PROLOGUE
Seen through the Lasik-clear lens of hindsight, the 1980s and 90s were journalism’s late-20th Century golden years. Newsrooms full of Baby Boom reporters and editors who came of age during the Watergate scandal were trained to believe that they could, with a few clicks of a keyboard, expose evil, right wrongs and even bring down a sitting U.S. President.
Blogs didn’t yet exist. The Internet was a reporting tool, not a competitor. Television news channels were still considered news candy, not substantial meals. And newspapers themselves were viable businesses that showed profits each year. They had yet to be outsourced, over-leveraged or reduced to insignificance
For the most part, reporters and editors in those days still believed in Journalism with a capital J, not just a lower-case job. They cared and believed in the public’s right to know and the traditional watchdog role newspapers have played throughout history.
They had talent and chutzpah. They worked hard and many drank as hard as the typewriter-using, fedora-wearing generation of past decades.
By the dawn of the 21st Century, technology, events and attitudes were moving in a way to forever change journalism and journalists. But for John “Jack” Patrick Clancy, the downward spiral began with a baked potato.