.S. presidential campaign so far show lots of contradictions and lack of clarity.

We must ask on that basis if the media are doing their jobs in digging into the stands of the top two candidates on the important issues of the day.

As a diversion, let’s juxtapose some criticisms of them, stands taken by them and interpretations of what they are saying.

• Democrat Barack Obama is too inexperienced to be president, some say. Republican John McCain is too old to be president, others say.

The 71-year-old McCain’s age has earned him the backing of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is one month younger than McCain and desirous of not being the oldest national leader in the Group of Eight industrial countries.

Because of his inexperience, Obama, who is 46, has the backing of actor Robert de Niro, 64, who said in February that the candidate “does not have the experience to let the special interests run the government.”

• McCain has no clearer idea how to end the war in Iraq than President Bush’s ongoing failure there (never mind that the United States is “winning” the war because of the surge; he and McCain see U.S. troops there for a long time, and there’s still little hint of achieving the original goal: democracy in Iraq).

Obama has a solution – troop withdrawal over the next year to 18 months – that could very well throw the region into world-threatening chaos.

• Obama thinks higher taxes for some can boost the struggling economy. McCain thinks extending current tax cuts past 2010 can stimulate the economy.

Neither idea is the best, and neither candidate has much in the way of economic acumen; at least McCain admits it. Obama wants to fiddle too much with the free market, the reason we are a prosperous nation.

• McCain let a supporter use the word “bitch” in a question to him about how to beat Hillary Clinton, and he responded, “That’s an excellent question.” Obama has had to deny that his wife used the word “whitey” from a church pulpit.

Some point to these as issues related to character. Baloney! Is this fourth grade? Can we get past this sort of silliness to some real issues?

We can only hope for civil debate on the aforementioned economy, health care, immigration and other relevant and important issues.

The news media can drive the candidates and the country toward that, if we choose.

Or, we – led by cable TV news and sheepishly followed by many in the print media – can continue to highlight pettiness and the misspeak du jour.

The former role for the media is certainly preferred, for the sake of our democratic society.

All should hope we have the fortitude and resolve to do it.

Reach Michael A. Chihak at 573-4646 or mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com.

Citizen Staff Writer
CHIHAK COLUMN

Where’s Tom Horne when we really need him? You know: the crusading Arizona superintendent of public instruction who rides in occasionally to try saving Tucson from itself.

Where is he now with word out that Tucson Unified School District is sending a group of kids to China this summer?

That’s the big country run by commies, isn’t it?

Gasp and horrors!

No word from Horne’s office. Is he soft on communism?

The students – a dozen in all, led by their Chinese immigrant teacher, according to the morning sheet – are making the trip under auspices of TUSD’s Ethnic Studies Department.

Suspicion should surface immediately with that report. The Ethnic Studies program is why Horne left the righteous confines of his Paradise Valley home last week and took a fork in the road to perdition.

Besides the dreaded Ethnic Studies connection, it was reported that the trip is largely being paid for by China’s Ministry of Education.

Hmm. Just what kind of education does it minister?

Or should we, led by crusader Horne, be asking if this is the Chinese agency responsible for – brace yourselves – commie, pinko propagandizing?

One student going with the group was quoted as saying, “I want to meet people my age from a different point of view and a different culture.”

Roll those last words off the tongue: “a different point of view and a different culture.”

What? We have no different points of view and no different cultures, Horne says. Only an American point of view and an American culture.

In the face of this dire threat to a dozen of our kids and our very way of life, there’s no sign of our hero Horne.

But, in his absence, we can quote from some of his past remarks that are applicable.

On the superintendent’s page of the Arizona Department of Education’s Web site, Horne says his department “will be primarily a service organization, helping school districts and charter schools achieve more academic success.”

What the Web site doesn’t say, but what Horne implied in his Ethnic Studies smear last week, was that he will help bring about academic success as long as it is achieved his way.

Never mind that students in the Raza Studies part of TUSD’s Ethnic Studies program, the one Horne attacked, have scored significantly higher on the AIMS test across the board for the past three years than students not enrolled in the program.

Smells like academic success to me. But what do I know? I’m from Tucson.

Let the Paradise Valley expert set the mark.

