…. is a recovering journalist living in the Yosemite Valley neighborhood of California’s Sierra Nevada… or Emeryville up by Oakland. That too. free dot devries at gmail dot com
Tuscany, that too
Bio.
Born in Ann Arbor, MI
Raised, schooled in suburban Chicago
Worked in Chicago, Philly, DC, New York, and San Francisco.
Lives in Mariposa CA
… to pursue other interests
(a CV, mostly true)
The Newspaper The Chicago Sun-Times gave me a job and an education in 1963-64. In the summer of my second year there I was hired for a new job in Philadelphia and gave notice. Sometimes still I wonder, could I have just stayed, there, doing that. Not a bad life.
Campus Organizing At a national meeting in Bloomington, Indiana, I was elected Executive Director of the United States Student Press Assn., based in Philadelphia. The term was one full year (during which we also had a baby), ending in summer 1964 when I was replaced by a new elected staff.
Peace Corps I moved directly from Philadelphia to DC to work at the headquarters as a press aide and writer. I rose in influence and access for about two years until I was burned by a Central Intelligence Agency scandal, forced to resign and sign a dishonest letter about the reasons.
Interregnum Fired and proud, I wandered the Earth jobless for a bit, hanging out in Greensboro and New York, until Peter Goldmark called on behalf of the Mayor of New York to offer a job for which I was not qualified and I should not have accepted.
Mayor of New York City I labored in the Municipal Building across a plaza from City Hall, doing work I mostly didn’t understand. In very early 1968 Curtis Gans recruited me to defeat and unseat the President of the United States. Since Mayor John Lindsay was a prominent Republican and I was running a Democratic campaign it was awkward and in March or April I resigned.
McCarthy Campaign Judy Herrick and I dumped our apartment in Greenwich Village and went on the road to Dump LBJ and end the war in Vietnam. We were successful in the former and ultimately failed at the latter. After the 1968 Chicago convention catastrophe the campaign organization that employed Judy and me went out of business and we were consequently unemployed.
Pointed Wandering The period between August and late November 1968 was spent (as were the previous six months) on the road, this time in a once-stollen blue Chevy station wagon from New York City to Berkeley.
Newsroom My plan for California, to be honest, was modest — maybe a grocery store clerk, bus driver, just punch the clock. Instead Joe Russin intervened and I was a TV news guy in San Francisco from late November 1968 until the end of 1972. I was the first hippie with a regular TV news gig in the country. When I flaked and became a husband, a country hippie, and new father.
Newsroom My plan for California, to be honest, was modest — maybe a grocery store clerk, bus driver, just punch the clock. Instead Joe Russin intervened and I was a TV news guy in San Francisco from late November 1968 until the end of 1972. I was the first hippie with a regular TV news gig in the country. When I flaked and became a husband, a country hippie, and new father.
Hippie Days Naive about my skills vs. what living in the country required, I spent two years trying, in denial, and sometimes failing at being a house builder (succeeded), farmer (mixed results), construction crew (nah), fire fighter (yes, I guess), cannery worker (yes), parent (the kids are alright). Faced with my incompetence and needing more income, we stayed n the country, but gave up on cliche country hippie and turned back to reporting and writing.
The Newspaper The San Francisco Examiner used and paid well for my work until the Newspaper guild union insisted that I be hired formally. Cool job, benefits, good money lived in Mariposa, so naturally I messed up embarrassingly. I was, how shall I put it, encouraged to leave.
The Magazine My friend Jon Carroll eased the blow, promptly hiring me to write for New West magazine, giving me a salary, and an editor, BK Moran, who taught me how to write. If Jon hadn’t left and the magazine changed mightily, I might have stayed, but….
The Writer It took me a decade at least of cranking magazine stories to call myself that. Reporter came easier. Free-lance and staff, I made a living with my typewriter for a good five years. I only moved on because Russin (again) recruited me for a TV job in New York (again). I might not have taken it, honestly, but Judy and I were more or less split and I needed to get away and to make more money.
The TV Show in New York was called “Inside Story”, a weekly half hour coverage of news media. Two seasons. Great fun. Learned a whole lot. Hard on my marriage and on my body. In a shot at mending my family, I didn’t re-up for a third season and instead took a job at the NBC station in San Francisco.
KRON San Francisco Magazine stories and long-form TV are marathons; local TV news is sprints. Pays well. Doesn’t demand all that much beside skipping lunch and doing-what-you’re-told. I was good at everything about the job except that last thing there. Management was so nasty and inept at dealing with me, they finally had to pay me rather a lot of please-don’t-sue-me-money. So I was fired with benefits. Technical term was settlement in lieu of tort liability. In the Fall of 1991 I was on my own with money in the bank.
Entrepreneur So we started DeVries Media, Barbara and I. A bit like freelance writing but with way more expensive technology. We had corporate and broadcast network TV work. Talented partners, supportive clients and bosses, excellent luck, Barbara’s business skills, made for a good and modestly profitable fifteen or so years. Always say, the trick is to make a living doing work you enjoy. Might have gone longer but came along the 2008 global economic meltdown and we just let go the office lease and quit hustling.
The rest As what came before, there’s not really much of any plan to it.
Tom DeVries 