So Why Did They Mess/Miss With My Sacramento Bee?

So the student of a journalism teacher friend of mine asked me to be a source for her research paper about the re-design of the Sacramento Bee, the major-metro daily I read religiously and where I do some (increasingly rare) on-call copy editing. The Bee didn't ask for my input on its recent print redesign, but for what it's worth, here it is ...  

Did the Sacramento Bee serve as inspiration for the Granite Bay Gazette's design?  What did you like most about the previous design and organization of the Bee?  

Not really. I have a long history with broadsheet newspapers as a designer and editor. I'd say most of the inspiration came from the Columbia Missourian, where I was the assistant sports editor and sports editor back in the dark ages about 25 years ago. But we've taken inspiration from the Bee, the Reno Gazette-Journal, the Fresno Bee and lots of other broadsheets over the years. 

And here's the thing about design. People get used to whatever you throw at them. Soon, they don't notice the design, except for when some kind of design glitch makes it more difficult for them to access content. So what I liked about the old Bee was what all Bee readers liked about the old Bee -- it was familiar, I knew where things were, the only surprises tended to be pleasant ones ... a spiffy cover page, for example, or an amazing photo.

If the Bee was an inspiration for your paper, do you plan on updating your paper?  

Nope. We're always considering small tweaks, but nothing major. Like I said, readers like what's familiar. Plus, I'm an old fart, and I'm pretty set in my ways.

How do you feel about the new changes to the Bee?  (For example:  How do you like the use of white space?  The length of the news stories?  The toplines/summaries at the beginning?  The new approach to reporting?)  Are there any specific changes you really like or don't like?

So far, I'm more of a critic than a fan. (But like I said, ask me in six months and see if I actually can distinguish more than a couple of changes without pulling out this old email.) I think the white space is creative, if jarring. My teacher friends who are not journalists and yet still read the printed version of the Bee (maybe three people, total -- a different story there altogether) feel like they're getting ripped off. The page is already super narrow, reduced a few years ago to save paper costs. And now they're running a bunch of "empty space," in the vernacular of my non-journalist friends, that means they're getting even less news than before. They hate that. 

I totally understand the concept of "breathing space" in design, using "nothing" to create "something." But the fact that the Bee is doing this on every story now takes away the potential for white space to powerfully attract the attention of readers. So ... too much white space, IMHO. 

Length of stories is probably something readers notice least. Most readers don't finish stories anyway. The research is quite clear, for example, that only a small minority of readers complete stories that jump to a new page. (But we're jumping stories anyway on the Gazette, because not doing so will kill design creativity faster than almost anything else you can do.) I haven't been especially bothered by shorter stories. I see they're shorter on the inside A-section pages, in particular, but the whole A section, after page A3, was a skim for me and most readers anyway. So now, the Bee editors are doing my skimming for me and actually getting more short summaries into the paper than they did before. So you can actually argue that there is more news in the A section than there used to be, although it's more summaries and fewer full stories. 

Toplines and summaries aren't a big problem for me, although as a copy editor, I can tell you they're a pain in the butt to have to create. I haven't worked any Bee copy desk shifts since the design changes went into effect, but I'm expecting my summer shifts at the Bee will be filled with a certain amount of dread over having to write the equivalent of five or six headlines/deckheads/subheads per story instead of the two or three we used to write.

I don't really sense a huge change in the way the Bee is reporting stories. I actually asked two of my teacher friends this question at a dinner last night, and they also said they didn't sense any significant changes in story-telling technique. The exception is sports, because the whole shooting match is wrapping up earlier, so they can't get late games into the newspaper and they've decided to go with a much more feature-focus approach. Which frankly works. Everyone gets their results on ESPN anyway, so why waste ink on scores that are 12-15 hours old by the time I pick up my newspaper? Instead, tell me something I don't already know, in an engaging, interesting way.