In doing so, though, Horne should heed his own words, from a speech he gave April 24, 2007, at an event of The Heritage Foundation:

“When a central bureaucracy attempts to manage a complex . . . system, extreme dysfunction results.”

Contact Michael A. Chihak by calling 573-4646 or e-mailing mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com.

Citizen Staff Writer
CHIHAK COLUMN

“Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.”

Mark Twain,

author, humorist,

1835-1910

Reform is what’s needed – in the way we speak, think and act. In other words, reform of a bad habit.

That’s because a bad habit is creating a perception problem for the newspaper business.

Oh, there, I did it: called it “the newspaper business”. That’s the bad habit.

A significant problem with the newspaper business is that we keep calling it the newspaper business. It hasn’t been that for quite some time.

Don’t want to give up your daily fix of news and information, including advertising, delivered in an ink-and-newsprint package?

That’s fine, for those who want it that way. For us – I’m on that list – we’ll still print newspapers for a long time.

But for the sake of business, we know that it’s not about the newspaper. It’s about information, regardless of the vehicle.

Thus, we have evolved into a 24/7 service providing local news and information online and zipped through the air to mobile devices. At the same time, we print and deliver a newspaper six days a week.

So you can get it whenever you want, or you can get it via ink-on-newsprint once a day.

The former is the wave of the present and the future, and we’re on the crest of it.

The latter is a three-century-old tradition born of a need to inform and create a democracy. It still has terrific utility.

We are moving on both fronts to continue bringing you the fastest and best-presented news and information about Tucson.

Here is what that is getting in the “newspaper business” as manifest by the Tucson Citizen:

• A declining print circulation, but a growing number of people reading the newspaper. Scarborough Research, an independent organization that measures media use across the country, reported past-week reach of the Citizen was 105,500 adults from February 2007 to January 2008.

Past-week reach is the number of people who said they read it the week before they were surveyed. Our readership thus is second best among all Tucson media outlets, including TV, radio and other publications.

• A burgeoning online audience attracted to the second-busiest local media Web site. The week of May 19, tucsoncitizen.com set a record for weekly traffic. That record was broken last week, and last week’s record is being broken this week.

For the first five months of 2008, tucsoncitizen.com traffic rose 14 percent from the same period one year ago and 25 percent over two years. That’s substantive, sustained growth.

The naysayers cry that the “newspaper business” is old and tottering toward death. The bad habit of calling it that misses the bigger picture.

The information business is just past toddler stage and roaring toward adolescence. We have a long life ahead of us.

Reform with us. We’re dropping the bad habit of what we call ourselves; you should, too. Happy reading, whatever your chosen format.

Reach Michael A. Chihak at 573-4646 or mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com.

Tucson Citizen 24/7

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Citizen Staff Writer
CHIHAK COLUMN

Editor and Publisher

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan,

U.S. senator, 1976-2000

People sometimes stray from the facts to support their arguments in our letters to the editor, guest columns and online comments.

Tucson Citizen staff members don’t check all information for factuality in these free-speech vehicles, so caveat lector – let the reader beware.

We edit letters and guest columns but not online comments. Our philosophy for all commentary, print and online, is that free speech rules, so we mostly let people have their say.

This sometimes leads to opinions supported by “facts” that aren’t, or factual claims for which conflicting sources exist.

Some recent examples:

• A letter to the editor writer last week argued that increased drilling for oil off U.S. coasts would bring gasoline prices back to 60 cents a gallon.

He then wrote: “North America has 10 times more oil reserves than all the Arab countries combined. The Gulf of Mexico alone has all the oil the U.S. needs for 1,000 years.”

Is that factual? It seems not.

The most up-to-date and consistently mentioned figure for Gulf of Mexico reserves found online is 15 billion barrels, mentioned in several stories quoting Chevron Corp. officials in 2006.

At the current U.S. consumption rate of about 20 million barrels a day, 15 billion barrels would last 25 months. A millennium at that consumption rate would take 7.2 trillion barrels.

Add in the high cost of the deep-water drilling to get at that oil, and it puts in dispute the claim that we can have 60-cents-a-gallon gasoline again.

In fairness, some other Internet sources offer information about reserves similar to what the writer cited.

• An online commenter, recently on a rant about illegal immigration, blamed the open-border crowd for the “30 million” people in the country illegally.

Is 30 million factual?

