I hadn’t noticed it at the time, I suppose because I was so focused on my own employment situation, but the Seattle Times lost another two political reporters this spring, longtime Olympia correspondent Andrew Garber and promising young local reporter Brian Rosenthal. (And that’s on top of the paper’s recent exodus of women reporters.) Garber has joined the Seattle Police Department as a senior media advisor, while Rosenthal’s Twitter bio says he he is now covering Texas state government for the Austin bureau of the Houston Chronicle.
Congratulations, Brian, I guess. But how bad must it be to work at the Seattle Times to make moving to Texas a better option? (I know—Austin. But still, it’s fucking hot, and filled with Texans.)
As for Garber, I believe his departure may leave the Olympian’s Brad Shannon as the last man standing from the Olympia press corps I met when I first started going down to the state capitol a decade ago. So I’ll make the same joke I made when David Postman left the paper: If many more reporters leave the profession to take media relations positions, pretty soon there won’t be any media left to relate to. (Oh wait. That’s pretty much what’s already happened.)
As far as I know, neither Garber or Rosenthal have been replaced yet.
If many more reporters leave the profession to take media relations positions, pretty soon there won’t be any media left to relate to. (Oh wait. That’s pretty much what’s already happened.)
Yup. Most of them at the White House.
Well, newspapers aren’t exactly going concerns these days. You can do journalism as a hobby for only so long before you have to get a paying job.