Has it really been 10 years already?

Seems so recently that I was interviewing for a job here with Steve Marble. I’ll never forget that interview. It was the only time anyone has ever hired me on the spot. It was like a movie.

“You can do that?” I asked incredulously.

“Well, I’m the boss so, yeah, I think I can,” he replied, smiling.

I was thrilled. My beat would be Santa Clarita’s City Hall as Times Community News expanded into the city with a local section. Back then we called the local editions “Our Times.” It was a weekly. I had worked for the City News Bureau of Chicago, the wire service that launched the careers of journalistic titans like Mike Royko and Seymour Hersh, and I had worked for daily newspapers, but I was new to California and I was taking screenwriting classes at UCLA so this fit in perfectly with my schedule. Plus, I got to work with incredibly talented reporters like Tim Hughes, Carol Chambers, Alecia Foster and Jason Song and photographer Scott Roby. I still count them as friends to this day.

Before I left Chicago for California in the fall of 1998, an old colleague of mine from City News in Chicago suggested I look up a friend of his who worked for the City News Service in Los Angeles. So I did. We hit it off and became close friends. Hardly knowing me, but trusting the instincts of our mutual friend, Lionel Rolfe put in a good word for me and I got a part-time reporting gig at City News Service in LA. Thank God for that because I was about broke and really needed the work. During my short time there before I joined Times Community News, I had a blast and it revived my love for journalism, which had dimmed for a variety of reasons in Chicago (including an absolute morale-crushing experience with a daily paper in the Chicago suburbs that I won’t go into). I hated to leave but Times Community News beckoned with full-time work and benefits, so I took it. Over the years I was promoted many times and ended up working in offices from Glendale to Simi Valley to Ontario to Costa Mesa. I helped launch the Times Community News websites in 2005 with my good friend Tony Dodero when he was the Daily Pilot editor and got a taste of those old wire-service days that I often talk about with the kind of relish an old veteran does when telling war stories.

Being a web editor was just like working the wires. Speed, speed, speed. But, unlike the wires, accuracy hasn’t been as prized in this webcentric news world we live in. We, and I’m speaking universally as a journalist here, need to work on that. As we used to say in Chicago, “If your mother sez she loves ya’, check it out.”

Anyway, I ultimately ended up becoming the Daily Pilot’s city editor. And I’ve loved it. Especially as I’ve tried to enterprise some stories like my undercover homeless project and covering President Obama’s inauguration (something I did on my own dime because there was no way I would miss covering the story of my life).

But now I’m moving on. As of July 29 I will no longer be the Pilot’s city editor. After a decade — a decade, can you believe it?! — I’m leaving Times Community News to be the Orange County bureau chief for the City News Service, the wire for Southern California. I’m going back to my roots. Anyone who knows me well understands why. The wires were my first love and I never got over it. City News in Chicago marked my salad days as a reporter and I loved working for City News in Los Angeles when I arrived in California. I’m telling you, I never saw a more eloquent editor on deadline than Pat Teague at City News Service.

I won’t stray too far, though. I’ll still be covering the news here in Orange County and I have big plans for my blogging future so stay tuned. The best is yet to come.

P.S. Thank you to everyone over the years who I have worked with. There are far too many names to add here, and I’m worried that if I start down that path I’ll inevitably slight someone.

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