A mournful peal of doom

The dismantlement of the Dallas Morning News newsroom has begun as it prepares to shift operations from its home at 508 Young St. to the old Dallas Public Library, which has sat empty and abandoned on the other side of downtown for almost four decades.

The move will breathe new life into an historic Dallas landmark, but alas it also will be another mournful peal of doom for newspapers in general, the DMN in particular.

The News, of course, is depicting the fateful omen in flowery language and disguising the disaster with positive, optimistic prose. I’ve seen these performances before – the earnest gazes, the calm-voiced assurances that nothing is wrong, all is well – and I sadly predict there will be no happy endings here.

My friends and family know I derive no pleasure from such gloomy predictions. I spent a quarter of a century working at 508 Young, sharing the newsroom with some of the finest journalists this country has produced.

Some of my happiest days – and some of my saddest – occurred in that building with the proud, imposing – and more than a little pompous and overblown – façade:

“Build the news upon the rock of truth and righteousness. Conduct it always upon the lines of fairness and integrity. Acknowledge the right of the people to get from the newspaper both sides of every question.”

And when the last computer terminal has been packed, the last telephone console taken away, the work cubicles disassembled and stacked, I will mourn.

That’s what you do when proud institutions fade away and disappear into the dustbin of history. And despite the fact that the DMN kicked me to the curb in 2011 during one of its many rounds of layoffs, I’ll shed a tear or two when the doors are finally shuttered later this year.

DMN executives say the move will provide the newspaper with an opportunity to create a true digitally focused newsroom, as if that was a good thing. Trouble is, the “digital first” philosophy heralded by Editor Mike Wilson has done nothing but damage the print edition – the enterprise’s only cash cow worth mentioning – and steepened the death glide the DMN has been in since the early 2000s.

Readers continue to rush for the exits, as do advertisers. The rise in digital revenues trumpeted with such fanfare each quarter are no match for the plummeting revenues everywhere else.

Almost as an aside, DMN suits acknowledge that another impetus for the move is a financial one. By renting office space in the renovated Library building across town, the newspaper can save $1 million in annual operating expenses at 508 Young.

So read the move for what it really is – another desperate cost-cutting measure by an organization fighting a losing battle for its very existence. All too soon, this cost-saving effort will be followed by other cuts – almost certainly from the ranks of dedicated men and women who toil in an increasingly demanding sweatshop lashed daily with exhortations to “do more with less.”

I haven’t been back to the newsroom since the day I left six years ago, accompanied by two old friends on the long, lonely walk down the hall to the back dock. Life is good in my second career, and I have no desire to return to the place where my 37-year journalism career ended in embarrassment and heartbreak. At least not in person.

Because I have vivid memories of the newsroom that I left for the last time shortly after noon on Sept. 6, 2011.

I remember the first time I entered it in the summer of 1985, amazed at the size of it and energized – as I was on a daily basis – by the hustle and bustle of a newspaper on deadline.

I can see the row of clocks I sat under during my decade and a half on the foreign desk, their faces showing the time in capitals across the globe. Who cares what time it is in London unless you have a correspondent for whom you are responsible living and working there?

I see, as if it were yesterday, the corner of the room where I sat in 1989 when the call came summoning me to West Texas to see my father one last time (my mother telling me bleakly, “And bring your suit.”).

A year and a half later, I watched the TV set above the same desk as the ABC Evening News cut to a live shot from Baghdad. U.S. bombs were falling, and we were at war. In a planning meeting 20 minutes later, I remember the look of horror on News Editor Walt Stallings’ face when he was told we were adding a 10-page section to the first edition, whose deadline was only an hour away. We busted deadline, but the special section made all editions.

I can see Mary Carter, surrounded by dozens of colleagues, sitting at a terminal scrolling the AP wire as we all waited for the bulletin we already knew would officially announce we had won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. One of the advantages of having your publisher on the Pulitzer board is the champagne can be chilling on ice for the celebration.

Over there is my cubicle on the metro desk where I picked up the phone one summer day in 2005 and heard an excited Dave Levinthal tell me FBI agents had descended on City Hall and were carrying boxes of documents out of Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill’s office. Four years later, Hill would go to prison for bribery.

And I can remember the overwhelming despair that swept over me as I sat in my cubicle by the western windows of the newsroom and stared at the ringing phone I knew would be a call from HR, informing me my days as a newspaperman were over.

Yes, I’ve been to the DMN newsroom many times since I left, and I suspect I’ll be back more times still. I left too much of my heart and soul there – and whatever talent I had – for it to be otherwise.

The DMN owners are still trying to figure out what to do with the five-story structure at 508 Young. They’d like to sell it, but so far have found no takers.

Anywhere else, it already would be designated an historic landmark. Opened in 1949, it was designed by architect George Dahl, who also designed Fair Park’s art deco buildings and, coincidentally, the Public Library building that will be the DMN’s next home.

Then there is the three-story “Rock of Truth” façade, which everyone agrees ought to be saved, if only they can figure out how to do it without bankrupting Croesus.

