I have always loved reading the paper on Thanksgiving Day; it’s the biggest paper of the year and usually holds some of the best stories. When I was a reporter, I loved nothing more than having a story on a section-front of The Kansas City Star.
As reporters, we knew very well that we had a huge audience that day and that thousands and thousands of people were actually taking the time to read the paper carefully.
Blessedly, my wife Patty and 24-year-old daughter Brooks are also avid newspaper readers (our 23-year-old son Charlie is another story; he’s still in bed as I write this), and today the kitchen table is overflowing with sections of The Star and The New York Times.
I think the Thanksgiving Day paper should give you a little bit of everything — hard news, appealing features, quirky elements, and it should call the readers’ attention to this very special, American feast day. The Star did a pretty good job of covering the bases today, but, of course, The Times outshined it.
With that, let me direct your attention to several highlights in today’s Times — highlights that can be appreciated whether you live in Manhattan, in the Heartland or on the West Coast.
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The most intriguing and compelling story, in my opinion, was a front-page account of how inmates at the Rikers Island jail lent a hand — many hands, actually — to victims of Hurricane Sandy. At the initiation of New York City correction commissioner Dora Schriro, Rikers inmates did 6,600 pounds of laundry for people in emergency shelters. In addition, the jail supplied generators and gas to neighborhoods with power outages, and corrections officers delivered truckloads of canned and dried goods from the island’s food supply. Clothing, including jackets stored for inmates, was sent to relief centers.
The writer, Corey Kilgannon, didn’t portray the story as a “Thanksgiving story,” but that’s part of what made it a good “Thanksgiving story.” Kilgannon didn’t have to sell the story; it sold itself.
Rikers Island inmates preparing to wash clothes of Hurricane Sandy victims…Photo by Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
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The Op-Ed, humor and political columnist Gail Collins delivered another winner with a column titled “The Turkey Chronicles.” With a headline like that and Collins at the controls, you can be pretty sure you’re in for a good read.
Collins cast the column in the form of a Q and A, in which she supplies both the questions and the answers. Here’s a sample:
Q — I’m not sure I want to quit talking about the election. I really liked watching the Republicans denouncing Mitt Romney, and going hehehe under my breath.
A — Time to let go. If you are a Republican, be thankful it’s the end. If you were rooting for President Obama, give thanks that your particular demographic group was responsible for his win. We have excellent statistical evidence that it was Hispanics who made all the difference. And also blacks, gays, young people, unmarried people and and women. If any of you had bolted, next year Mitt Romney would be pardoning the turkey.
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How about this headline from an Arts section music review: “Flouting Flute Convention, Flautists Flute en Masse.”
That’s one you have to think about for a while…I say give that copy editor an extra helping of stuffing to keep his or her brain functioning at that level!
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And, finally, consider this excerpt from an editorial, titled “When Thursday Vanishes,” at the bottom of the editorial page.
“Over the years, we have come to love the fixedness of Thanksgiving. Always on a Thursday, by proclamation, this holiday is unmindful of anyone’s inconvenience. Even Christmas Day must fall on a weekend some years, but never Thanksgiving. It causes as much fuss as possible — a stir that disrupts the entire week, year after year. Yet when the last of the guests have arrived and everyone is seated at the table, there comes a pause, a toast, a grace — long or short secular or sacred, vocal or silent — that says what this holiday is for. Thursday vanishes, and it its place Thanksgiving.”
So, let’s give thanks for all our blessings today…including the First Amendment and a long line of great newspapers, which have kept us informed and in contact with our community, our country and our world.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
The Times is a wonderful paper despite – or perhaps because of – its flaws.
Dark meat, ahoy!
Thanks for the thoughtful post on Thanksgiving day. Best wishes to Patty, you and the little ones.
Fitz, where the heck are you? You’re down for holiday metro duty this afternoon!
Happy Thanksgiving, old buddy!
Julius
I remember, as a young reporter, working a Christmas Day in about 1969 or 1970. A photographer and I had dinner at the Snooty Fox at Linwood and Gillham, where the 7-Eleven is now…The occasion was memorable only for its dreariness.
Happy Turkey Day Fitz!