Several sources, using Census Bureau and other statistics, put the number at 12 million. Some anti-immigration groups estimate it as high as 20 million.

No one knows how many are here. But using statistically proven methods is better than wild guessing, by my thinking.

• “Chihak can’t see the positives in anything our president does . . . ,” a letter to the editor writer said two weeks ago in response to my May 3 column.

It’s his opinion, so I won’t quibble with whether it is factual. But he erred in concluding: “As long as he’s editor and publisher, he can print whatever nonsense drips off his pen.”

Oh, yeah! Ask anyone who knows me: I am very selective about what nonsense I print.

Nonsense, good sense or somewhere in between, it’s all and always about freedom of speech – yours, mine, theirs.

So please, keep those opinions – and all the “facts” to support them – coming in.

And caveat lector.

Reach Michael A. Chihak by calling 573-4646 or by sending e-mail to mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com.

Citizen Staff Writer
CHIHAK COLUMN

Publishing has become a free-for-all, thanks to the Internet. And in a democratic society, that’s good.

Thus, the notion of media consolidation in the hands of a powerful few – Tucson Citizen owner Gannett Co. Inc., Rupert Murdoch’s seemingly ever-expanding News Corp. or any of the other big conglomerates – is less of a threat than it may have been in times past.

Not that consolidation isn’t a threat at all; it is, but to a much lesser extent than before.

So the hue and cry over the news media being driven by the demands of the free market – rather than those of the First Amendment and the people’s right to know – should be taken with some leavening.

It used to be said that anyone could practice freedom of the press, as long as he had millions to buy and run a press.

Now, the Internet is the press to a great extent. It greatly levels the playing field for those wanting to get into publishing and spreading information on the cheap.

Yet even there, the free flow of information and equal access face threats.

The New York Times pointed it out May 19 in an editorial headlined “Democracy and the Web.” It discussed legislation working its way through the U.S. House of Representatives to ensure “Net neutrality.”

That is, equal access from all and to all for information on the World Wide Web.

The issue, as the Times pointed out in its editorial advocating for Net neutrality, is that some Internet service providers are looking at ways to create what in essence would be fast lanes and slow lanes for information delivery online.

ISPs could make more money by charging a premium to the owners of Web sites that want their content delivered faster.

“Web sites relegated to Internet ‘slow lanes’ would have trouble competing,” the Times said in its editorial.

That would not be good for them or for anyone in society. Equal access is necessary.

On the other hand, cross ownership of media outlets is less of a concern overall than what many make it out to be.

Cross ownership means one company could own both a newspaper and a broadcast outlet in the same market. That now is prohibited, with some grandfathered-in exceptions.

In Tucson, for example, Gannett, as the Citizen’s parent company, cannot own television or radio stations.

It’s an archaic rule, dating to an era when newspapers were, without challenge, the dominant news and information outlets in their markets.

While newspapers still dominate – the Citizen, business partner the Arizona Daily Star, business agent Tucson Newspapers and our Web sites reach 63.7 percent of adults in the market, way more than any other medium – they are hardly alone in ability to reach significant sectors of the market.

Radio station consolidation and widespread Internet access are challenging that reach.

An exception is that consolidation can minimize the voices of some groups – racial and ethnic minorities, fringe political and social groups and others with the same First Amendment rights that we enjoy.

As members of a democratic society fueled by information, it behooves all of us to understand these issues.

They can affect and do have an effect on First Amendment rights, for every one of us.

Call Michael A. Chihak at 573-4646 or e-mail mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com.

Citizen Staff Writer
CHIHAK COLUMN

Societal polarization has made news reporting a hazard, at best, in 2008.

And we’ve only just begun, with the most intense parts of the campaigns – presidential, state, local – and other local, state and national budget and fiscal issues still to come.

But already the cry is that the media are liberally biased or are covering the wrong issues or are ignoring those few politicians in the white hats or . . .

Some of that probably comes from the estimated one-third of Americans who think the media have “too much freedom,” according to the First Amendment Center’s latest survey on the state of the First Amendment, done last fall.

To be exact, 34 percent of those surveyed chose the “too much freedom” response, the lowest percentage in the 11 years of the annual survey.

Truth be told, the free press, flawed as it may be, is more important than ever in efforts to keep democracy alive.