On that note, my favorite change so far at the Bee (and it's not design, but it happened at about the same time) is Andy Furillo as the new Bee sports columnist. I used to love to copy edit Andy's crime stories, because he was a creative guy, and they gave him a lot of rein to be clever and compelling. Switching him to sports has been a breath of fresh air. He's a hell of a writer, and he's an excellent reporter. That's a combination the Bee has been missing since Mark Kriedler left nearly a decade ago. Since then, the Bee sports section has been boring me with Ailene Voison's overwrought prose, and with an occasional Marcos Breton return to sports that is inevitably designed to somehow make me feel guilty about something. 

Furillo, on the other hand, has just been terrific. Check out his piece today, for example, on Barry Zito -- a wonderul column highlighting Zito's struggles in his major-league baseball comeback attempt that is just beautifully constructed and executed. 

Sorry ... got sidetracked. The one design change I like least is the huge color splash, with reverse text for the name of the section. It reminds me of USA Today, and that product is one I hold in especially low regard. The color is disjointed, disconnected and distracting to me. I think it shouts "Seventh Grade Newsletter," not major metro for the capital of the largest state in the country. 

The sports coverage is a lot different than before.  What are your thoughts on that?   

I noted some of my sports thoughts above. I will say that my son, who is a varsity baseball player, is irritated by the lack of box scores for major-league baseball. But again, that's information you can get elsewhere. He's adjusting. So am I.

What do you think about the readability of the paper?  Is it harder or easier to navigate?  

It's probably harder for me and everyone now, because it's new. But we'll all get used to it. I told Joe Davidson, the prep writer for the Bee and a friend of mine, that newspaper redesigns result in lots of vocal opposition from a few critics, a smattering of vocal support ... and mostly silence. But ask readers six months from now what specifics they'll remember about the redesign, and they won't be able to come up with anything. (Except for the color. Because that really sucks.)

Do you think that the redesigned paper is geared toward a different readership than the original Bee?  (print vs online reader, younger vs older generations)

I know that's what they're trying to do. You youngsters don't pick up the printed version of the Bee. Maybe you'll get enticed by the color. It's sort of like Sunny the Wonderdog on my living room floor ... she's not paying much attention as I write this, but if something catches her eye -- "Squirrel!!!" -- she's up and at 'em. Maybe a giant splash of red spot color is your generation's "Squirrel!"

Do you think that these changes are going to be beneficial in the long run for the Bee?  

In terms of getting and keeping readers? No. The Bee, and all print newspapers, have a much bigger problem with readership that tweaking design is not going to solve. Readers are jumping overboard in droves, and the industry has not figured out how to monetize online content to the degree it needs to to be able to pay for the costs of serious newsgathering. I mean, it's nice that you get a byline in your school's newspaper, plus camaraderie with your peers, and academic credit, and the opportunity to exercise your critical-thinking skills in ways that are much more engaging than the typical five-paragraph literary analysis you are often asked to write. But some day, you're going to want to rent an apartment, make a car payment and eat something other than cat food for dinner. The Huntington Post model -- "Hey, people will write for us for FREE!" -- is unsustainable. But people are used to getting content for free online, and newspapers made the mistake of providing that content for free for many years. Now, as some newspapers try to get readers to pay for online access to help pay for the high costs of newsgathering, they're finding their readers simply won't take the bait. 

My best friend is a history teacher at Oak Ridge (where I used to teach a long time ago). Like me, he was a HUGE Bee reader. Every day he'd devour the newspaper, and we often had arcane but incredibly satisfying conversations about all kinds of topics because we'd both read the same stories in the Bee (and elsewhere).

Today, he's killed his subscription and only reads the Bee online, and he doesn't pay a dime for the privilege. He gets full access with a school-based subscription intended to get students to read the Bee online, but teachers can also take advantage of the deal. 

I told him last night at dinner that they'll have to pry my printed newspaper out of my cold, dead fingers ... and he just smiled. 

