STEVE MARBLE -- Editor’s Notebook

I promised myself I wouldn’t write this. I’m not big on being maudlin,

saying goodbye, getting teary.

It’s my last day at the Daily Pilot, and I’d thought about stealing

away without making much of a fuss about things. But then, I didn’t want

to be like the old Baltimore Colts, packing up the moving trucks in the

dead of night and moving the football franchise off to Indianapolis. Tail

lights and a quick glance in the rear view. Later, Baltimore.

I’ve been at the Daily Pilot for something like a bazillion years, so

it’s probably high time I moved on. Starting Monday, I’ll be at the Los

Angeles Times. I leave behind good memories, good friends and an office

that’s in serious need of cleaning.

Funny, but I probably never would have ended up in Orange County --

let alone at the Daily Pilot -- had not some long ago courthouse reporter

murdered his wife one morning. The reporter was in a dark mood,

evidently. Suspicious his wife was cheating on him, he’d spent the night

drinking, thinking bad thoughts. He caught up with his wife at a Santa

Ana restaurant where she was waiting to be seated. He stabbed her to

death. In fact, a patron had to bang him over the head with the “Please

Wait to Be Seated” sign to get him to halt the carnage.

The net result of all this was a sudden and very unexpected opening at

the Daily Pilot. I was mulling over career options at the time, and I

wasn’t one to let opportunities pass me by.

One of my first editors was a delightfully old-school guy named Tom

Murphine, rumpled and crusty with a laugh that always seemed to have a

slightly deeper meaning. He was a spirited man who banged out a column

every weekday, chortling softly as he lampooned the mayor or Caltrans or

any of the environmental groups he so loathed.

At the end of the day he’d fire up his pipe, blow a huge plume of

smoke across the newsroom and lean back in his chair. He looked like a

man who discovered contentment each and every day.

He called me up several years ago to tip me off to a story. A good

story. It was the last time I talked with him. Cancer caught up with him

a short time later.

Over the years, they came and went. The reporters. The photographers.

The editors. One kid went out on assignment to Irvine and never came

back. Into thin air, as it were. Another moved off to Mexico, convinced

the government was watching him. And maybe it was. Still another decided

to try to drink himself to death. He failed in that regard.

At night sometimes as I head out the door, I see the ghosts. Paul

Archipley, the cop reporter who moved to the Olympic Peninsula and bought

his own community newspaper. Hussein Mashni, the education reporter who

moved to the West Bank to do missionary work. Jeff Parker, who fancied up

his name to T. Jefferson Parker and became a best-selling author. Chris

Goffard, the tireless wordsmith who always wanted to cover a war but took

a reporting position with a big-time Florida newspaper instead. Bob

Barker, one of the best damn reporters I’ve ever known, who now delights

in raising orchids and playing softball.

But in the morning, the place is always the same. Editor Tony Dodero

wanders in with a fresh coffee stain on his shirt. Publisher Tom Johnson

bounds upstairs with a news tip. The front desk receptionist -- usually

around 9:30 a.m. -- announces that, yep, the lunch truck has already

arrived. There’s an energy to the place, a sheer, pure, unrelenting

energy.

The Daily Pilot has always been able to roll with the punches. I

remember years ago flying up to San Jose with my editor, Bill Lobdell, to

pick up a general excellence award, a nice and fairly prestigious

distinction in our business. At the time I think both of us felt the

paper was near the end of the line, running low on money and running

lower on options. We felt foolhardy making the trip yet content that --

if it really was going to come to this -- what a better way for it to

end.

The ink never ran out, of course, and the Pilot now prospers.

During the Christmas season several years ago, a colleague of mine was

murdered. She was on her way home from church, evening Mass, when a

mixed-up kid stabbed her to death, only feet from the front door to her

home. Her husband was inside, waiting for her, I presume, as she died.

Her death was jarring, arresting, enough to make a person question the

very meaning of life. But it was also when I found out the true depth and

the character of the Daily Pilot.

The day of the funeral, I remember walking along the street to the

church, three blocks down, two blocks over from the paper. I looked up

and the street and the sidewalks were filled with fellow employees. Some

of them worked in the newsroom, some in advertising, some in the business

offices. But at that moment they’d all come together. They were going to

say goodbye to a friend and vow never to forget her memory, her laugh,

her good heart.

You go through stuff like that, and you know you can handle virtually

anything. You come to have faith and trust in your team. You go home at

night content that you are among friends.

Leaving the Daily Pilot is not an easy thing for me to do. But it is

of my own choosing, and I am excited about the future. Change is not a

bad thing. Still, this will always be a special place and I will think of

it often.

See you down the road...

Editor’s note: William Lobdell, editor of Times Community News, also

will be taking a new assignment at The Times. Starting Oct. 9, he’ll be a

religion writer-editor for the Orange County edition. Both Lobdell and

Marble can be reached at their same e-mail addresses:

bill.lobdell@latimes.com and steve.marble@latimes.com.