from a pre-Blogger blog
ATTENDING A DINNER FOR THE Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter, as a co-recipient of their annual James Madison Freedom of Information Award, I’m in the presence of real journalistic heroes: men and women quietly doing their jobs in order that their fellow-citizens can be better informed about their world. Some of those people, like the person who enabled us (by which I mean, my former employer and myself) to write the stories which led to our receiving the award, are bigger heroes: people who risked a job (and security) in order to do the right thing — by blowing a badly-needed whistle.
As this blog is partly an online scrapbook, here’s my half of the acceptance speech (after my ex-boss introduced me by telling everyone that I had quit the news biz to attend rabbinical school):
“They say this job will drive you either to drink, or religion. I seem to have chosen the latter…
“When I was a kid, I was crazy about Don Quixote: knight-errant, defender of justice and the innocent, tilter at windmills which he thought were fierce giants.
“As a result, I wanted to follow in his footsteps. I never thought I’d do it while working as a reporter.
“But when we first broke our story, after years of anonymous — but unproven — allegations that all was not well at SDC, my companion sent a bouquet of flowers to my desk, with a note: ‘You knew they were giants all along.’
“In a different way, this award says the same thing. The quest continues. Thank you.”
The evening is inspiring. It’s enlightening. It makes me really, really miss the news business. But it doesn’t make me miss it enough.