Because that's exactly what he used to say.

Eulogy for Kenneth W. Grubaugh, Aug. 10, 1927 – Feb. 3, 2015

We buried my dad today. I had the privilege of delivering the eulogy. I hope I honored my dad with my words ...

Eulogy for Dad

Kenneth Wayne Grubaugh was born on Aug. 10, 1927 in Van Wert County, Ohio, the sixth and youngest child, and the fourth son, of William Porter Grubaugh and Ada McClelland Grubaugh.

He attended schools in that rural, Depression-era community, graduating from Union High in the spring of 1945. He enlisted in the U.S. Army, and he was almost certainly going to be part of a U.S. invasion force of Japan, but he turned 18 just a day after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, and the war ended a week later. So when he was mustered in to the Army, he ended up serving 18 months stateside.

He got out of the Army and went to college at Bowling Green State University in Ohio on the GI Bill, and then he transferred to Georgia Tech, where he completed a degree in architectural engineering and participated in ROTC. He later completed a master’s degree in industrial engineering at Stanford University. 

He accepted a commission as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, eventually serving for 29 years and advancing to the rank of colonel. He was trained as a jet pilot, he was stationed in post-war Japan, he flew combat and reconnaissance missions in Korea and Vietnam, he was a graduate of the elite Air Force Experimental Flight Test School at Edwards AFB in Southern California and served as a test pilot, he was a candidate for the Mercury space program, and he was a leader in Air Force contracts and procurement. He was the recipient of various military commendations and awards, including most notably the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, several Distinguished Flyin­­­­­­­­g Crosses recognizing his 168 combat missions in Korea and Vietnam, and Air Medals. He was stationed at various locations in the U.S. and abroad, with his final assignment being as the Director of Procurement at McClellan AFB, Sacramento.

After retiring from the Air Force and moving to Davis in 1978, he worked as the purchasing agent for Yolo County for three years, and as the general services administrator for the city of Davis for two years. After fully taking up retirement, he served as a volunteer for many years with the UC Davis Friends of the Arboretum, and he was a volunteer set designer and builder with Winters Community Theatre.

He met Lou Ellen Gatlin, a beautiful young journalist at the Arizona Republic newspaper, in 1955 in Phoenix, and they married in January 1956. They were married for 59 years and had four children, all of whom are here today – Karl, our late son and brother Kyle, next to whom he will be buried, Ann and Jim – and five grandchildren – Lauren, Connor and Garrett Grubaugh, and Kerry and Kyle Baker.

Those are the quick, unvarnished biographical details of my father’s life, but if you knew my dad, you know he was so much more than can be conveyed with a rapid recitation of the highlights of his life.

If you knew Ken Grubaugh, you know that he loved people, and he loved laughter, and he loved telling and listening to the stories that knit people and laughter together. I would be terribly remiss if I didn’t take a few moments this afternoon to share some of the stories that we’ve laughed and cried re-telling in the last few days. But I want to start by bringing up someone else to tell a couple of stories.

We asked Chuck Walker to share a few of his memories of my dad. Chuck’s older brother, John Walker, is married to my oldest cousin, Mary Altier, and almost 20 years ago, when Chuck was moving out to Davis to take a history professorship at UCD, Mary called my dad and asked if he would be willing to pick up Chuck’s dog at the airport and take care of him for a couple of days while Chuck was driving his family out from Chicago. That started a two-decades-long relationship in which Chuck became, to my dad, like another son.

Chuck …

Thank you Chuck. There are so many stories to tell, so many sweet memories.

