It never occurred to me that one day I might be at a loss for words, but here we are. This will be my last column for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram after nearly 20 years, almost 1,000 columns and of those only six were rejected. Those numbers meant a great deal to me; they showed the Star-Telegram and staff believed in my work, even when they probably weren’t crazy about the column they were about to publish.
To explain why this column is ending, I must take you back to why it came to exist. It was the time of 9/11; Art de la Torre, then running the newspaper’s classified section, wanted something of an automotive nature to draw more readers to that section. It was my friend David El Attrache, now GM at Huggins Honda, who suggested me to write a weekly column. I had just received the Gerald R. Loeb Award from UCLA’s Anderson School of Business for outstanding business journalism, so that seemed to make sense. I knew Art well and liked him. Yet I doubt sincerely that my columns were what they expected when he invited me aboard; I still see the automobile industry as being integral and intertwined to everything in the world’s economic-political system.
After all, now looking back after 18 years, does anyone think we would have gone to war in Iraq if the world didn’t need their oil fields brought online? Frankly, if cars didn’t exist, we wouldn’t need that oil. I wrote numerous columns here and at BusinessWeek.com about how speculation — not market fundamentals — was driving oil prices through the roof in early 2008. The Star-Telegram stuck with me in spite of puffed up threats of legal action for those columns.
But then the world’s financial system blew up, because it wasn’t just oil that was disconnected from market realities, it was the housing market too, and the reinsurance market and credit default swap markets. The 2008 Meltdown happened because business fundamentals — real values of assets and margins — were so distorted that no amount of money thrown at it could keep that bubble inflated. So one day it’s threats and the next it’s the Columbia Journalism Review debating if those columns helped change reporting on Wall Street speculators.
Over the decades I’ve had numerous individuals handle my columns and every one of them was wonderful to work with. I would fight with my own personal editor, Angie Richardson, more on any given column. But it’s all because everyone wanted the best.
Recently two columns went missing, but not of malice prepense. My current editorial contact with the paper was on vacation, so one column went to another McClatchy paper for approval and that editor didn’t care for it. I believed it was simply an oversight that it wasn’t published, so I didn’t write another column for the following week. It was simply a comedy of errors, the first such in 19 years.
But things do change; the Star-Telegram asked me to continue, but pen a much shorter column. And in the past we have in fact made the column slightly smaller, put part of it in the paper and the rest online — a downsizing made necessary by the modern realities of print news. However, I’m a storyteller, not a columnist. So I declined their kind offer to stay on board.
Now there are things you need to know. While it never paid much, I started refusing payment for my work over a decade ago. I could not stand the thought of being paid when our hometown newspaper was working so hard to make sure it accomplished its mission statement. I loved writing the columns, but not at the financial expense of kids who wanted to become journalists.
Second, last year I donated twice to the fund to keep the Star-Telegram vibrant, alive, and informing its readers of what they need to know as good citizens. This newspaper and those who’ve served it built our town and made it what it is today. If you love Fort Worth, Amon Carter and generations of his Star-Telegram family deserve a great deal of the credit.
I will continue doing the radio show and the reviews at Fox Four for the foreseeable future. I will miss writing this column tremendously, but never forget the support I received from the Star-Telegram and its readers over the decades — support for which I will always be grateful.
-30- Forever
Ed Wallace is a recipient of the Gerald R. Loeb Award for business journalism, bestowed by the Anderson School of Business at UCLA, and hosts the top-rated talk show, Wheels, 8:00 to 1:00 Saturdays on 570 KLIF AM. Email: [email protected]
