The Whidbey Examiner lasted 22 years, 18 with me as a freelancer. This shirt? Not as long. (David Svien photo)
I come to praise the Whidbey Examiner, not bury it.
Two weeks from now, after the Jan. 19 edition is published, the paper which came into the world as the Coupeville Examiner, will cease existence, retired at age 22.
As a business decision, it makes perfect sense.
There are no employees to feel sorry for, as the paper has shared the same staff with the Whidbey News-Times for some time.
No one is having to hit the bricks, and, in an era where newspaper staffs are being gutted, that’s a true positive.
But, I have to admit, on an emotional level, the news hit me a little harder than I expected.
I have a long, volatile relationship with the Examiner, having made the journey from fanatical true believer, to wanting to (metaphorically) burn the joint down, to being at peace with where the paper was, and where I was.
I was never a “real” employee of the Examiner, and yet, my byline appeared hundreds, maybe even thousands, of times in the paper.
When it was launched in 1994, by four of my former co-workers from the News-Times (Keven R. Graves, Mary Kay Doody, Gretchen Young and Bill Wilson) and business wizard Laura Blankenship, it was a bold, risky move.
It’s not like today, when any idiot can create a blog like Coupeville Sports for free and be publishing five minutes later.
Back then, it was all about print, and these renegades were going toe-to-toe with the News-Times, which had been around since the late 1800’s and owned its own presses.
For them even to get a paper out, especially with the giant up North openly staring them down, was a monumental achievement.
And, right from the start, it was a quality paper, an award-winning paper.
How could it not be?
These four were some of the best journalists the Island has seen, and they were fighting for their newspaper lives, to be financially successful against staggering odds, while also offering a higher quality product than what was coming out of Oak Harbor in those days.
While I had left behind day-to-day newspaper writing at age 23 earlier that year (the first of many idiotic decisions), Keven and Co. let me jump my movie reviews from the News-Times to the Examiner.
I’m not 100% sure what issue of the new paper I debuted in, though I know it was near the start, and that column ran in the Examiner, without missing a week, until 2010.
Over that time I wrote a lot of other freelance articles, as they always found a way to include me, and a way to put up with me.
Keven, Gretchen, Lauren and Bill departed over the years, because of family, because of other plans, because of needing to pay the bills.
And yet, their memory was always there.
As I continued to write for the Examiner, often putting an emphasis on the free part of freelance in the later years, I made that decision because I believed in what they started.
I wrote for Mary Kay, because she was the hardest-working reporter I ever knew.
And, because, back when I somehow fast-talked my way into being a 21-year-old Sports Editor at the News-Times, despite never having stepped foot on a college campus, she treated me like I belonged in the newsroom.
Even when I was acting like an idiot with no clue, giving the people who signed my checks angina and seeing how many AP style book rules I could bust in a single afternoon.
She was a pro’s pro, even when calling someone up while madly typing, then proceeding to scream “I can’t talk now, I’m on deadline!,” all while bashing the phone on our cubicle wall 22 times as the person on the other end tried to explain SHE had called THEM.
The Examiner could have faded away when Mary Kay’s health took a turn for the worse, but another of my former WNT co-workers, Kasia Pierzga, came in to save the day, buying the paper.
Now, I am not the easiest writer to deal with, whether I am an employee or a freelancer, and that was most evident during the Kasia years.
From God’s lips to my finger tips, and how dare you even think of changing one word I wrote.
I wrote it the way I want it written, and there is little doubt I can be a pain in the rear, especially if you get between those lips and those fingertips.
I have also never missed a newspaper deadline in 27 years, and, while it will undoubtedly sound egotistical, I firmly believe I am a far better writer than 99.9% of the people with a college diploma on their walls.
So, Kasia put up with me, and during her run, I wrote a lot, with an emphasis on returning to sports, and I believed deeply.
The Examiner was the last stand against the Evil Empire, the only independent newspaper voice left on Whidbey.
Kasia and Justin Burnett were doing the hard work, keeping the paper alive with a strong journalistic voice.
Meanwhile, I was allowed to work on the edges, the king of annoying emails in which I got way too upset over how my Paul Newman obit was edited or why my sports scoops weren’t being posted at 3 AM.
But I believed in what The Examiner stood for, and looking back, I see how hard Kasia worked, how much of her life she put into the paper.
My respect for what she accomplished grows with each day.
I didn’t react well when she sold the paper to the same company which owns the News-Times and South Whidbey Record in 2012.
And I certainly did not react well when all my bylines — often my only payment — vanished off of hundreds of my stories on the Examiner’s web site.
Whether they were scrubbed intentionally or lost inadvertently in the change-over no longer matters.
It did, for a very long time.
It’s why I launched Coupeville Sports, and anger drove me in the early days.
I saw myself as the heir to the legacy of the “true” Examiner, the only one who didn’t “sell out” to The Man.
If you haven’t noticed, I can be very self-righteous.
I have mellowed over the past four-plus years, for many reasons. I no longer view it as a battle between me and a giant media conglomerate.
Coupeville Sports has offered me the freedom I always wanted for my writing (I can even post at 3 AM if I feel like it), and Keven’s return to run the Whidbey papers made it hard to view them as the “enemy.”
Also, and this might be the biggest thing, I didn’t like the perception that people thought I was in a war with Jim Waller, who has been dividing his sports coverage between the News-Times and the Examiner.
There are several people who have had a profound impact on my journalistic “career” (Fred Obee, Geoff Newton, Keven, Ellen Slater, Lionel Barona), but if it wasn’t for Waller, you probably wouldn’t have seen a single story from me.
If he didn’t ignore his own rules and let me fast-talk my way onto the Oak Harbor High School newspaper when my parents uprooted us from Tumwater, I end up doing something else.
If he doesn’t choose me over the high school paper’s Sports Editor when the News-Times comes looking for a kid to write one basketball story, I end up doing something else.
Jim Waller is the #1 reason I have spent the last two decades-plus irritating the heck out of editors.
Wait, that doesn’t sound right…
The point is, I’ve grown (a bit) and Coupeville Sports and the Whidbey papers can co-exist nicely. We cross over in some areas, and we each have our sweet spots that the other one doesn’t care to hit.
I know for a stone-cold fact that after 30+ years as a high school coach in multiple sports (PS — He’s in the state Hall of Fame for baseball coaches), there’s no way Waller’s sitting through a JV game, ever again.
So now, the Examiner fades away, with the News-Times once again the sole newspaper voice of the area.
The world has changed since 1994 (if it hadn’t, I’d still be getting paid to happily watch movies at Videoville), and life will go on, in a slightly different manner.
As I personally go forward, though, I’d like to think, that in some way, with Coupeville Sports, I still help carry the torch for the Examiner, just as Keven and Justin do in their work with the News-Times and Record.
Whether we came in on day one, or further down the trail, whether we had ownership or operated on the outskirts, every single person who came together to weave the tapestry of the Examiner should be proud today.
It was a heck of a run.
To read the official obit, pop over to:
http://www.whidbeyexaminer.com/news/after-22-years-the-examiner-will-cease-publication/
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