What with the sheriff up Phoenix way running roughshod with the people’s money and interests and the president approving of torture, we need all the press freedom there is.

Imagine not knowing that the Pima County Board of Supervisors put a cap on the budget this week. We told you about it.

Imagine not knowing that hundreds of Tucson police officers were disciplined for infractions in the last five years. We told you about it months back.

Imagine not knowing how city of Tucson elected officials continue to fumble downtown redevelopment opportunities. We tell you about it frequently.

These local stories may not sound as important as the war in Iraq or illegal FBI domestic wiretapping or an administration only too willing to provide billions in taxpayer money to bail out financial institutions.

But they are important because they are ours, and they have implications for our future just as the national issues do.

That’s why we keep telling them to you, day in and day out.

Staff wins 16 Press Club awards

Praise be to Tucson Citizen staff members who won 16 awards in the 2007 Arizona Press Club Contest at a Phoenix banquet earlier in May.

News reporter and columnist Ryn Gargulinski won the Don Schellie Award for column writing. The award is named for the late Citizen columnist.

First-place awards: science writer Alan Fischer for “Valley Fever may be coming”; news reporter B. Poole for “Discouraging words: local ranching fades”; copy editor Dave Petruska for feature story headlines.

Second-place awards: Poole in business reporting; government reporter Garry Duffy for an electronic voting story; courts reporter A. J. Flick for a public safety story; basketball writer Steve Rivera for a University of Arizona coaching story; football writer John Moredich for an athletics and academics story.

Third-place prizes went to Gargulinski for public safety reporting; metro columnist Anne T. Denogean for news column writing; Night Editor Bill Clemens for news headlines.

Third-place awards in photography went to Photo Editor P.K. Weis for spot news photography; senior photographer Francisco Medina for general news photography and pictorial photography; Xavier Gallegos for feature photography.

Hearty congratulations to these fine Citizen journalists.

Reach Michael A. Chihak at 573-4646 or mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com.

Citizen Staff Writer
CHIHAK COLUMN

Monday’s print edition of the Tucson Citizen may look to readers like a return to a bygone era.

For us, it will be more like back to the future.

The latest evolutionary step for the Citizen is a return to a four-section newspaper in standard news page sizes. That means the Citizen’s magazine-style Plus sections will go away four days a week, replaced by standard-sized sections.

Here’s the rundown:

• Monday’s newspaper will include the usual front section with local and state news, the second section led by Citizen Voices and followed by national and world news and the weather. Section C will be sports, and Section D, in standard format, will be Body Plus.

Section D will include the comics, TV listings, horoscope, Sudoku and other standard features that have been running in Section B on Mondays.

• Tuesday’s newspaper will be the same format. Section D will carry Family Plus, comics, TV listings and other features.

• Wednesday will be the same. Section D will be Taste Plus and the features.

• Thursday will remain in the old format for Sections A, B and C and the magazine-style Calendar Plus section. Comics, TV listings and other features will appear in Section B.

• Friday will be in the new format, with Section D devoted to Weekend Plus, the comics, TV listings and other features.

• The Saturday edition will remain as it is now.

Creative Media Editor Cara Rene and Plus Editor Dina Doolen are overseeing the changes and the daily production work on the new Section D.

The changes are designed to return the newspaper to a familiar format and free up staff members whose jobs for the past two years have been principally devoted to producing the magazine sections.

Two of the staff members, Gabrielle Fimbres and Polly Higgins, will return to reporting and writing, adding to the deep base of knowledge that the Citizen staff uses to bring you information in print and online.

Body Plus Editor Mike Truelsen will take a position with the Citizen’s Web site, adding needed editing strength to what is the fastest-growing part of the Citizen’s information machine.

In the information era, change will occur regularly as we balance traditional newspapering with the burgeoning technologies that allow gathering and disseminating news and information in many ways.

Your comments and questions about the new format and any and all other aspects of the Citizen’s print edition and online services are always welcome. Contact me at the number or e-mail address below.

Reach Michael A. Chihak at mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com or 573-4646.

Citizen Staff Writer
CHIHAK COLUMN

MICHAEL A. CHIHAK

mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com

Four first-place awards, seven seconds, three thirds and two honorable mentions.

