For those who came late to BJ party:
I have been asked to reprint the legendary Ann Hill letter, written by a BJ job applicant. And, to answer the question, yes, Ann worked for the same newspaper, or so she says, that fired me for union activities. Cox Newspapers hated unions, particularly by writers, editors and photographers.
In my defense, the late State Desk editor Pat Englehart made me do it. He said to assign Ann to a meeting, and all the good ones already had been taken, so shitwork was the only thing left. And I think it is appropriate that the Ann Hill letter is retrieved with comments from the late BJ Alums founder Harry Liggett, who taught me that no work is shitwork if you do it well.
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
The Legendary? Ann Hill Letter
Mr. Giles and Company
I did not write a Canton Council story or any other story because I did not come to Akron or the Beacon Journal to do shit work or to run an obstacle course.
Consider what you wanted me to do:
1- Stay over an extra day -- I have a trip to New York City planned and I have no intentions of cancelling my plans because you are too unorganized to tell me exactly what I will be doing in Akron.
2- Nobody bothered to look at my work. I do not need a training ground. I have two years of newspaper experience and a master’s degree and I taught magxazine writing at OSU. If you look on my resume at OSU, you will see that experienced newspaper people who now teach at OSU consider me the most talented student they've ever taught. It seems pointless to me to run an experienced, talented reporter through a state desk.
3- Your schedule is unreasonable, theoretically, to arrive in Akron at 8 a.m. today, I had to get up at 4 a.m., dress, drive to Akron. From 8 until 11:30 I did rewrite. From 12:30 until 3 I researched 2 stories. At 3, because I had to go to a council meeting at 5, I had one hour to try to learn background on a very complicated story -- Canton sewers. No one can do an adequate story with that kind of background. At 4:15, after cramming 15 clips into my mind, I left for Canton. I have never been to Akron or Canton, so I set off in rush hour traffic to find Canton City Hall. I did not have time to check into my motel or get a cup of coffee. I was told Canton was 20 - 40 minutes away. At 5:30 I was still looking for Canton City Hall -- 30 minutes late. After attending the meeting, I was told to come back to the Beacon Journal -- which would have been around 8 p.m. -- to write two stories -- which would have taken another 3 hours if I did a good job. I was told to be back at the B.J. tomorrow at 7 a.m.
From 4 a.m. until 11 p.m. is ridiculous --especially for a trial reporter. It's only discipline, like being in the army, and I do not care to bend that much to the overbearing demands of the B.J.
Ann Hill
Blog Guy’s Notes: Does the Ann Hill letter which is read regularly at Newspaper Guild parties meet the definition of legend? My dictionary defines legend as “an unverified popular story handed down from earlier times” or “a romanticized popular myth of modern times"’ or “a person who achieves legendary fame.” It would have been better if Ann had remained hidden. She still considers it a private letter. But Ann Hill lives.. She is the principal (read that as head honcho) of Ann Hill Communications in San Rafael, CA. You can go to the web site at www.aphapr.com by cliicking on the headline above. Check the site map and you will find a biog (no doubt an autobiog) of Hill which is almost as interesting as the original letter. It mentions that she graduated magna cum laude at OSU with a master’s in journalism/PR and was involved in PR campaigns to renovate San Francisco opera and SF City Hall. Strangely the biog. says she developed her award-winning writing style as a feature writer and investigative reporter at the Dayton Daily News which I believe is the same outfit that fired John Olesky for union activity. Our apologies to Bob Giles who had nothing to do with all of this except he just happened to be M.E. of the Beacon at the time.
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