But the land upon which it sits just may be too valuable. The city covets it in order to create an entertainment district adjacent to the Convention Center and the Omni Hotel. Renovating the 68-year-old DMN building for such a purpose probably doesn’t fit into any financial equation.

Remember, too, this is Dallas, where historic preservation is a joke, so don’t be surprised if it eventually falls prey to the wrecking ball. And perhaps that is best.

Any new owners of the building might be discomforted by the ghosts that almost certainly will haunt the place. It’ll be a raucous crowd, noisy and profane and prone to practical jokes, most in very poor taste.

The new tenants will find it strange as each day throughout the late afternoon and early evening, the atmosphere of the building is seized by a growing sense of urgency, a rising level of stress and tension, followed shortly after 7 p.m. by a sudden whoosh of relief. A sense of calm then will fall over the building, as it and its ghostly inhabitants celebrate another successful sprint to the first-edition deadline.

The meaning of it all

I started my car this morning and from the radio came the distinctive opening guitar riff of “Old Man” by Neil Young.

It’s a favorite of mine, a reminder that youth is fleeting and that happiness doesn’t depend on fame and success, but instead is rooted in love and connection.

It was written by Young at the zenith of his fame, and the version I heard this morning was an early recording, with Young’s voice as clear as a ringing bell on the high notes. It made me sad and happy and introspective all at once in the way that great music does.

Young says the inspiration for the song was the caretaker of his California ranch, a simple, unassuming man who loved the land and his family and was content with his modest place in the universe.

Funny how your perspective changes. When I first heard the song in the 1970s, I identified with Young, “Old man, look at my life, 24 and there’s so much more.” This morning, I found myself contemplating things from the old man’s point of view.

Once upon a time, I thought “Old Man” was a love song, assuming Young viewed the old man as a cautionary tale, a warning about the consequences of not embracing life and love.

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.

And perhaps it is. But like most great songs, “Old Man” has layered meanings that reveal themselves only as we grow in experience, buffeted by age and regret and bolstered by knowledge and insight.

Now I understand what drew Young to the gray-haired handyman who tended things on the property purchased by the famous young rock balladeer’s music royalties and tour wages.

He didn’t feel sorry for his old friend. Quite the opposite, in fact. With the insight of an artist, he sang about a connection across generations, an appreciation that money, sex and rock ’n’ roll can’t make you happy, can’t fill the void inside you, can’t bring you peace in the wee hours of the morning as dawn and another damned day beckons.

I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I'm all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.

Young looked at the old man and understood – even at his young age – the things that can offer us grace and a restful soul – an appreciation for the small things in life, an acknowledgement that we need other people to make our life complete. When he peered into the eyes of his caretaker, he saw peace and happiness. When he sings, “Old man look at my life. I’m a lot like you were,” it’s with a yearning – an earnest hope – that he can find that same peace and contentment.

As I drove to work this morning, I envisioned Young sitting on the porch of his California ranch house all those years ago, thinking deep thoughts for such a young man. And I envied his wisdom. It took me decades to get to the same place.

Next week, I go under the knife to remove a cancerous prostate. Perhaps it’s only natural, under such circumstances, to ponder the mysteries of life and muse about the real meaning of it all.

Our children's herculean task

When historians look back at this particular period of American history, I wonder what their judgment will be?

They won’t be kind, I suspect. Our country has slipped into such a state of malaise, selfishness and hatred that I scarcely recognize it. And it happened on my generation’s watch, which makes it all the more painful and all the more tragic.

We grew up in an era of peace and prosperity. Our parents pampered us and spoiled us in a way their parents were unable to do for them. Unlike our parents, most of us went to college, and our diplomas did not come packaged in bone-crushing debt. We demonstrated against and ended an unjust war, contributed our brains and brawn to the civil rights struggle, created the environmental and the women’s rights movements, and dreamed the dream of making a better world.

Tragically, it will be left to my children’s generation, the much-maligned Millennials, to clean up the mess that we Baby Boomers have left, and what a sorry mess it is.

The state of our democracy has never been more imperiled. The bloody, hard-fought progress we have made in racial, gender and LGBT relations is seriously threatened. The United States, once the light of a troubled world, has become a laughingstock before the brotherhood of nations.

At a time when environmental catastrophe looms ever larger, our leaders are retreating into the murk of superstition and false gods. And a large percentage of our countrymen feel so isolated from the world and so disenfranchised that they turned over, in their anger, frustration and fear, the reins of power to men governed only by nihilism, narcissism and greed.

Yes, I know. These are strange thoughts to have on the Fourth, normally a time of pride and celebration. But these are not normal times and this is not a normal holiday. I have a sickness of heart and an oppression of spirit so heavy that sometimes I can hardly draw a breath.

So amid the flag-waving and fireworks that normally mark this day, I humbly suggest we say a quiet prayer for happier times and for God to guide the hands of our children, who have inherited the herculean task of preserving our democracy and leading our country out of the wilderness into which we led it.

I believe they are up to the task. Our children -- the greatest gift we could ever give to this sad, troubled world.