The moment I walked into the office I was breathlessly accosted: somebody called this morning and said that there’s a dead whale on the beach by the Prom!
I nabbed a pen and a pad of paper, swiped a camera off the shelf, pocketed a couple of rolls of film, and hopped in my car.
Five minutes later I arrived at the Seaside Promenade. Sure enough, a little down the beach, there was a giant dead whale—surrounded by about a dozen gawkers—resting on the golden sand.
On the first day of work, naturally, you dress up. Thus, for my new gig as Editor-in-Chief at the Seaside Signal I donned a light blue Oxford, khakis, and a pair of brown Derbies. The Labor Day Weekend had just ended; it was a warm, sunny morning. I was hardly dressed for a shore excursion.
Nonetheless, playing the role of the intrepid journalist, I trudged through the sand, granules seeping into my shoes, and arrived astride the carcass. The man who operated the local aquarium told me it was a bottlenose whale. It certainly seemed to have a prominent beaky protuberance resembling a bottle, but subsequent research made this claim dubious. Most likely it was a gray whale as bottlenose whales are not known to inhabit the waters off the Oregon coast. But what do I know? My whale knowledge is in deficit, so perhaps the aquarium tender was correct. In any event, the sea creature was about 30 feet long and surely a ton or more.
The balding, middle-aged marine biologist was standing guard over the great beast, a sentinel speculating upon its demise. Likely sick, likely washed up on the shore to die, likely a bad idea to touch it. But touch it people had. Every Labor Day weekend Seaside, Oregon hosts an annual sand volleyball tournament replete with music, food, excessive drinking, and general debauchery—a sporty summer send-off. Apparently, the whale had beached the previous evening as the festivities were ending and the sun was setting. A small collection of inebriated folks had ditched their cans of Coors Light to try and save the whale upon its arrival. They splashed it with water, tried to nudge it back into the sea, and generally fretted about the fate of the forsaken being. Their efforts were in vain.
But now, the gathered crowd felt the magnetic pull of the slimy, gray flesh and made their approach.
“I wouldn’t touch it, it’s probably sick and could be diseased,” the marine biologist admonished.
Naturally, numerous folks curiously poked at the body anyway. A young boy ran his hand along the side of the whale, pronounced it gross, and then returned to his mother’s side where he promptly picked his nose, rubbed his eyes, and made sure to place his fishy hands all about his face. Gross, indeed.
What now? Well, there would be a truck with a large flatbed trailer coming to cart the cetacean away to an undisclosed location. If people know where the mammal was laid to rest, the marine biologist said, they would molest the corpse. It would receive its burial at a more remote beach.
After an hour or so of reporting, I made my way back to the office. A few days later, above the fold on the front page of the weekly Seaside Signal was a photo of the dead whale accompanied by onlookers. My byline ran beneath the image along with a recounting of the event. It was a harbinger of my time in Seaside and my career in journalism.
Upon completing my undergraduate studies I searched for a job. For some cyclical reason or another, hiring was slow during the summer of 2003. I had applied to various newspapers, but other than a couple of interviews and one barely above minimum wage offer, I was getting a bit nervous. I expanded my search outside of California and stumbled upon an opening for an editor to head up a small weekly newspaper on Oregon’s north coast. I submitted my resume, flew up for the interview, charmed the publisher, and a couple of weeks later was driving a U-Haul up I-5 from the San Joaquin Valley to Seaside.
It was 2003 and the demise of newspapers and small-town journalism was just beginning. But at that early date, it was hard for a fresh college graduate to read the tea leaves. Thus, the plan was to work for a while in Seaside before moving on to a glorious position at The New York Times or Newsweek covering international conflicts, hobnobbing with politicians, and exposing the nefarious deeds of various wielders of power. Along with writing tricks and interview techniques, journalism schools excel at filling students with grand ideas about a noble profession of globe-trotting, cosmopolitan pedantry, and speaking truth to power. Just shine bright at some tiny fishwrap, move up to the regional daily, and eventually claim your desk at the national outlet. Easy as that.
But, before long, my dreams of drawing a fourth estate salary were soon meeting the same end as the beached whale. The Seaside Signal did not suit me. It wasn’t one event or a specific mistake—my exit from journalism was of a gestalt nature. It was covering the high school cross country meet on Saturday morning when I should have been eating cereal and watching cartoons. It was late Tuesday nights at seemingly endless city council meetings. It was grumpy locals who left insipid voicemails about the inaccuracy of some esoteric detail in last week’s edition. It was an amphetamine-fueled reporter who failed to show for work. It was a chain-smoking publisher preaching 60-hour weeks. It was a Chamber of Commerce I could not make happy.
A few months later I proffered my letter of resignation. Question from the incredulous publisher: What would I go do now? My answer: Not be the editor of a small town weekly newspaper, not worry about covering the annual Junior League mixer, and not write about dead whales on beaches.