Kirk

Few things surprise me anymore. And the things that do, well that I’m surprised by them is one of the few things that still surprise me. And strangely enough one of the most shocking things to flicker across the in-box of my email was the news that Kirk Ericson was quitting The Olympian. Maybe it’s better to use the lexicon more acceptable in these times of financial duress, he accepted a “voluntary separation package.”

Every time one of my friends leave The Olympian, it’s a mixed blessing. Bad for the paper, good for them, and good for me as I can miss the newsroom a little bit less. Two out of three ain’t bad.

I never worked in journalism as long as Kirk worked at the Olympian. In the last days of Kirk’s 18 years at the daily paper of Olympia, WA, he wrote an online column (some people call these blogs), called These Times. The thing about These Times that stood out from the usual online stuff that newspapers ply was that it was a throwback to an earlier concept was once dominant long before newspapers had websites: That people went to them because they liked to read things.

Kirk holds a lot of contrary views. One of them was not to actually think less of the reader. This is contrary to the current ideas held by management throughout much of corporate media, which seems to be trending more and more toward logos, branding, short stories and simple words. And figured people could get jokes and detect irony and sarcasm. It’s really quite an optimistic view to have. He believed in it when he told me the first words I heard from a co-worker on the copy desk:

“Do you want to know what you have to do to survive here,” he asked. “You have to let your soul die.”

He doesn’t always like me to relate that anecdote, but it’s one of my favorites.

I worked across from Kirk at The Olympian from 2000 to 2005 and daily it was like getting a live dose of These Times. More than just about anything else, Kirk made going to work enjoyable. There was an element of that thing that drove people into journalism majors: that you’d be going to work some place where ideas mattered. Maybe it was delusional, but at least on the days we worked together, we pretended it was true.

And no matter what weird downsizing, marketing scheme non-news decision came from the board room, he maintained his beleif in the medium:

Newspapers play a role in our lives that blogs can never replace. Where do you suppose bloggers most often get the base coat for their colorful edifice of indignation? Newspapers. Newspapers demand a rigor for discovering the demonstrable truth, and an insistence on taking responsibility for what you write. The fear of having a printed correction inspires a level of concentration among newspaper reporters and editors that online sources don’t require. That fear remains real to me after all these years. You can’t simply strike through an error that’s printed in the newspaper. In newspapers, the mistake remains, sometimes in 48 point type. It mocks you.

Of course, this isn’t an obit. And it’s not a farewell. I’ll still see him around town whenever I get back to Oly. We’ll still have the same talks. I was surprised to find someone like Kirk at The Olympian, and now it’s weird to think about the newsroom without him there. For the newspaper it’s an end of an era, though.

Congratulations Kirk. Welcome to the outside world. You came and left, soul in tact.

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