That was the stellar outcome for the Tucson Citizen and its staff members in the annual Arizona Associated Press Managing Editors awards competition. Results were announced one week ago in Phoenix.

Beside the staff and individual winners, the Citizen was named Arizona AP Member of the Year for providing the wire service with stories and photos well in advance of print publication.

Citizen first-place winners:

• Editorial writing: The Citizen Voices staff, led by Associate Editor Mark Kimble. He and Opinion Editor Billie Stanton write most editorials, with assists from Voices Editor Paul Schwalbach and staff artist Arnulfo Bermudez.

• Sports columns: Anthony Gimino, a prize winner since joining the staff in 2004.

• Sports deadline reporting: Sportswriter Steve Rivera and Gimino for the story about the temporary coaching change for the University of Arizona men’s basketball team.

• Spot news photography: Senior photographer Francisco Medina, the ace among Arizona newspaper photographers, with first-place finishes in 13 of the last 14 years.

Second-place winners:

• Beat reporting: A.J. Flick for her coverage of the criminal justice system.

• Business writing: Database reporter Eric Sagara for his early analytical look at home mortgage foreclosures.

• Best columns: Kimble, whose weekly commentary on politics and the community appears each Thursday.

• Deadline reporting: The news reporting staff for its work on the death of a child in the 2007 Tucson Rodeo Parade.

• Headline writing: News Editor Bill Clemens, who oversees the Citizen’s experienced crew of copy editors.

• Best multimedia storytelling: Multimedia manager Dan Buckley for his feature story and video on the anniversary of South Tucson’s El Casino Ballroom.

• Sports deadline reporting: Gimino for his coverage of the UA softball team winning the 2007 NCAA championship.

Third-place winners:

• Feature writing: Family Plus Editor Gabrielle Fimbres for a story on a man still living with the scars of his abuse as a child.

• Sports enterprise: Sportswriter John Moredich for a look at college sports and academics.

• Best Web site: Citizen staff.

Honorable mentions:

• Headline writing: Copy editor Jim Wyckoff, the Citizen’s longest-serving employee at nearly 36 years.

• Page design: Presentation editor Jennifer Judge Hensel for a package on the UA mission to Mars.

Congratulations to all the winners and all the hard-working members of the Citizen staff.

Because of their labor, the real winners are you, our readers and online users, who benefit from the work of this excellent assemblage of journalists.

Reach Michael A. Chihak at 573-4646 or mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com.

Citizen Staff Writer
CHIHAK COLUMN

Editor and Publisher

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies.”

Groucho Marx

Recession? What recession? George W. Bush asks that question rhetorically almost weekly now.

He characterizes what we are experiencing as a “slowdown.”

Kind of like characterizing as a slowdown what Wile E. Coyote experiences when he hits the fake tunnel entrance that Road Runner has painted on a big rock wall.

Beep, beep.

(The goal with this week’s column, in case you hadn’t figured it out by now, was to name as many comic characters as possible. Let’s see, four so far: Groucho, Wile, Road, George.)

Whether we’re in a recession is political rhetoric, of course.

“The average person doesn’t really care what we call it,” Bush said Tuesday.

Nevertheless, the prez is here to help, pulling strings over at Treasury to get the economic stimulus checks out a week early for people who don’t “really care what we call it.”

The checks are arriving just in time to cover our gasoline credit-card bills, so we can stimulate the economy for George’s wealthy oil friends.

Forget rhetoric: For George and his oily friends, there’s no recession. But there’s a plenitude of people outside the circle who could feel otherwise:

• The quarter-million or so who have lost jobs in the first four months of the year.

• Anybody forced out of his or her house because of a foreclosure since January.

• Consumers expressing less confidence in the economy than they have in a quarter-century, according to a Reuters/ University of Michigan index last week.

• Approximately 299,999,950 Americans. That’s minus the 50 hedge-fund managers who took home a combined $29 billion in compensation last year.

• Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Board chairman who gave – say, is this figure a coincidence? – a $29 billion taxpayer guarantee to JPMorgan Chase for the Bear Stearns bailout.

• Gov. Janet Napolitano and the Arizona legislators scrambling over big budget deficits, including $1.2 billion in the current state budget that they passed and signed, all while knowing that we were headed toward “not a recession.”

