Long before
Twitter, there was Pa Watsonville. And his close relations Tulare Tim, Cuzzin
Conejo, and Shasta Sam. They were constructs of the newspaper group I used to
work for back in the days when newspapers were more dominant forces in their
communities.
The group
(it was always “group,” never “chain”) was John P. Scripps newspapers, which,
at the time, owned seven daily newspapers and a number of weeklies concentrated
on the West Coast. None of them were in major markets, and the largest probably
topped out at a circulation of 40,000.
Pa
Watsonville, who was well established when I came to work for the newspaper in
that town in 1972, was part of what I came to perceive as the group’s attempt
to encourage editors to be folksy and informal. Five days a week the paper’s
editorial page featured a full-out editorial, but on Saturdays the space was
given over to Pa Watsonville, as it was to the previously mentioned characters
in other towns.
Commentary for Short Attention Spans
Each week,
Pa Watsonville would toss out six to ten short opinions in that space, each one
signed “Pa Watsonville.” They ranged from a word of praise for someone who had
done a good job to a skewer for someone who hadn’t. True, there was no
140-character limit, but because they were short, they were much better read
than the editorials.
The idea
was to be punchy, pungent, and tellingly funny whenever possible. The editor
would generally write them down as they came to him (it was always a him)
during the week and struggle to come up with a few to fill the space on Friday
morning.
Writing
those pieces wasn’t easy and demanded a certain amount of skill. For all the
talk about sound bites, the fact is that a lot of TV and radio commentators get
by on out-bellowing the other people on the show. Print is a cooler medium, and
you can’t do that. A good item had to be succinct, include enough context to
help out those who hadn’t read the news story (a high percentage of readers,
I’m sure), and end with a flourish.
A Knack for the Thrust
During the
two decades I worked at the paper, I was one of four people from my cohort to
serve as editor. A couple of them, I think, wrote better editorials than I did,
but I’d like to believe I did a better job than any of the others (and they all
did good jobs) at Pa Watsonville.
If correct
in that belief, I’d have to attribute it to my wool-gathering mind. I’ve always
had the writer’s mentality that views the world through a lens that focuses on
every experience and bit of information as possible material for further use.
It enabled me to make juxtapositions others wouldn’t have and that worked well
in that sort of short, hard-hitting commentary. It constituted a knack for the
thrust, if you will.
I could no
doubt dig up some examples, but I doubt they’d wear well with age. Like Johnny
Carson’s monologues on the old Tonight Show, they were rooted in a specific
time and place. The context would surely be missing, and, owing to how the
internet has changed our way of viewing things, so might other elements of the
craft. But if the jokes didn’t last, they were good while they lasted, and
coming up with them was fun while it lasted. No regrets here.