My mom realized Ken Grubaugh was quite a find when they met in the summer of 1955. Dad was stationed in New Mexico, but along with several other AF pilots, he was visiting Phoenix for two weeks of training at Luke AFB. Some of my mom’s girlfriends knew some of the Air Force guys, and they put together a group dinner that ended up being a kind of giant blind date for both my mom and my dad and some of the others. Mom and dad were paired with others that night, but they were introduced, and before the night was over, my dad had asked my mom to dinner for the following night. After that first date, my mom told her mother: “I don’t know if he’s coming back, but if he does, and if he asks me to marry him, I will.” My grandmother was appalled – “You don’t even KNOW him!” But mom knew a good man when she saw him, and after six months and a dozen or so more dates, they were married in January 1956.

Dad and his brothers Glover, Boyd and Beryl all served as Air Force pilots, and their combat missions stretched across WWII  and two regional wars in Asia, from Sicily to France to China to Korea to Vietnam. He was proud of his military career, but we’ve been talking this week about how he never told anything but funny war stories. A few weeks ago, for example, he told Connor about being in the back of a truck with a bunch of other U.S. pilots in Saigon, inching across the city in horrific traffic, when a rider on a motorbike decided to slide past the traffic by going up on the sidewalk. What the motorbike driver didn’t know, however, was there was a very large, uncovered manhole. Dad said the motorbike was zipping right past the Air Force truck and all of a sudden … he just  disappeared. The U.S. pilots all stood and cheered.

My dad was very good at the balancing act of fatherhood. I’ve heard it said that some fathers are like quarterbacks – they have to be in charge. And some fathers are like running backs – they want the focus and the glory and the spotlight to be on them. Ken Grubaugh was a lineman. He opened up holes for his family and for his friends, helping them see and exercise their opportunities, to play out their passions, and then he smiled and cheered as they ran to daylight. My mom told me this week that dad managed to somehow skip out on his own military retirement ceremony, because he just wasn’t comfortable with the spotlight focused on him. He was all about others, not himself.

I was a competitive swimmer in high school and college. I remember being at one of my first-ever winter swim meets, and we ran into one of his colleagues from work as we were leaving. My dad asked for my second-place medal, and he showed it off to his friend and his friend’s young daughter. Then he handed it back to me, and he patted me on the back. I was just a rookie swimmer in a tiny little swim meet, but I was just so encouraged by his pride in my small accomplishment. Like a football lineman, he opened up holes for us, and then he applauded when we went running through.

But my dad was certainly no pushover. A couple of years later, some of Kyle’s friends were TPing our house. (For those who don’t know, TPing a house involves throwing many, many rolls of toilet paper – dozens, maybe more than 100 – up into the trees and across all the bushes of someone’s yard. It’s an expression of endearment and friendship, really, but someone has to clean it up.) So these friends of Kyle’s are TPing our house at like 1 in the morning, I think for the third or fourth time in the previous few months, and my dad hears something outside that wakes him up. So he throws on some sweat pants and a T-shirt and bathrobe, quietly walks out to the front door and then BOOM, blows out the front door in hot pursuit of the perps. Kids are scattering all over the neighborhood, jumping into cars and peeling off. But one kid – Nelson Licky – was either too slow or too stunned to get his car started and rolling in time, and my dad came running up alongside and grabbed his antenna and stared him down. Nelson, wide-eyed, started to accelerate, my dad held on – and the antenna snapped off in his hand. For good measure, he whapped the roof of Nelson’s car a couple of times with the broken antenna as the vehicle finally went careening down the street. And then, the next school day, my dad had Kyle deliver Nelson a little wrapped package. In it? The broken antenna, complete with a bow and a little card – to Nelson, with love, from the Grubaughs.

My dad was exceptionally smart. Last Monday night, he was talking to himself in the middle of the night, and my mom woke up.

“Nary a one,” he said. “Nary a one … nary a … nary.”

Ken, my mom asked, what are you saying?

“I’m doing the crossword puzzle,” he said. In his head, he was doing the crossword puzzle.  

