Remembering Art Gallagher

A few weeks ago, we received an email from Jean Wilkins, saying that her father, Art Gallagher, was having a problem reading The Chronicle on his computer – it appeared to be a technical issue with the web browser he was using, which made it impossible to read the center column on his screen.

I hadn’t seen Art in more than two years, so when I got Jean’s email, I thought it was a great excuse to go out to his Glacier Hills home for a visit, and see what I could do to solve the computer issue while I was there. I also wanted to ask him what he thought about the state of journalism these days, and about our publication, and so many other things. But I’m ashamed to say I never acted on this intent. There always seemed to be other things crowding my schedule and clamoring for attention. I thought it could wait – I thought I had time. What I have now is simply deep regret.

Art Gallagher died on Monday. He was 99.

I told Art once that I wished I’d had the opportunity to work for him. He was the editor of The Ann Arbor News longer than any other in the newspaper’s 174-year history – 22 years. But he retired in 1976, a full two decades before I was hired there. I got to know him several years after that, when I became opinion editor of The News in 2006.

I can’t remember exactly how our exchanges started – a phone call, email or typewritten note – but they became a staple for me. He always seemed to contact me when I needed his support the most: When I was dealing with an outraged reader, or frustrated by internal newsroom politics, or feeling like my writing had degenerated into tripe. He was always generous, never patronizing, often wry and self-deprecating.

His writing reflected his wit, and his ability to spot the humor in our foibles. One of my favorites is from an essay he wrote called “Joys of Editorship.” Today I pulled a copy out of my files. I had forgotten that it included an old photo of Art, sitting at his typewriter, pipe clenched between his teeth. It’s a classic look.

Here’s an excerpt:

An editor’s adherence to a policy of treating everybody the same will lose some friends, but at least some of the requests are interesting. When the News was printing marriage license applications, a woman asked to have hers left out because, she said, “I’ve been married three times, and I don’t want people to get the wrong idea about me.” She enclosed a five dollar bill, which offended me because she thought I could be bought so cheaply.

His writing when I knew him often took the form of letters to the editor. Even in his 90s, he was more engaged with the Ann Arbor community than were some of us who were still in the news business. It was remarkable, though he would have brushed aside that praise.

Art understood the value of the newspaper’s letters section – he had expanded it dramatically when he was editor, as he recalled in his “Joys of Editorship” essay:

The News “Letters to the Editor” column grew from an occasional letter in the 1950′s to several hundred a year and was cited by Dr. V. O. Key of Harvard University in his 1961 book Public Opinion and American Democracy. He said that “the small town daily, with only a little ingenuity and effort, can be as good a newspaper as many metropolitan dailies. And some of them are. Thus by almost any standard the Ann Arbor News (circulation 30,000) is as good a newspaper as the Detroit Free Press (circulation 460,000).” Actually, we thought we were better.

(As I was reading this today, it struck me that The Chronicle’s monthly readership is also around 30,000 – and that we too take some pride in the quality of our work, compared to much larger competitors. I wish I could tell him that – I think he’d get a kick out of it. He didn’t think that biggest meant best.)

His own letters to the editor reflected his keen interest in the issues of the day. Here’s an excerpt from one of his letters, published on March 2, 2008:

It seems as though every time there is a light news day at our local newspaper, its readers are treated to some intriguing, if remote, possibility for the future: First more trains, and this time, on Feb. 24, a streetcar system that would solve our growing traffic and transportation problems.

This is one reader who grew up with streetcars and loved them, and it seems unfair to present the possibility like someone holding a steak just out of reach of a salivating dog.

You are given to wonder why an otherwise complete story didn’t mention the fact that Ann Arbor once had trolley cars, taken off the streets in 1924-25 because of the need for iron in wartime.

It was Art’s style to lead with a compliment – “an otherwise complete story” – before delivering a gentle critique. In his comments to me about The News, there might have been undertones of criticism, but he knew too well the pressures of running a newspaper, and didn’t figure that making potshots would serve anyone well. The harshest thing he ever said to me about Ed Petykiewicz – who served as editor from 1988 until The News closed last year – was that he didn’t agree with some of the decisions Ed made, but that he understood times were different now.

Different indeed. I ate lunch a few years ago at the Ann Arbor Club, a men’s-only lunch club downtown that’s a throwback to the days when deals were made by men on a handshake while the women-folk labored in the kitchen. Art happened to be there that day – he’d been a member for decades – and showed me some of the fading photos hung on the walls that included images of former News executives. With apologies, he noted that there were no women represented.

In fact, he often talked about how proud he was to see women in leadership roles at The News in more recent years, saying it was one of the best changes that the newspaper – and society – had made. Perhaps that’s why he was so supportive of my work – and of my predecessor in that role, Judy McGovern, and of the newspaper’s final publisher, Laurel Champion.

Art had a strong sense of history – it never struck me as nostalgia so much as context. He understood the importance of knowing where you’d been, as a guide to where you were headed. I wonder what he thought about the online venue, the social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and the general state of our profession. I suspect he would have understood that while things change, there’s no getting past how much they stay the same. This excerpt from “Joys of Editorship” could well be referring to any anonymous commenter on any online publication:

Of the many letters we received, there were two I especially cherished: one by a frequent letter writer who said we improved his letters by editing and shortening them, and another that ended like this – “and so it is time for all Americans to stand up and be counted. If you print this, please don’t use my name.”

Art was never ashamed to put his name to his words – and his words meant a lot to so many people, for so many years. He’ll be missed.

A memorial Mass will be held at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, 2250 E. Stadium Blvd., at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 18. The celebrant will be Father James McDougall. Visitation will take place in the main foyer, before the Mass, from 11-11:30 a.m.

Mary Morgan is publisher and co-founder of The Ann Arbor Chronicle.