{"id":20744,"date":"2017-04-01T14:55:13","date_gmt":"2017-04-01T14:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20744"},"modified":"2017-04-01T14:55:13","modified_gmt":"2017-04-01T14:55:13","slug":"another-old-school-journo-calls-it-a-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20744","title":{"rendered":"Another old-school journo calls it a career"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Of all the colleagues with whom I worked during my 37 years in daily journalism, I am hard-pressed to think of anyone who fit the description of “ink-stained wretch” better than a fellow who has just retired from a newspaper where we both once worked.<\/p>\n

His name is Dan Wallach. He is a native of New York state. He graduated from the University of Arizona and ended up in Beaumont, Texas, where he worked at the Beaumont Enterprise for more than three decades.<\/p>\n

Dan represents — to me — the individual who is committed fully to covering his community, of telling the myriad stories that give that community its life, its personality.<\/p>\n

What’s more, he is unafraid to reveal the community’s scars and to press relentlessly the individuals who are responsible for\u00a0inflicting those wounds.<\/p>\n

He has just entered my world … of retirement<\/em>. I welcome him gladly and wish him well, but I am absolutely certain that journalism as we both understand the craft is going to be a good bit poorer without more people such as Dan pursuing it.<\/p>\n

I now want to tell a short story that personifies the kind of tribute that Dan earned from news sources over his many years in print journalism.<\/p>\n

In the spring of 1995, just a few months after I had left Beaumont to become editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News, I got a call from then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s office. The governor invited me to Austin to meet with him.<\/p>\n

I arrived at the State Capitol Building a few days later.\u00a0Gov. Bush and I \u00a0shook hands and he led me to his office. We exchanged a few pleasantries before we got down to brass tacks.<\/p>\n

The governor knew I had worked at the Enterprise and he thanked me for the newspaper’s editorial endorsement in the 1994 governor’s race in which Gov. Bush defeated incumbent Democrat Ann Richards.<\/p>\n

“It kind of surprised me,” Bush said. “Why is that?” I asked.<\/p>\n

He told me about a “reporter you had there who gave me all kinds of trouble” when\u00a0Bush talked to the media during his campaign stops in the Golden Triangle.<\/p>\n

“I can’t remember his name,” he said. I responded, “Oh, you must be thinking of Dan Wallach.”<\/p>\n

“Yeah, that’s<\/em> who it was,”\u00a0the governor\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

“He was one tough son of a b****.”<\/em><\/p>\n

We both laughed out loud. <\/em><\/p>\n

I told Dan not long after that meeting what the governor had said about him. I took it as a statement of high praise and I believe to this very day that’s how George W. Bush intended for it to be taken.<\/p>\n

I have wanted for years to tell that story in some public forum. Dan’s retirement has given me that chance.<\/p>\n

Well done, Dan.<\/p>\n\n

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Of all the colleagues with whom I worked during my 37 years in daily journalism, I am hard-pressed to think of anyone who fit the description of “ink-stained wretch” better than a fellow who has just retired from a newspaper where we both once worked. His name is Dan Wallach. He is a native of … Continue reading Another old-school journo calls it a career<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[179,568,1899],"class_list":["post-20744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-news","tag-agn-media","tag-beaumont-enterprise","tag-george-w-bush"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20745,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20744\/revisions\/20745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}