My son Connor, who came home from Scotland to be here today, remembers how my dad taught him and his brother Garrett to play solitaire, cribbage and chess, and how he just had a brilliantly analytical and quick-thinking mind for those kinds of games. The version of solitaire my dad taught is so difficult to win – the odds are so astronomical – that Connor says he’s never actually won. I don’t know if my dad ever won, either. But for my dad, that was part of the reason for playing in the first place. He taught my boys how to play cribbage, and he loved the quick analysis and mathematical calculations the game requires. Again, Connor said he never beat my dad – but that also wasn’t the point. It was about the joy my dad experienced teaching his grandsons a simple game that allowed them to spend time together.

Years ago, he coached my cousin Melissa through a college algebra class. When Melissa got stuck on a particularly tough problem, she asked my dad to help her work through it. My dad pulled out an old college math textbook, figured out how to tackle the problem, and then Melissa went to class. When the professor asked her to show her solution on the board, he looked at it and insisted on knowing how she did it the way she did it. Melissa admitted she’d gotten my dad’s help. The solution, the professor said, was done using a technique he’d never seen before, and could Melissa please ask my dad if she could borrow that book so he could see how it was done?

Dad was also pretty financially astute. I think all of us have leaned on him over the years for tax advice, investment advice, and the like. He was also pretty financially conservative and frugal. ... OK, he was very frugal. He was incredibly generous, but he was very frugal. Jim jokes that he’d never buy anything other than the cheapest $1 flashlight, which of course lasted about a week, so Jim finally bought him a nice $25 maglight, which he used for many years – although he still had a bunch of cheap plastic flashlights sitting in a drawer. When Neal Baker, Ann’s husband, first started dating Ann, my dad sat him down to play chess and handed him an Old Milwaukee beer, which is, let’s just say, not the finest quality beer in the world, and then he explained to Neal that all beer’s the same, so you’re just wasting your money if you buy the expensive stuff.

When we lived in Mountain View, and dad was going to Stanford, we had a gopher problem. Dad tried smoking them out, he tried flooding them out, everything he could think of … and nothing worked. Then one day, when my Aunt Jan was coming to our house, she saw my dad on the roof, taking out gophers one at a time … with a .22 caliber rifle. Hey, why pay an exterminator if you don’t have to …

And we won’t mention the BB gun he might have used in violation of Davis city ordinances to chase away squirrels from his backyard.

Dad really was a master craftsman, an artisan. He was an architectural engineer –  he designed and supervised the building of his house in Davis – and he loved to tinker. My sister Annie mentioned one time that a friend of hers had made a play stove for someone else’s daughter, and that was something Kerry might like. Next thing you know, at Christmas, there it was, a painstakingly painted, beautifully hand-made wooden toy kitchen stove. Dad made a small wooden playhouse for my kids that’s still standing in our yard. We all got beautiful oak casserole dish holders for Christmas one year that my dad crafted out of scrap lumber. He did all kinds of projects over at Chuck’s house.

Dad just loved bringing joy and encouragement to others. Garrett and Kerry both said one of their favorite memories of my dad was Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. We’d open presents – and my dad always made sure we had a plastic trash bag handy to immediately discard the torn wrapping paper … he was an engineer, after all – but then mom and dad would briefly disappear to another room, only to return bearing plastic bags filled with more special gifts for the kids and grandkids. What Garrett remembers most of all is my dad calling out, “Here comes SantaGramps! Here comes SantaGramps!”

Lauren remembers staying overnight a few times at Grandma and Grandpa’s house when she was little, or when Grandma and Grandpa stayed overnight at our house. The grandkids would get up in the morning to English muffins and scrambled eggs, and then Grandma and Grandpa would ask for “help” from the grandkids on the crossword puzzle. My dad and mom both made all my kids feel like they were so smart, that their help was so invaluable. He was all about supporting and encouraging others.

