JOHN DIXON’S JOURNALISM: DOING YOUR BEST TO TELL THE TRUTH
By Dave Wielenga
John Dixon, former sports editor of the Press-Telegram—actually, the Independent, Press-Telegram during most of his service—is remembered with vibrant accuracy in today’s paper with a piece reported and written by Jim McCormack, the man who succeeded Dixon as sports editor in 1980.
It’s probably obvious that I’m choosing my words carefully—or I should say, especially carefully, because I am always agonizing over vocabulary because of John Dixon’s relentless emphasis on accuracy. It’s just one of many ways Dixon’s journalistic influence became my journalistic instinct.
Dixon was I,P-T sports editor in 1972, when his prep sports editor, Gary Ellis, sent letters to local high school newspapers seeking student journalists to help with local sports coverage. I applied and soon afterward jumped from junior sports editor of the Bellflower High School Blade to 16-year-old staffer on a major metropolitan daily newspaper … that’s what the P-T was in those days. I stayed for 23 years, and had just turned 40 in 1995 when I accepted a staff-slashing buyout that emptied the institution of more than 1,000 years of experience and made it irresistible to newspaper vulture William Dean Singleton.
John Dixon was long retired by then. When we periodically got together and talk turned to the Press-Telegram, he would do little more than shake his head sadly.
McCormack was one of Dixon’s protégés, and that is obvious in what he writes in today’s Press-Telegram. Rather than composing a tribute, McCormack reports the truth—and by telling the truth, and choosing the very best words to tell it, he enables John’s life to speak for itself. Because of the kind of man Dixon was, that life serves as its own tribute.
I frequently worry about the state of journalism, which is so often discussed in terms of its economic model, its technology, its control by huge corporations or its dismantling by heavily leveraged raiders, its invasion through blogs and websites by the half-baked, the self-aggrandizing and the wicked or mischievous firestarters. Maybe those are good reasons to worry, but I suspect are also a condition of my age, which just reached 56.
Yet the slices of truth that McCormack presents in his piece are mostly examples of John worrying about the same kinds of issues. And I can see that his response was simply to reach into his own integrity to find the correct response, then to reach into his own courage to take the action of responding.
Journalism is truth-telling. That makes it simple, but not easy, yet ultimately the most supportive, positive and effective thing any of us can do.
Journalism is John Dixon—a simple man, who as all who knew and worked for him never deny, was not always easy—but who I now see as one of the most supportive, positive and effective influences on my life. Rest In Peace? I can’t imagine John Dixon resting.
Remember Frankie Albert!
READ JIM McCORMACK’S STORY IN THE PRESS TELEGRAM, WHICH BEGINS LIKE THIS …
BY JIM McCORMACK, Correspondent
It was Loel Schrader’s first day at the Independent, Press-Telegram.
An experienced sports writer and a former tough guy Newspaper Guild negotiator, Schrader had been hired to cover USC and write columns. But, on this 5a.m. shift, Schrader was scheduled to work the desk, under the direction of John Dixon, putting out the afternoon Press-Telegram sports section.
Schrader andDixonwere a lot alike—World War II veterans (U.S. Navy), similar in age, professional … and direct. After exchanging pleasantries, Dixon gave Schrader a headline guide and a story to edit and headline.
Schrader worked on the head and story for 15 minutes, and flipped it in the slot wire basket, signifying that it was ready for Dixon to approve and send to composing.
Dixon studied the headline for a few seconds and flipped the story back to Schrader.
”He told me, `You can do better than that,”‘ Schrader recalls, “and he was right.”
It was, as Rick told Renault in the closing scene of Casablanca, the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and it is only one version of a similar story that anyone who ever worked with Dixon during his nearly 50-year career could quickly recite.
Those tales are flooding the memories of those of us who so cherished our professional and personal time with Dixon, who passed away Nov. 28 after a heroic month-long battle with the devastating effects of a heart attack and stroke.
A memorial service is scheduled for Saturday at 1:30p.m., at The Grand, 4101 E. Willow,Long Beach.D
In work and in life,Dixonwas a self-admitted perfectionist. So much so that his health began to limit the things he could do.
Before his death, he wrote and edited a letter to be sent to colleagues after he died. The letter was written when death was likely still months or even years away, but John had a message; he always had a message.
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Citizen Journalist Quotes of the Day –- Understand the Situation
“To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful.” — Edward R. Murrow
“Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.” — ERM
“Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.” — ERM
“The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.” –- ERM
“The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.” — ERM
“A reporter is always concerned with tomorrow. There’s nothing tangible of yesterday. All I can say I’ve done is agitate the air ten or fifteen minutes and then boom — it’s gone.” — ERM
“Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.” — ERM
“Anyone who isn’t confused really doesn’t understand the situation.” — ERM
“Good night, and good luck.” — Edward R. Murrow
(Source: thinkexist.com)
I get the idea that remembering John Dixon, (didn’t know him), is like remembering a by-gone era. The I in IPT meant we as a people were more that. It was a time that despite imperfections, good did triumph over the opposite and reporting the news was more blue collar and probably like a real true blue job.
As a makeup man in the composing room of the Independent Press-Telegram it was not uncommon to get tickets to ball games from John Dixion.
I shall always remember John’s answer to my request for tickets to a future Angels Indians game.
John’s answer: Do you want plane tickets too?
Whups, it wasn’t a home game!
He sounds like he was a real good guy just the same.
John was a class act and represents what used to be great about journalism. He will be missed.