Yay!

Here’s the story.

Journalism is a small world, and in the mid-1990s, when I was a young, impressionable, sometimes naive journalist, I was fortunate enough to cross paths with them. They didn’t know me very well, but nonetheless, they took time to help and mentor me, and for that, I’m forever grateful to them.

I first met Brand in 1996 when I was a reporter for the West County Times, in Richmond, Calif. At the time, my newspaper chain was trying to make inroads into Berkeley, and was offering a crazy deal – $10 for a year’s subscription – to drive readers and compete against the Oakland Tribune. Brand was a grizzled newspaper vet who covered Berkeley for the Tribune, and one afternoon, he and I were stuck at City Hall, waiting for a city official to emerge from a locked office to give us additional details for a story.

He knew I was on deadline before a Berkeley City Council meeting, and that I was angsting. I hadn’t yet developed the skill to pump out a 12-inch story in mere minutes. I needed time – at least a good hour – to write the story, and needed to rush home to file the story before the meeting, or I was hosed. This was before Wi-Fi, back in the day when we needed phone lines to dial into the newsroom computer system. Brand took pity on me and said something like: “You go home and write your story. I’ll wait here and when I get the information, I will call you and share it with you.”

I was surprised. I was taught in journalism school that you simply don’t share information with your competitors. I didn’t trust him. But I was also relieved that he gave me an out. So I took it. An hour later, he did call. He shared all the information he had. He saved my ass.

I’ve never forgotten his kind act. We were competitors and he didn’t care. He taught me a good lesson in journalism: the difference between competition for scoops, which this was not, and being a nice guy to a fellow colleague.

As for Reed, I’ve read many stories in his obituary’s online guest book about how he’d eat everyone’s lunch on a breaking news story, so I’m glad I never competed against him. I got to know him outside the newsroom because my friends at work were good friends of his. One time, in 1997 or 1998, we met in a Berkeley pub or coffee shop one night, and I told him that I had just received a new job offer.

It was a choice between loyalty and jumping ship for much higher pay, a choice between staying in the comfort zone and pushing myself to explore the unknown. I told him I was choosing loyalty and comfort. And in a very gentle way, he told me I was making a mistake. We talked it through. The upshot: I took his advice, and took the new job, and in many ways, the decision helped me get to where I am today.

Each of these experiences is what I remember of the two men. Both were willing to help a kid out and impart their wisdom. I can only imagine the impact they made to their families, friends and colleagues, day in and day out, year after year. Because of that, their legacies live on.

Every section in a newspaper feels a need to do a year-ender. The San Jose Mercury News’ restaurant reviewer even chimes in with “my 10 most memorable meals of the year.” And the Arizona Republic this week felt compelled to remind us that the year’s top local business stories include the lousy housing market and the opening of new shopping centers across the Phoenix metro area. (Why state the obvious? I mean: it’s all still happening and we see it with our own eyes every day. “For Sale” signs litter every neighborhood and houses sit empty for months on end. And, you don’t think we notice that the hundreds of acres of farmland along the freeway are suddenly replaced by a huge Best Buy or Target store?)

At least some enterprising publications are not just regurgitating old news and are trying to put a new spin in their stories. But they, too, have varying degrees of success.

The Huffington Post published “the trends that made the naughty and nice lists of 2007.” (Nice idea, bad execution. Apparently not too many people were naughty or nice because there were only five examples each.)

Wired.com, a terrific technology site, is quite innovative for publishing stories on “the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of 2007″ and “the top 10 new organisms of 2007.” (That’s pretty cool because I can actually learn something.) But then it also published ridiculous stories like “vote for the sexiest geeks of 2007″ and “the 10 best gadget ads of 2007″ (Ads!?).

My newspaper editors once asked me to write a year-in-preview. It was different and it was fun. I called up a seismologist to find out what the chances were of a big earthquake hitting that year. And I’m grateful my editors had a sense of humor and kept it in the story. I just checked out the Contra Costa Times’ online archives and the story, which was published on Jan. 1, 1996, began with:

You’re partied out and you’re O.J.’d out. 1995 is history. It’s a new year. Time to look to the future and wonder excitedly what 1996 will bring.

For a bunch of local politicians, it might mean unemployment. Elected officials from all levels of government will play musical chairs this year as term limits in the state Legislature force five of eight East Bay legislators out of office. Speaking of shakeups, a UC-Berkeley seismologist says….

Heh. I think the rest of the sentence said there was a 1 or 2 percentage chance of the Big One hitting that year. But I’m too cheap to pay the $2.95 to view the full story.

Anyway, when I worked full-time in news organizations, I wrote my fair share of deadly year-in-reviews, so I understand the reasoning behind them. We’re in the news business. We chronicle the news and this is a chance to step back and tell you what we feel were important things that happened in the past year. And except for the tsunami in 2004 and this year’s political chaos in Pakistan, it’s generally a slow news period and these stories fill space.

I also understand these year-enders are just those normal staples of journalism. Like the day-after-Thanksgiving shopping story or the first-rainstorm-of-the-season story. Or the five-year or 10-year anniversary of a major disaster story. But c’mon people, all these year-in-review stories are too much. You are all overdoing it.

Unless you are Megatron and have been iced down in cryogenics for the past year and need to catch up on news, very few people will read the stories. (OK, sorry. I just watched the Transformers movie.) But you get my point. It’s been only a year. I remember what happened. I don’t need the media to tell me what was important in the past year. I already know.

OK. Rant over.