• Tucson businesses facing up to a 63 percent increase in commercial trash collection fees. Could a boost in the residential trash collection fee, now $14 per month, be far behind? Watch your wallets.

• City of Tucson finance director James Cameron, who last fall predicted holiday shopping would push city sales-tax revenues up by 4 percent from the previous year, making up for a slowdown. Actual holiday sales-tax revenues fell short of what they were a year earlier.

These signs, one and all, make it obvious, rhetoric or not.

But, George, don’t give in to the obvious. Remember, it ain’t a recession until economists say it is. Or was. They always say so after the fact; that often increases their chances at accuracy.

So if this unpleasantness isn’t from a recession, rhetorically speaking, what is it, George?

How about a full-speed slam into a big rock wall?

Beep, beep.

Reach Michael A. Chihak at 573-4646 or mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com.

MICHAEL A. CHIHAK

mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com

Chihak

Continued from 1B

Citizen Staff Writer
CHIHAK COLUMN

Fifty-thousand proposals for new postage stamps are submitted to the U.S. Postal Service each year.

Only about 25 are chosen, making the odds no better than 1 in 2,000 that someone will be honored on a stamp.

So when word came that five journalists had been selected for stamps commemorating their work, there was great celebration. Now, the stamps are out, featuring:

• Rubén Salazar, a TV and Los Angeles Times reporter killed when covering a 1970 war protest in East Los Angeles.

• Martha Gellhorn, who covered the Spanish civil war in the 1930s and, at the age of 81, the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. She was married to Ernest Hemingway from 1940 to 1945. She died in 1998.

• George Polk, a CBS News correspondent who was killed in the Greek civil war in 1948. His death, not a battle casualty but an execution-style shot to the head, remains unsolved.

• John Hersey, a World War II correspondent for Time, Life and the New Yorker magazines. He won a 1945 Pulitzer Prize for the novel “A Bell for Adano.” He died in 1993.

• Eric Sevareid, CBS News correspondent, one of “Murrow’s Boys” in the early days of CBS News. He was first to report France’s 1940 surrender to Nazi Germany. He died in 1992.

Of greatest significance to Tucsonans should be Salazar. The campaign to get his image on a postage stamp began – and ended, successfully – in Tucson.

The Mexican-born television and print journalist, who died at age 42, was among the very first Latino journalists to work for mainstream U.S. media.

He was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times beginning in 1959, covering the Dominican Republic, Mexico and the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

In 1969, he became a Times columnist, a first for a Latino. He continued his column but went to work for Spanish-language KMEX-TV in LA.

Salazar was killed when on a TV assignment to cover a war protest that turned violent. A sheriff’s deputy fired a tear-gas canister, hitting Salazar in the head as he and his camera crew took a break in an East LA bar.

His postage stamp was unveiled this week, in Los Angeles on Tuesday and in a ceremony in Tucson at the University of Arizona on Thursday.

It was an inspiring moment for all, but especially for Olga Briseño, director of UA’s Media, Democracy & Policy Initiative and leader of the push for a Salazar postage stamp.

“We did it,” Briseño said in her speech at the Thursday ceremony, repeating the mantra she adopted when word came months ago that the stamp had won Postal Service approval.

“We did it for you, for us, for our children, for those who need to know the story of Ruben Salazar.”

The story is that Salazar fully achieved his potential as a mainstream journalist without losing sight of his personal history. That drove him to recognize the need for reporting on the growing U.S. Latino population as part of a larger need for Latino social reforms.

In a TV interview three months before he died, Salazar said he championed the causes of Latinos because, “someone must advocate for a community that has been forgotten.”

His memory and legacy live on, because the need for advocacy in society for Latinos and many who remain among the forgotten or oppressed is stronger than ever.

Call Michael A. Chihak at 573-4646 or e-mail mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com.

Citizen Staff Writer
CHIHAK COLUMN

Editor and Publisher

You are reading this because you can. Many others cannot.

The harsh word for it is illiterate. Estimates are that 1 in 5 Tucson adults are illiterate; they can’t read or write.

Now a group that grew from the 2007 Tucson Regional Town Hall aims to infuse a culture of literacy in our community.

The Literacy Leadership Council is working on its final strategic action plan, and you need to be part of the action.

