The decline of newspapers & death of Mike Pigott

(779 words)

The newspaper industry took another big hit last week when it lost both me and Mike Pigott as regular readers.

My wife and I agreed it was time to cancel our Pittsburgh Post-Gazette subscription because the paper had become too expensive ($1.50-a-day), delivery too erratic, and the paper too strewn with sloppy errors.

Mike’s readership ended for more concrete reasons.

He died in Nashville at the age of 62.

For me, it’s like one of the faces of Mount Rushmore cracked and fell down the mountain.

It’s funny, but 23 years after drawing my last regular paycheck from a newspaper, I still consider myself a newspaper man.

It’s all I ever wanted to be.

After graduating from Ohio University with my journalism degree, I went to visit my brother in Nashville.

I’d already acquired a stack of rejection letters from much smaller community newspapers. But I was plucky and called the Nashville Banner seeking an interview.

“Can you be here this afternoon?”

I could.

But because I was pessimistic about my prospects, I showed up in shorts. It was hot in Nashville and I didn’t want to wear anything that might later curb that day’s recreations.

The editor was Joe Worley (he’s up there on Rushmore, too).

He sat there and read all my clips without cracking a smile. After about five awkward minutes he asked in a Southern accent so thick I could barely understand, “How long were you on the school paper?”

One year.

Then with a sneering edge, “What’d you do the other three years? Drink beer?”

Yes, sir!

“Good. I did it for four!”

He hired me on the spot. It was a great day.

Little did I know it would ruin my career.

Starting out at the Nashville Banner in 1985 mistakenly led me to believe every newspaper job — every job — would be as exuberant and filled with such lively and engaging characters, each so distinct.

My favorite Pigott story happened after I’d left. I read about it on Facebook.

A new guy, a self-confessed rube, admitted he’d never taken a plane ride before and was nervous about an assignment that would take him out of state.

Pigott asked if his parachute was packed.

Parachute? No, why?

“Well, you’re going to need a parachute and you’re going to need to know how to use it.”

The day before his flight the reporter got a call from the airline’s customer service department. The woman wanted to confirm the flight and make sure he had his parachute.

With Pigott as ringleader, the whole newsroom was watching. I guess it was hilarious.

He left the Banner shortly after I did.

He quit because the sleazy publisher had suggested he do something that offended his ethical sensibilities.

I quit because Nashville at the time didn’t have any decent pizza joints.

He started a public relations firm that bore his name and eventually claimed as clients Nashville’s mayor, Tennessee’s governor and the Tennessee Titans. His death left the state in mourning.

I guess the reason Mike’s passing is hitting so many of us so hard is because he was before our eyes becoming what Tom Wolfe called “a man in full.”

He’d become a grandfather. He was taking ballroom dance lessons. He was traveling the world.

And everywhere he went and everything he did found him with an equator-wide smile. 

I’d sent him a copy of my book and he sent me note saying how much he loved it.

That’s the polite thing to do. But he kept sending notes. Months would go by and he’d send another one. He wanted to make sure I knew he meant it.

It’s funny, because we weren’t what you’d consider at all close.

We were just two guys who’d worked three years together in the same building about 30 years ago.

Maybe it was just all of us being in that building together.

Or maybe it was just Mike. He was the kind of guy who’d without fail treat people who weren’t so special in ways that made them feel like they were.

The Banner folded in 1998. I’m sure Mike was revolted by what The Tennessean, the surviving Nashville paper, has become. 

They’re Exhibit A in why I for the first time in my life am living in a home that doesn’t get the daily newspaper. 

It dismays those of us who love newspapers to realize the people most responsible for saving newspapers think the only way to do so is to make them less like newspapers.

So, yeah, the newspaper industry took a real hit last week.

The world took an even bigger one.

Related . . .

