Decades ago, hard-bitten newspaper reporters and editors were celebrated in witty plays and films. They were whip-smart, jaded “muckrakers,” passionately dedicated to “getting the story.” These memorable characters have almost disappeared from our cultural landscape since the movie “Spotlight” came out ten years ago.
That’s because their real-world counterparts are nearing extinction as well. In recent years, the number of employed newspaper journalists has dropped by more than half as thousands of papers have folded or shrunk to a whisper of their former selves. A journalist who covered Pasadena schools for the Star-News recalls the paper once employed more than 40 full-time reporters and editors covering community news. Today, there is one editor and one reporter consistently “covering” a world-class community of nearly 140,000 people.
Kevin Uhrich, who passed away this weekend, was once one of those Star-News reporters. His curiosity, sardonic sense of humor and opinionated observations made him a “must read” for those following city government news. He provided local readers not only a ringside seat to City Council meeting drama, but insight into what was going on behind the scenes. He was embarking on what turned out to be a lifetime mission to cover this complicated town.
Kevin went on to edit the Pasadena Weekly – although that doesn’t do him justice. His dominance of the paper was akin to the legendary Harold Ross years at the New Yorker – he personified the feisty and fearless independence of the paper, seeking to make it an indispensable guide to life in Pasadena.
Like so many of those fictional protagonists, Kevin lived large. He struggled with his appetites and cultivated a Buddhist practice to tame them. But as Lincoln sardonically observed when a group from Congress came to complain about General Grant’s drinking, “Find out what kind of whiskey he drinks so I can order a barrel of it for my other generals.” Kevin smoked, drank and ran on the adrenaline fuel of chasing the stories behind the stories.
It’s easy to be sentimental about roisterer personalities like Kevin and forget the pain they are treating. Andre Coleman, who followed him from the Star-News to the Weekly, has a beautiful tribute to his friend in Pasadena Now, which Coleman now edits.
I was never personally close to Kevin in the brotherhood of fellow journalists – I was someone he reported on and there were times when his insouciance was infuriating. But one could not help but see and appreciate how devoted Kevin was to his craft – and he came to know this community in a way perhaps no one will ever again replicate in our distracted lives of attention-deficit democracy.
He is gone – and so passes an era. Only Coleman and Lawrence Wilson (who somehow persists at the Star-News) represent the time when reporters and editors had the time and resources to truly know their town and the passion to share that knowledge with their readers. We still have excellent writers, reporters, editors and outlets (like this one) for strong local writing and reporting – but Pasadena has a cloudier mirror to hold up to see its true reflection.
The “good old days” were not some golden age. There were blindspots and institutional biases that are painful to recall. Then, as now, careerism, advertising, public relations spin, and the public’s appetite for shallow sensation blighted the elusive search for truth. But it’s a shame there is no robust venue for someone like Kevin Uhrich to find a personal mission in helping the citizens of a place understand the landscape they share and the strangers they ought to know.
That’s a loss for all of us.
Correction: Uhrich’s death was Friday night, not Saturday as originally reported.
