Wednesday, May 7, 2008
A new chapter
I could not have dreamed that "The Commission'' would be so successful. The book seemingly had the misfortune of being released on Super Tuesday, when the Hillary-Obama fight was really starting to get good. In early February, most Washington reporters weren't paying attention to anything beyond the presidential campaign, and who could blame them? Still, thanks to a brilliant publicity campaign, the book caught fire and finished up on the NYT bestsellers' list a week after its release. John Stewart, Keith Olbermann, Terry Gross, Diane Rehm, all of it a happy blur in the first few days of a book tour. Fantastic reviews. Within days of the announcement of the bestsellers list, The Times decided to offer a generous buyout package for veteran reporters, an effort to trim the paper's staff to deal with the brutal economic realities of the newspaper business. That sure seemed to be a message from the heavens. The Times remains the gold standard for daily newspaper journalism, but these are dismal times for newspapers, including The Times. Could things be much worse? And "The Commission" proved to me that there are other, probably better ways for me to practice my craft. So on the afternoon of April 17, sitting at a desk in a room in the the Hilton Hotel in Portland, Ore., where I was on my last out-of-town assignment as a newspaper reporter, I signed the buyout paperwork, walked to a nearby Fedex outlet and sent it off to The Times in New York. I'll be leaving this month after more than a quarter-century on the payroll of The New York Times, the only employer I've known in my adult life. (I joined the paper in the Washington bureau -- as a copyboy for the great James Reston, my first and best boss at the paper -- eight days after graduating from college.) There is a sense of melancholy as I walk out the door, of course. The Times is The Times, and I leave behind many, many friends. But there is also plenty of excitement about the next chapter of my career.