Nashville Banner & the vanishing stigma of typpos

How I became a PROSEtitute

My history of drinking at/near work

On old girlfriends & great pizza

Expense accounting the National Spelling Bee

In praise of rock’s double albums

Movin' next to the Palins

It took me 10 seconds to come up with 10 reasons to tell my agent to tell my publisher why I wouldn’t be moving in next door to Sarah Palin for purposes of writing a six-figure best seller on her.

The top three are: I don’t have an agent; I don’t have a publisher; and no one’s foolish enough to offer me a six-figure advance on something I’d never finish. I couldn’t read a book about Sarah Palin, much less write one.

Reasons four through 10 are all some variation of the theme: I don’t want any neighbors. In my experience, the bad and the creepy have far outnumbered the kindly and good.

We right now have a vacancy next door and I tremble at what might move in. Meth techs? Doomsday rapture cultists? Pit bull breeders?

The widow Josephine was probably the best neighbor ever. We lived next to her from 1992-2007 before we moved up into the more secluded woods.

She was generous. We had free reign to raid her bountiful garden whenever we needed fixings. I’m convinced the whole Third World could have shown up unannounced for dinner, she’d have fed them up full and then stuck her head out the kitchen door and said, “Anyone have room for pie?”

She was interesting. She surprised me one time when she said she used to watch hours and hours of televised golf. Then she about shocked all the hairs off my head when she told me why.

She used to spend hours and hours with her hands in Arnold Palmer’s pants.

“They called me recently to see if I was still available for hire, but I told them I didn’t do that kind of thing anymore,” she said.

She was his seamstress.

She made a lovely heirloom quilt for our daughter when she was born. She was just so sweet and loving that I’m sure there’ll never be another neighbor so perfect.

It would be a pleasure to be assigned to live next to her for the purposes of writing a book.

Not so with the Palin brood. Already, the Mama Grizzly’s flair for the dramatic has gotten in the way of being neighborly. Instead of welcoming McGinness with cookies and smiles -- and, guaranteed, we’ll do that for whatever meth chef/pit bull owning madman who moves in next to us -- she immediately played the victim.

She unleashed a venomous Facebook attack on McGinniss. If she’s ever president, I’m convinced she’ll eliminate the State Department and run U.S. foreign policy entirely through social networking.

Then she sent surly Todd over to bully and bitch.

Then she built an enormous fence obscuring his view of them and -- who knows? -- maybe her view of Russia.

I don’t know what McGinniss is thinking. Uptight people like that make for awful neighbors.

I’ll bet if sufficiently motivated, I could come up as compelling a story as he eventually will with just two weeks at the Wasilla Best Western.

Of course, that’s not fair to McGuinniss. He’s Holy Cross elite and didn’t cut his reporting teeth, as I did, at National Enquirer.

But it got me to thinking who, in all America, I’d like to live next door to for the purposes of writing a tell-all book.

This week I found the answer.

It’s Todd Snider.

He’s a hilarious singer-songwriter in Nashville, a now flood beleaguered town I love.

He’s the kind of guy who’d probably be furious that America is resorting to generic game shows to determine musical popularity if he wasn’t always so pleasantly stoned.

One recent song, “America’s Favorite Pastime,” is a deadpan homage to the day Pittsburgh Pirate Doc Ellis pitched a no-hitter on LSD.

He just released a flood benefit single “Come Up and See Me Sometime.” The accompanying video shows him and a rag tag band whooping it up amidst snippets all these great East Nashville bars, many of which I used to frequent when I lived there from 1985-1989.

There are beguiling flashes of backyard parties that show the gang sitting around sipping wine, playing fiddles, mandolins and banjos. I could practically smell the marijuana clouds wafting through my computer screen.

For reasons that have nothing to do with contact highs, it would be impossible to live next door to such a happy scene and remain burdened by life’s petty cares or the gnaw of self-inflated ambitions.

Hell, forget about me or McGuinness moving in next to Palin.

Let’s move the Palins next door to Snider.

I’m sure, at the very least, Levi Johnson would enjoy visiting more.