UPDATE #2 "THE TRUTH!":
What they wrote (red)
This is my final column for The Muskegon Chronicle.
I's been a great six years, but they tell me that financial pressures at the newspaper have caused freelance compensation rates to be reduced and I can't live with what they want to pay me.
What I wrote (blue). I didn't bother to read what they wrote after I read their first paragraph. There may have been more changes.
"A month ago I received an email from The Chronicle saying they were going to cut my pay in half.
“Gee,” I thought, “Obama’s in office, I thought big bushel baskets full of money were supposed to fall from the sky!”
Well, apparently they aren’t falling on Muskegon. So when the paper offered me half I said “No.”
I’m not the one who recommended electing a president with ZERO experience and no plan, why should I pay the price?
So unless today's lunch meeting with the publisher turns out differently than I expect, this will be my last column.
I had a good run.
I got to do things I would never have done without the opportunity given to me by the paper. I got to be the hockey mascot Furious Fred, I hung out with rap artists, and played basketball with Nancy Wilson. I partied in Stepenwolf’s tour bus and I got to write columns about the jungles of Belize and the Alps of Switzerland. I judged talent shows, bikini contests, Christmas lights, chili cook offs, and, in one of the odder moments in an already odd life, shaved a woman’s head for charity. I got to speak at schools, speak at service clubs, and emcee events I had no business emceeing. If it wasn’t for this column I never would have luged.
And then there were the letters. Thousands and thousands of letters. Most of them nice, some of them not nice, but I did my best to answer every one. But it wasn’t all a giant candy farm. There were the threats, the calls to my house at two in the morning, there were mad hockey dad’s, mad soccer mom’s, and some really really mad Miss Michigan contestants.
I only had three times I actually thought violence was at hand…union members can get pretty grouchy.
I’d like to thank my friends and family for letting me put parts of their lives in print. I’d like to thank “The Helper Group” for, as a group, helping. And I’d like to thank the proof readers who told me when something was lame so I could punch it up prior to submission.
And let’s not forget the editors. I think I had seven of them over the years; each one had a different way of plucking humor from the written page and dropping it on the cutting room floor like a no-bake cookie.
Then again, I’m still here (for now) and alive (for now) so maybe they knew what they were doing after all.
But there’s one thing I want to make perfectly clear: I love Muskegon and I always will. I get very defensive whenever someone not from here says anything negative about this place. I think it’s a town with self esteem issues but that only adds to the allure.
Anyway, that’s where I sit, not knowing if there’ll be a column next week or not. If you open up the paper a week from today and you see my wretched picture you’ll know things worked out. If not, well, all I can say is the last six years were a very cool time to have happen in my life, and for that I’ll always be grateful."
