NEWS NEEDS EYES LIKE THOMPSON'S

With Hunter Thompson dead, there's only one living author left on my list.

For you news consumers, that's a shame.

At the end of every semester, I give my journalism students a short list of
writers they should read. All but one author comes from the world of
fiction: Thompson. After his suicide Sunday, they're all dead, save John
Updike.

In class, we discuss how each writer's strengths (characterization,
scene-setting and such) can be used to breathe life into everyday newspaper
writing.

That's important, I think, because everyday newspapers are boring. That's
why people don't read them as much anymore.

Publishers are in denial about this. They say people are too busy to read
newspapers. I say people are too busy to read boring newspapers.

Newspapers once heaved and gasped and screamed with the intensity of the
cities and people they covered.

Not anymore. Today's reporters are dullards.

They have college degrees. They're book smart. That's good.

But they treat reporting like a cubicle-dweller at IBM. They wait for news
to happen: an agenda out of City Hall or news release over the fax.

That's why I'm crestfallen about the death of Hunter Thompson.

Devotees will wax romantic on his drug-fueled (and drug-exaggerated)
lifestyle and diatribes that he dubbed gonzo journalism. I'll spare you
such silliness, in part because you might find him to be a pig. After all,
he made no apologies about his credo: "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol,
violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."

Despite the incessant whirlwind of hallucinogens and hyperbole, Thompson
had an eye for detail and clarity - both often missing in newspapers.

As I tell students, Thompson at the core was a reporter. He actually went
out and talked to people - interesting people.

He wrestled the weirdness around him and shoved insight down the reader's
throat. In "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72," he cuts through
political poppycock:

"There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible and hopelessly
dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey is until you've followed him around for
a while."

He'd also push readers close to what he called The Edge. In "Hell's
Angels," Thompson jumps into the same rumbling seat of the man-beasts in
the outlaw motorcycle world:

"With the throttle screwed on, there is only the barest margin, and no room
at all for mistakes. ... And that's when the strange music starts, when you
stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along
your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast
that they vaporize before they get to your ears."

You don't see such picturesque penetration anymore. That's why I urge my
students to read Thompson.

That's not to say that reporters must suck drugs or cheat death to tell an
intriguing tale.

But it wouldn't hurt if they'd get out of the office - endure a little
smoke and stink and underbelly, be it a City Hall back room or low-rent bar
room.

Reporters could take you readers along for an eyeful and earful of vivid
candor. You might like the change.

As Thompson once said, "I have a theory that the truth is never told during
the nine-to-five hours."