Carrie’s Painting of the Week – 11/08/13
A Day Without Lou Reed
By Carrie Jacobson
The Times Herald-Record laid off all of its photographers and several experienced editors this past week. And Lou Reed died this past week, too.
It would be a stretch to say that the events were linked in any way, even metaphorically. But I can say that they both made me sad, and both made me long for times long passed.
The editors whose jobs the Record eliminated were incredibly hard workers, talented and bright, with experience and the amazing ability to solve a huge range of problems. They’d learned to work without pretty much everything that an editor needs to run a good paper – and yet, they persisted, building the best paper they could with the meager resources left to them.
The four photographers whose jobs were eliminated were among the best shooters I have ever seen. They documented the life and times and people of the mid-Hudson Valley for decades, and they did so with precision and verve and a big dose of love and art.
In its heyday, when Mike Levine was the editor of the Record, and I worked as Sunday editor and art director, the paper had a rough and tumble quality that I loved. We wanted to do something different, we wanted to be a paper that mattered. We wanted to be the paper that we were, heart and soul, not some weak echo of someone else’s idea of a good newspaper.
And making that tenuous stretch, that yes, perhaps tortured connection, I’d say that that was Lou Reed, too. Far as I know, he never wanted to be anything other than himself. Yes, he had his moments of doubt and pain, his weaknesses and his failures – and the Record did, too.
But even if you didn’t love the end result, I think you had to respect the integrity of the Record and Lou Reed.
I’m sorry they both are dead.
Tags: Carrie Jacobson, carriejacobson, Eastern Shore, Lou Reed
November 15th, 2013 at 9:30 am
I had Mike come to my Historical Club to speak. He was wonderful and shared his baseball book. I shared a weather project with him, that stemmed from the weather page in the newspaper. I had requested that the weather conditions in the areas that our soldiers were fighting be resumed. That was done. Possibly not from my request, so my project could continued, but in both cases his sensitivity was obvious. I was greatly saddened that he was taken so soon.
November 16th, 2013 at 9:28 am
Hi, Chris – Thank you for sharing your memories of Mike. He was a wonderful man and a good friend. I loved him, and loved working with him. He was indeed taken too soon.