The joy of newspapering

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
The joy of newspapering				March 12, 2005

I’ve always liked Gazette editor Rusty Carter. He’s a big guy, though totally unthreatening, with an infectious laugh and a tremendous sense of humor. He also knows his stuff and, as a result, writes a damned good sports column.

So I rather looked forward to last Saturday evening, when Rusty and I would represent the Gazette at the Virginia Press Association’s annual journalism awards banquet at the Waterside Marriott in Norfolk. John Harvey was supposed to be there too, but evidently he was working on his next award by covering 25 different sports events in one day. Publisher W.C. O’Donovan also won an award, but he was out of the country on a goodwill tour. He was attempting to explain to befuddled Bahamians the influence of Nietzsche on Del. Melanie Rapp’s incisive political theories.

Having attended many a convention while I was teaching, I wasn’t surprised to find that, when we arrived at the Marriott, there was a lively group of journalists milling about in the lobby. They were heavily engaged in what is fashionably called a cash bar, with the emphasis on cash. I won’t say that the prices were exorbitant, but I could buy a 12-pack of beer at the Food Lion for what they were charging for a small bottle of Bud Lite. But, the more you get into all this, the easier it is to pull out the twenties and have another swig or two.

It was really the banquet for which we came, and at 6:30 on the dot the doors to a huge dining room were opened and we all nudged our way to our assigned tables. Rusty and I were seated at a table with three charming award winners from the Tidewater Review.

The meal itself was marvelous, and, according to the menu, all very French. I have always found French a difficult language to deal with, and it is to my great regret that chefs insist on embellishing their creations with hoity-toity-sounding French names.

Thus we had delicious sea bass smothered in something that I thought was called bouse de boubou. But that can’t be right, since “bouse” is French for “dung,” which is hardly what you would want to slather on your sea bass. Or, maybe the combination of the bouse with the untranslatable boubou is what produced the succulent, tangy taste. Given the fact that the French eat snails, anything is possible.

Our beef loin was enhanced by a sauce de maison, which I assume means “house gravy.” Calling it house gravy would obviously make it so pedestrian as to render it inedible.

The piece de resistance ironically had no French name. No, it was a vegetable called “aspiration broccoli.” Why they call what looked like three very tiny thin stalks of asparagus aspiration broccoli is known only to the loopy chef who coined the name. A friend suggested that, whatever this veggie was, it aspired, in good Aristotelian fashion, to become real broccoli. .

For dessert we were presented with a gateau de chocolat avec creme, which turned out to be a hunk of deliciously oozy chocolate cake garnished with a squirt of foofer-pumped whipped cream.

Then came the presentation of the awards. Now you have to remember that there were what seemed like thousands of newspapers represented at this orgy. They in turn employ even more thousands of people who are getting awards in every category under the sun.

There are awards for graphics, design, editorial writing, sports writing, headline writing, column writing, front-page layout, convergence and a host of other stuff. My favorite, however, is the category called “spot,” though I have no idea what that means. There are awards for spot news writing, spot sports writing, spot photography, spots on the wall, spots before your eyes and spots on your shirt, of which I had plenty as a result of dribbling the bouse de boubou and the sauce de maison.

Because of the large size of its circulation, the Gazette is in what’s called Category 4 in the menagerie of non-daily papers. This meant that Rusty and I had to sit through the presentation of awards to scores of smaller papers in three categories before they got to us. Most of these papers I’d never heard of, like the Floyd County Floogle, the Deltaville Dude News and the Wytheville Witch Chronicles. They were all there and getting numerous awards for all those spot things.

Finally they got to the Gazette, and Rusty and I hoofed it up to the stage and sauntered down the runway, while our names and all the Gazette awards were flashed on two humongous power point screens. The only problem was that the woman handing out the plaques at the end of the runway had no idea who we were, and so I was presented with John Harvey’s award for sports writing.

But that’s fine. Now I can look forward to doing a whole new series of columns about the Jamestown Wolverines and the Lafayette Cornhuskers. If I make a mess of it, I always have my friend and colleague Rusty Carter to bail me out.