The problem is worse than the 1-in-5 figure above. Another estimated 20 percent of adults are only basic readers, meaning they cannot read this column and answer questions about it.

“Nor can they fill out an application, read a food label or read a simple story to a child,” according to a statement on the Web site www.lovetoread.org, maintained by the Literacy Volunteers of Tucson.

That’s the problem we face. We may be tempted to dismiss it as caused by Spanish-speaking illegal immigrants or a poor public school system.

To do so would be to deny the reality of the issue and its ramifications. A December report of the National Commission on Adult Literacy says employment and income statistics reflect illiteracy.

The report cited federal data that showed 2005 employment for people ages 16 to 64 who didn’t earn a high school diploma or a GED was 55.6 percent, compared with 72.9 percent for 16- to 64-year-olds overall.

Annual earnings for 16- to 64-year-olds without a diploma or a GED were $14,416, compared with $33,798 overall.

A U.S. Department of Education report, on www.love toread.org, said 60 percent of prisoners are illiterate and 85 percent of juvenile offenders have reading problems.

“Illiteracy leads to low self-esteem, unemployment, poverty and crime. Literacy empowers people to better their lives and the lives of their families, and communities,” the report said.

The point is clear: Illiteracy affects us all, and all need to work for full literacy. Instilling it in our culture is the key.

Margaret Doughty, a Houston literacy expert who has helped 70 communities do just that, was in Tucson this week to speak to the Literacy Leadership Council.

Her key advice, offered at a Tuesday luncheon, was to move literacy from its stigmatized place as a social issue to a place of prominence in the community, so it can be dealt with.

“Organizations have looked at literacy in the past as a social issue,” Doughty said. “Over the past few years, it has come out of its box and been infused in every realm in the community.”

She said that for Tucson, infusion could mean:

• Grant-makers should insist on a literacy component with every monetary request they receive. We will begin doing so immediately at the Tucson Citizen, with the modest level of grant money we award.

• Nonprofits should build literacy into every aspect of their operations. Many do so, including Big Brothers Big Sisters of Tucson, which has begun tying it to its mentoring programs.

• The media must push the concept consistently and thoroughly. The Citizen will lead an effort with all media in town. Competitors must be collaborators on this important issue.

“You have to set a goal: 100 percent literacy through 100 percent community engagement,” Doughty said.

Preparation work is under way, and the literacy council should go public within the next six months with its action plan.

We’re in. Are you?

Call Michael A. Chihak at 573-4646 or e-mail mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com.

LITERACY AND JOBS

Employment rates of 16- to 64-year-olds in the U.S. by educational attainment, 2005. Source: National Commission on Adult Literacy

Educational attainment Employment rate

Less than 12 years, or 12 years with no diploma or GED 55.6%

High school graduate/General Educational Development 70.0%

13-15 years, including associate’s degree 76.2%

Bachelor’s degree 81.3%

Master’s degree or higher 84.0%

Citizen Staff Writer
CHIHAK COLUMN

“We of the press are like the fellow who did not have an enemy in the world, but none of his friends liked him.”

John C. Quinn,

former editor in chief,

USA TODAY

Blaming the news media for all that’s bad in the world is akin to blaming the trees for the wind blowing.

Nevertheless, many blame us for a wide range of maleficence. Let’s cite just a few examples:

• The media drove airlines to overreact, ground planes and cancel flights by making a big deal of some loose wires on a few commercial airliners.

• Local media badgered Lute Olson and the University of Arizona basketball program so much that freshman Jerryd Bayless and sophomore Chase Budinger plan to leave the team to try going pro. And we drove the Ooh Aah Man into retirement.

• We are to blame for Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize because we promoted his idea that icebergs are melting, polar bears are dropping dead and seas are rising because of human-driven global warming.

• Most Americans oppose the war in Iraq because the media are so negative about it. Rather than that, we could list 4,000 reasons that people oppose the war. Make it 4,030 as of Friday.

• And this pointing of the finger, in a reader’s story comment on tucsoncitizen.com Thursday: “I’m convinced the dems and the media are to blame for untold US military casualties.”

• We are to blame for mean-spiritedness, vitriol and hate in society, another reader suggested. He said our policy of allowing anonymous comments on Web site stories is driving this truculence.