I remember The Star (Times) being a huge paper on Thanksgiving back in the early ’60s, but I can’t recall whether or not they also came out with an afternoon paper on Turkey Day. The paper today was big enough – I helped my friend with his two paper routes some 15, 16, 17, 18 hours ago and last got some sleep late Wednesday evening – but it was probably a little smaller than those Thanksgiving papers in the early ’60s. I’m down in Joplin right now on the 18-month anniversary of the tornado, and The Globe that came out today is said to be the biggest paper of the year. I’m guessing that they had at least three advertising sections in addition to the news sections based on the “wrappers” I encountered down here. My friend was supposed to be throwing The NY Times today but someone didn’t get him the papers for his routes, so I never got a look at today’s issue. Happy Thanksgiving to all!
The Times and the Star, much like my beloved Jets and the local NFL squad, leave much to be desired when it comes to being best of breed. I’m all for free speech, which is not worth much hence the fact that it’s free.
Mr. Krugman’s recent article suggesting a return to the confiscatory tax rates of the 50’s without any in depth analysis contrasting key, and critically important, financial and societal metrics between then and now is just one illustration of how far out of touch the Times is with reality. All the news fit to print indeed. Along with enough propaganda to require a cranial enema.
But, or should I say butt, we can give thanks this week for the SF city council voting to ban public nudity. Hope springs eternal even if mammory glands and genitalia can’t.
Fitz, Paul Haskins and Marietta Dunn called; we were supposed to work the mtero desk Thanksgiving!
Paul Haskins and Marietta Dunn — two of the best, and not just on Thanksgiving. Love your blog, Fitz.
Great to hear from you, Bev! It’s been too long…Thanks for the compliment.
About your late, ex-husband and Marietta (assistant metro editors at the time)…They were two of the most singular and yet archetypal journalists I ever saw. They scared the crap out of all reporters, especially Paul, with that “I-might-just-kill-you” glare and ever-twitching leg. But they kept us moving in the right direction, tolerated no foolishness and molded a lot of us into pretty good reporters…I remember one time when Paul was pushing me to get a certain story, he said, “Fitzpatrick, I want that story or I’m going to hang you out the window by your feet.” I remember that I got the story the next day, hanging it on a single source, instead of the customary two or more. But I was worried about what Paul might do to me, so I went with it.
Oh yeah. The recent op-ed from Mr. Diuguid suggesting we, aka taxpayers, spend, aka dump, several hundred million dollars on revitalization of the east side was another literary gem. I say we engage in a cultural experiment. Let’s carve out 100 acres on the east side, plow it to dirt, give it to the Amish and see what happens.
Sorry, Smartman, I don’t read Diuguid; somebody down there should have made off with his pencil bag years ago.
Well Fitz, if you don’t read LewD, objective and passionate observer of the Fourth Estate that you are, why should anyone? I know times are hard in the print business. In these toughest of times, for some of us, I can’t believe that there are not 20 great reporters, columnists, etc looking for work that could replace 20 of the slackers on Grand. I am dumbfounded, absolutely dumbfounded, that Mi-ai Parrish has not tried to improve the quality, if not the POV, of the Star to make it a better product that more people might want to purchase.
I think the biggest problem with Mi-Ai, Smartman, is that she has failed to establish a public profile, thereby losing the opportunity to elevate The Star’s profile, too, and make the paper more relevant.
In these days of second-tier, regional papers (The Star, Post-Dispatch, Denver Post, etc.) continuing to plummet down their own fiscal cliff, I think that one of the few ways that a regional paper has of succeeding is for the publisher to get out front and use his or her bully pulpit to sell the product.
The days of publishers sitting back and watching subscription figures and ad revenue rise are long past. Nevertheless, most publishers of regional dailies, including Mi-Ai, have continued functioning the old way, sitting in their offices and trying to exhort the advertising, editorial and circulation departments on to greater efforts…Sorry, not gonna happen.
The Newspaper Guild made sure that us copy boys got time and a half on Thanksgiving at the AP, upstairs….Holidays were always a good way to get rich pulling a double…and the Vendo’s in the Nelson Room’s were great company….