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Riddle: How’s this weather like journalism?

By S.K. Bardwell
Posted Monday, November 12, 2007

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You know I’m never happy, right? Well, this beautiful, sunny, cool, low-humidity weather is about to get on my last nerve.

It’s creepy San Diego weather, is what it is. When I spent some time in San Diego some years back, the weather was just like this. Every day. The locals I questioned all insisted that it was like that every day, all year. “Never rains,” they all said. That’s why they have wildfires like the ones that destroyed so many lives and homes recently.

Of course it does rain there on rare occasions. When it does, even a little bit, the houses start sliding off their hills.

I came home and pronounced the weather there creepy, and I stand by it. I was born and raised in Tulsa, where spectacular thunderstorms and tornadoes are common. I have lived here on the Gulf Coast, with the tropical storms and hurricanes and torrential rains, for more than 30 years.

I need a storm every once in a while. I enjoy them. A good storm, or even a rain, makes me feel like the tension’s been washed out of me. My sister says a storm makes her feel fizzy inside, and that’s a pretty good description.

In the past, I have greatly enjoyed days like the ones we’ve had recently. But that was because they were so rare here. I find that this month-long string of them is—well, it’s creepy. Makes you wonder if we’re going to suffer wildfires next. Or mudslides.

At least we wouldn’t have far to slide.

Enough about the weather. For those of you who have asked, yes, that is one of Micheal’s photographs gracing the cover of the Angleton Chamber of Commerce “Heartbeat” magazine this month. Thanks for remembering the picture, and The Angleton Observer.

The photograph—a Santa from a Christmas in the Square of the past—wasn’t credited to the Observer, but there’s no Observer around to complain. It is nice that some of your recognized it as Micheal’s work—his photos were a big part of why people loved the Observer. He’s shooting more for the Journal now that he’s no longer The Pizza Man, so we have that to look forward to.

The uncredited photo did remind me of a story from my early journalism days. It happened not long after I went to work in Houston, when I turned in a story I believed was complete, and was told by an editor to add something to it.

I declined. Without boring you to death with minute details of newspaper life, the addition the editor wanted was the nationality of a person who had been charged with a crime. I declined on the grounds that where he was from had nothing to do with what he was charged with, and was just as unfair and silly as writing that a woman killed in a car wreck had been “a divorcee.” (A lawsuit was won by a woman described thus in a major newspaper).

So, the editor said he’d add it himself. I said if he did, he had to take my name off the story. What ensued was the verbal equivalent of a shoving match.

The issue was resolved when a higher-up pronounced me correct. But my vindication came at a price—during the shoving match, I learned from the paper’s lawyers that the paper owned my name, at least for purposes of using it as a byline, and could use it as it saw fit.

Journalism can be just as creepy as San Diego weather.

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