Slm-bill-m
Love this photograph of P-D columnist Bill McClellan, shot by Wesley Law and published in our forthcoming July 2009 issue. Here's an excerpt from Jeannette Cooperman's three-page interview with McClellan, in which he talks about the future of print journalism ... and the closest he's come to getting fired:
It was back when Mr. Pulitzer was alive. According to his bio, it was because of something I’d written about Ed Whitacre [Jr., then chairman of Southwestern Bell]. I do remember Whitacre being furious and people thinking it was a cheap-shot column. They were holding a fundraiser for the United Way, and I wrote that they pulled the drapes so the homeless people couldn’t look in. But my recollection of when he tried to fire me was when I’d written that Ted Kennedy was an unlikely champion of women who were being sexually harassed. Mr. Pulitzer was furious. He liked Ted Kennedy—and he never really liked me. He thought my column was not dignified enough to represent the paper.
So how did you escape?
The bosses told him, “It doesn’t represent the paper any more than the horoscope does. It’s just a column.” And to convince him, they wanted to put a line under the column title: “On His Own” [later changed to “On My Own”]. They asked if I minded. I said, “As opposed to getting fired? Put whatever you want: ‘Drunk again.’ ‘Disregard this.’ ‘Probably more lies.’”
Were you ever tempted to quit?
The only time I really toyed with the idea was during the era of [former editor] Cole Campbell. Things got so crazy. I talked to Mary—since she’s a dentist, I thought maybe we could go to an Indian reservation. She’s from the Southwest, and she could work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and I could hike around. She looked into it, and we even broached the idea to the kids. But in the end, it was just something I was musing about on days I was disturbed at the paper.
Read the full interview only in the print mag, hitting subscribers now and newsstands in the coming 5 days. -- Stephen Schenkenberg