• House sales are in the dumper because the media keep reporting that house sales are in the dumper. So say some in the real estate industry.

• The Democratic presidential nominating race is devolving into chaos. Blame the media for focusing on race, gender, 3 a.m. telephone calls, whose minister said what, who’s a worse bowler, why one candidate wears pantsuits (don’t they both?), who called bs on the war first and on and on.

OK, granted: We in the media are to blame at the least for amplifying all that noise.

But come on now, we’re not to blame for grounded airplanes, basketball players dropping out of college or all that other stuff or even much of anything that goes on in the world, bad or good.

Our role is akin to what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and fellow civil rights advocates did in pushing for equality. They were accused of creating tension with their actions, but King deflected that.

“We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with,” he said in his eloquent Letter from Birmingham Jail in 1963.

What we do in the news media is similar: bring to the surface issues that are already churning below, issues that need exposure so society can debate them and move toward progress and solutions.

If you don’t want light shed on societal issues or if how we shed that light isn’t to your liking, then indeed, blame the media.

At the same time, know that we who act on the rights and responsibilities of the First Amendment will wear the blame as a badge of honor.

Call Michael A. Chihak at 573-4646 or e-mail mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com.

Citizen Staff Writer
CHIHAK COLUMN

Editor and Publisher

Don’t we need a high-quality public education system, boosting our economy and ingrained in our culture and sense of community pride?

Of course.

Then, shouldn’t we as a community be working urgently to save public education?

And shouldn’t business leaders come together to strategize and raise money to make schools better for our children?

Shouldn’t elected officials use the bully pulpit to decry any threat to our centuries-old tradition of good public schools?

Yes, but let’s prioritize: First, for heaven’s sake, we must work urgently, come together, raise money and enlist elected officials to save spring training. That part of our economy, culture and sense of pride is facing a dire threat, after all.

So we’re pulling out all the stops to save spring training.

Just as dire, and with much broader consequences, is the threat to public education.

Are we pulling out all the stops? Do we have a sense of urgency about it?

No. Instead, we barely notice, having become inured to the statistics: high dropout rates, low graduation rates, low national rankings in spending on schools and teacher pay.

Our economy reflects the results: Businesses won’t move here because they can’t get enough good workers, leading to a lack of good jobs, lackluster growth in household income and college graduates fleeing to more prosperous places.

We know that losing spring training would cost our economy $30 million. Our collective inattention to public education costs our economy many more times that.

So, why no urgency to save public schools?

Business groups and politicians have myriad task forces, committees and commissions supposedly working on it.

It’s all a bunch of blah, blah, blah. Here’s proof:

The Tucson Unified School District is coming apart at the seams. Yet there is no rush by community leadership to help.

We’re busy saving baseball.

The one group making an effort is the grass-roots Tucson Unified School Supporters. Its members are pushing for fiscal accountability and this week struck an agreement with TUSD’s charitable arm, the Educational Enrichment Foundation, to conduct an emergency money-raising campaign for the school district.

It’s all of a sudden an emergency because the threat to schools has come in an insidious, communitywide slide.

We all are responsible for it.

We eschew the responsibility by enrolling our kids in private and charter schools, then pointing fingers at public schools.

Teachers, superintendents, school board members, parents and the children themselves are at fault, we declaim.

We let schools deteriorate as the state Legislature slowly starves the system.

We do nothing to change standardized testing that aims to expose failure rather than encourage betterment.

We wring our hands over teacher shortages, ignoring the fact that teachers are of more strategic importance than bankers, lawyers, athletes and just about any other profession that pays better.

All of that is why public education faces a dire threat.

Yet no outcry is heard for saving our public schools. Top businesspeople are not urgently meeting to strategize, raise money and find other solutions.

No politicians are in full throat over this dire threat.

No outcry. No urgency. No political bully pulpit. Not for public education.

Instead, we’re spending time, brainpower and energy – and soon taxpayer money – to save spring training baseball.

Public schools will have to wait till next season.

If there is one.

Call Michael A. Chihak at 573-4646 or e-mail mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com.

HOW TO GET INVOLVED

To help support the Tucson Unified School District, contact:

• Educational Enrichment Foundation

e-mail: eef@theriver.com.

• Tucson Unified School Supporters

e-mail: annevepedersen@yahoo.com