ROYKO AND LIEBLING AT THE NEWSEUM

Joe Liebling and I have been hanging around since I met him last week at the coffee house. I have been having a lovely time of it as he has told me about his career in journalism in America. He had a thrilling forty year career. Many writers do.



Joe spent a fair amount of time in my beloved France during the dark days of World War II. He was a war correspondent who wrote his dispatches for The New Yorker. In more peaceful days after the War ended, Joe wrote columns about the joy of French cooking. Gargantuan French meals were the mainstay for Joe at that time, undoubtedly leading to the gout and hastening his death at a mere 62 years of age.



I was walking by the Greek coffee house last Friday with Joe when we came upon a tall grumpy man swearing as he was reading some Chicago newspapers. Joe knew him and introduced me to Mike Royko.



Mike had a firm handshake, which I was soon to learn had developed from a lifetime of playing Chicago softball and thousands of rounds of golf.



I, the curious one, asked Mike what was troubling him so. He said, "The goddamn Chicago newspapers are in the toilet. I knew this was going to happen. It started with Murdoch, continued with Conrad Black. Awful. I am sick. I need a drink."

Joe said, "Mike, what you don't need is another drink. It is your drinking and my reckless eating that got us here ahead of our contemporaries."

I thought for a while about having met two American writers in the past week, both of whom were so upset over the state of journalism in America. I ventured forth boldly (I know no other way) with an idea.

"I have an idea. Let's take a trip to America and get a closer view of what's going on in journalism. Where should we go ?"

Mike said, "Chicago. It desperately needs us. Chicagoans are so distressed with the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times that they are regularly diving off the Michigan Avenue bridge to their death in the Chicago River."

Joe responded,"Mike, that is tragic but New York is the place. Home to my beloved The New Yorker and The New York Times."

"The New York Times that missed the absurdity of Bush's Iraq War. That New York Times ?"

A storm was brewing. Royko appeared volatile and likely to throw a punch at the portly Liebling. Joe had never seen a punch up close and personal, only from ringside as a reporter on the boxing scene. I, promoting tolerance and good will, said," Let's go to Washington, D.C. and check out the scene from the center of power."

Joe and Mike went along with it, though Mike mumbled something unprintable about New York. I had never been to Washington but looked forward to the adventure. Nothing is more fun than traveling with writers, particularly brilliant American writers.

We sat three abreast in the latest model jet run by The Angelic Express. The trip to DC took about ninety minutes. Royko had four cocktails and a beer and was promptly entertaining all of us with stories about bumbling Chicago politicians and judges. We touched down at National Airport and within twenty minutes found ourselves outside this massive building called The Newseum.

The building was about five stories tall---all glass windows on the front of the building. A feeling of openness and light was the effect of the architecture. Joe was the first to comment on the design, "Clever design, very appropriate to the news business. We are opening the public's eyes to the truth in America and shedding light on it."

Mike ambled ahead of us a bit. At the entrance to the museum we came upon a glass enclosed display of two dozen front pages of newpapers for the day from Maine to California. Then, all hell broke loose.

Mike yelled, "Goddamn it. What the hell did I tell you. Look at this for chrissake. This paper is a comic book, it's not a newspaper."

Joe and I caught up with him and looked down at the front page of The Chicago Sun-Times. The paper had a front page photo of a golf star standing at a podium looking grim. At the bottom of the page were three little graphics, one on baking, one on sports and the third on car repair. There was no writing on the front page except the headline and a sentence or two under the photo.

Joe was aghast and consoling to Mike. I took it all in and started to process it. I found so much in my lifetime absurd. This bit of nonsense was just another chapter.

We entered the building and spent a solid five hours captivated by the history of journalism in America from penny papers to something called Internet blogging that I am trying to understand.

Mike was beaming when we came upon the display of Pulitzer Prize winners. His photo was prominent for 1972, the year he won the award for Commentary. Joe had his turn at the display of press critics, where he took his place as the unrivaled champion.

The more time we spent in the museum the more glum both Joe and Mike got. Joe spoke for both of them. "The news business has been captured by huge corporations. God help America in the 21st Century."

I was not as despairing as my new friends. Hope always defeats despair, always has and always will.

I lived in an earlier age and fled my native France in my middle age. At the time I fled, the country had no independent press of any kind and no constitution with a First Amendment like that in America guaranteeing freedom of speech and the press. My writings were smuggled into France in the early morning hours and burned if discovered by the Catholic Church or the French government.

I just felt that the need for truth and an independent press was so ingrained in the American way of government and law, that no concentration of capital would doom the news business to mediocrity and extinction.

We finished our visit to the museum and DC and were home by dinner. Royko was melancholy and very drunk by now. Joe and I got him home safely and cheered ourselves up with a great French meal and two bottles of port.

And that is the way it is.


Voltaire