As we’ve been looking through pictures this week, we were struck by how many featured my dad and young children – his children, his grandchildren, Chuck’s kids, many others. My brother Jim said dad’s gentleness with children was one of the things he most remembers about him, how he got down on their level and connected with them. In one photo, my dad is asleep on his stomach on the floor, and Jim, who was maybe 2 years old at the time, is straddled across my dad’s back – and also sound asleep. Fast forward to Jim’s graduation from San Diego State, and there’s a picture of Jim on his motorcycle, zipping out to an outer parking lot – with my dad sitting behind him, hanging on with one hand, a big thumbs up to my mother with the other.

My mom reminded me, over the last year, that my dad wasn’t afraid of dying, that he had made peace with the possibility of an instantaneous death when he was a 25-year-old fighter pilot. Fighter pilots are all supposed to be fatalistic stoics – that’s the stereotype. When you strap yourself into the seat of a fighter jet, with bullets and rockets potentially coming at you, there are a million things that can go wrong, many of which are completely out of your control. But my father was not a fatalist, and he was certainly no stoic. Instead, he was quietly faithful. You do everything you can to prepare for all possible eventualities, you put your faith in your equipment and your crew and your training, and then the stuff you can’t control, you leave up to God.

He used to love to sing the old hymns when we went to church as a family. All of us remember, as kids, his talent for singing harmony. He wasn’t at all preachy about his faith. It was very private. But it was real. You do your part, and then you let God do his.

Another stereotype about military men is that they make demanding and dictatorial taskmasters. “When I say jump, you say how high,” with a finger waving in your face … but that was the antithesis of my father. My wife said one of her favorite things about my dad is how he would always tell her, at the end of one of our visits, “You’re doing great – just keep doing what you’re doing.”

When Lauren and Connor went to college, they both started getting letters with a short, encouraging note from my dad, a small check for some extra spending money, and then some New Yorker magazine cartoons that my dad would cut out and add some pithy commentary. In one he sent to Connor, a couple of Visigoths are about to storm a castle, and one has turned to the other and says, “I’m just in this for the retirement plan.” My dad had added a title to the cartoon: “Poli Sci 101”

Even last Monday afternoon, after he’d taken a serious turn for the worse and was just a day away from dying, when he saw my wife Tanya come into his bedroom, he said, “Oh, you were supposed to be in your office today … how is your new office? Tell me about it.” Tanya was scheduled to see her first clients in her new counseling office in Gold River that afternoon, and here’s my dad, critically ill and dying, asking HER about HER  office. “It’s so beautiful!” she told him. “It’s so pretty and so calming. In fact, Karl says it so nice, even he wants to come over and talk to me.”

“Well,” dad said, “tell him to bring his checkbook!”

We all just roared with laughter. And while I didn’t see it, because the room was a bit dark, I can guarantee he said it with a classic little Ken Grubaugh twinkle in his eye. He was a day away from dying, but he was still focused first on others, and on how they were doing, and then he couldn’t help but offer a quick, funny little quip that got us all laughing and thinking about something other than his current predicament, if only for a moment.

I loved that about my dad. He loved people, he loved laughter, and he loved knitting them together.

More than 30 years ago, my dad gave a moving tribute and  eulogy for my cousin Paul Altier at a ceremony here in Davis. He asked the rhetorical question: How do you measure a man’s life?

I think my dad reflected on that question – how do you measure a man’s life? – over the course of this last year. Like all of us, I think he wanted to know he was leaving a legacy, that he would be remembered. So let me close by quoting from his obituary, which he helped to write before he died:

“He is loved and honored by his family and will be remembered for his steadfast love and loyalty, for his outstanding example as a loving husband, father and grandfather, and for his pride, support and regard for all his family, near and far.”

That was the measure of his life, and that’s why we will never forget him.

* * *

Kenneth Wayne Grubaugh.

Beloved son and brother.

Beloved husband.

Beloved father and grandfather.

Beloved brother-in-law, father-in-law and uncle.

Beloved friend.

He lived a good life. He was a good man.

Goodbye Dad. We love you.