A begrudging goodbye to a Pilot staffer, with new designs on

career

TONY DODERO

This was a tough week for me. I had to say goodbye to a longtime

colleague in the newsroom, Joey Santos, who put in his last hours for

the Daily Pilot on Saturday.

Santos is going to work for a new magazine called Ciudad,

published by the same people who produce Los Angeles magazine.

It was February of 1999 when I interviewed and hired a then

23-year-old Santos to be part of what was a burgeoning design desk at

Times Community News, producing upwards of 20 community newspapers

throughout Southern California.

It didn’t take long for us to figure out how talented this young

man was, and he ascended to the top ranks, eventually being promoted

to art director.

As art director, he works behind the scenes mostly, and readers

are largely unaware of his talents.

But Santos is responsible for a whole host of designs, including

the Daily Pilot 103, the Toshiba Classic, the Sunday Edition relaunch

in 2001, the Campus Times papers that are delivered to local high

schools, the entire redesign of the Pilot itself and all of the

community newspapers in the division that was done in 2002.

Santos has won a whole host of awards for his work, most notably

for the layout and design of our sister papers, the Huntington Beach

Independent and Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot.

We don’t produce 20 newspapers any more, and both Santos and I

have seen our share of job cutbacks and layoffs. We’ve been through a

lot together, even a power outage that shut down the paper over the

weekend back in 2001. But I wanted the readers to get a better

glimpse of this very special journalist, so I asked him a few

questions.

Tell us about your background.

I grew up in the Imperial Valley, Brawley to be exact, a small

town near the Mexican border. Second-generation American, one of four

kids. I’m 29. I’ve always been interested in journalism. I was the

editor of my high school newspaper two years and even wrote some

stories for the now-defunct Brawley News as a high school

correspondent. That was my first experience working in community

newspapers.

I went to school on scholarship at the University of San Diego, a

small Catholic school, which actually isn’t so small anymore. I spent

my entire four-year career at USD on the staff of the school paper,

the Vista.

My junior year, I reluctantly took the helm of the paper as

editor-in-chief. I was an English major and actually preferred

spending my time going to concerts, movies and other artistic

gatherings rather than sitting in front of a computer all day. But as

I said before, I was good at the newspaper thing. I did my first

redesign my junior year, and when I stayed on as editor-in-chief my

senior year, I did another redesign, each time yielding a more

successful profit for the paper, but more importantly, making the

paper better, content-wise and look-wise. I graduated cum laude in

1997 with an English degree and a philosophy minor. I moved to

Illinois that fall and worked for the now-defunct Copley Chicago

Newspapers in Aurora for about four months.

In February of 1998, I hit the big time and worked on the features

design desk of the Chicago Tribune. My title was art director, and I

had a one-year residency. I learned from some of the best visual

journalists in the country during that period of time.

The Vista prepared me for the creative challenges at the Tribune,

and the Tribune would ultimately prepare me for the mental challenges

of my next job at Times Community News.... After a phenomenal year in

the City with Broad Shoulders, I came back home to California and

began my TCN tenure in February 1999.

So what will you be doing in your new job?

I will be an associate art director at Ciudad magazine and will

mainly be responsible for designing the pages of the magazine.

What is Ciudad and who is its audience?

Ciudad is an exciting new project that will center on Latino

lifestyles and culture in Los Angeles and its neighboring

communities.

Unlike other magazines of its kind, it will be an English-language

product. The target demographic is Latino professionals between 20

and 50 who have been born and raised in the U.S., but the magazine

will have stories that appeal to everyone.

What have been some of your most memorable moments at the Pilot?

There have been many memorable news events during my tenure at the

Pilot. The first week I actually worked on the Pilot was the week

Brandon Wiener and Sierra Soto were killed when Steven Allen Abrams

drove his car onto the playground of a preschool in Costa Mesa. That

has stuck with me; watching the community go into shock, then rally

their spirit to help heal the damage that the terrible incident

caused. The newsroom was quite emotional that day: hearing

then-reporter Greg Risling talk about the reaction of the families,

the tears in the police officers’ eyes at the scene, then seeing Don

Leach’s photographs which were startling, that ... is the event that

has had the most effect on me.

A lot has happened, but I think the story of my tenure at the

Pilot has been the rise of Costa Mesa.

I read our Forum pages every week, and there are a lot of people

who complain about Costa Mesa for one reason or another, but as a

resident, I can honestly say I think the City Council and other city

agencies have really done a great job helping the community grow in a

positive direction. I think IKEA, the Harbor Center, The Lab ... and

the continued growth of South Coast Plaza were vital to this. I think

the City of the Arts initiative is wonderful, and I’m really proud to

live in a place where an organization like Share Our Selves can

thrive.

But the moments I cherish, the moments I really love, are the

small ones I’ve shared with co-workers: working on a headline,

finishing designing a page, making sure the paper got out every

night. There is a bond that happens while doing that that’s hard to

break. But ultimately, for the rest of my life I’ll always remember

the Pilot as the place I met my rock star of a wife, Alicia Lopez.

That’s the best gift any workplace has ever given me.

Some of your least memorable?

I think the biggest lesson I learned about community papers while

working at the Pilot is it’s never easy and it’s never perfect. You

do what you can with what you’re given, and it can all be taken away

at a moment’s notice.

You really learn what you’re made of when it suddenly dawns on you

that the impossible needs to get done, and you’re the one who has to

do it. So, I guess the least memorable moments for me are the ones

where you feel completely defeated and completely helpless in the

face of the routine stress and pressure of putting out a newspaper

every day: the grunts, the pangs, the d’ohs, the late-night

wonderings of ‘why am I doing this for a living?’ But those are the

moments that make you stronger, and even though they’re rough, I’m

glad they happened.

Any thoughts you’d like to leave the Pilot readers with?

It’s been a pleasure being here, it’s been a pleasure serving you,

and I’ve enjoyed working on this great newspaper. The staff really

believes in what we’re doing here, and [we] do our best to give you

the news you need to know, presented in a way that’s easy to

understand. We may falter, we may misstep, we may even fail, but know

that we always try, and in our minds, we always strive to do our

best.

Forgive us when we fall, cheer us when we succeed and know we’re

trying to do the same. This is, and always will be, your newspaper.

Pilot to the people, right on!

*

A quick Tom Johnson update:

Our publisher who, as we reported, received a new kidney from his

older brother Cliff, is now back at his Newport Beach home and is

resting up.

That’s great news for all of us, and it looks like all the prayers

and well wishes from the readers did the trick.

I know Tom appreciates every bit.

* TONY DODERO is the editor. He may be reached at (714) 966-4608

or by e-mail at tony.dodero@latimes.com.