A final, but fond, farewell

Ken Reich died last week at the age of 70. Readers, former colleagues and former subjects wrote in to offer their thoughts. William J. Drummond, professor of journalism at UC Berkeley and a Times staffer from 1967-1979:

Ken Reich, who died last Monday, was a colleague of mine for a dozen years at The Times, and I have to offer up a few observations that might help fill in a few gaps about the career and persona of a truly remarkable guy.

I arrived in the Times newsroom in 1967, as only the third African-American who ever occupied a reporting position there. The following year, after settling in, I was feeling confident, and I invited a few personal friends and colleagues from work over for dinner, including Reich, to my Baldwin Hills apartment. As it turned out, Ken and his date were the only Caucasians who showed up. The other guests were all African-Americans. Keep in mind that this party took place in mid-1968, after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis and the ensuing riots around the country. Race was, to put it mildly, a dangerously touchy subject, a continuing national migraine.

The dinner conversation began subdued and friendly. Afterward, however, as we settled into after-dinner drinks, Ken decided to become the provocateur. Wasn't it self-destructive for blacks to burn down their own neighborhoods, he asked? How was looting a political act?

To my horror, I watched as tempers and voices rose. It wasn't long before Ken was in a corner, surrounded by the other guests. Accusation followed upon recrimination. Party manners disappeared. It got personal. Fortunately, they all eventually exhausted themselves, harrumphed and went home.

I thought that Ken Reich would never speak to me again.

To my amazement, he called the next day, thanking me for the invitation, saying that he found the whole group interesting and the discussion fascinating, adding that he couldn't remember when he had been so stimulated.

Insight No. 1 into Mr. Reich: He loved to be in the eye of controversy. Whoever invented the term "hard-nosed" reporter must have had him in mind. The intensity he brought to an assignment was demonstrable, and nearly unbearable. He was a formidable-looking guy, pugnacious, stocky, with a menacing gaze cast through wire-rimmed glasses.

His phone conversations were the stuff of legend. The Times newsroom used to be one large open room with rows of desks, so everybody could see and hear practically everything. Reich could never seem to sit still when he talked on the phone, which consisted of a clamp-on headset, tethered to the user by about three feet of cable. On more than one occasion, stalking around in animated conversation, Reich would nearly throttle himself on his own telephone cord. On other occasions, frustrated after being thwarted in getting information, he would noisily slam down the headset on the desk.

On the phone he was nothing if not imperious. One of his signature lines uttered during phone interviews, to the amusement of his colleagues, was, "See, here, my good man. . ."

Ken thought that his best journalism was his coverage of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. My own view was that Ken's defining effort was his coverage of the first Tom Bradley mayoral campaign in 1969. That was the election in which incumbent Sam Yorty made antipathy toward The Times a centerpiece of his strategy. Ken sacrificed everything for the job – nights, weekends, whatever it took, under a steady barrage of criticism from the Yorty camp. As it turned out, Bradley lost the election.

In the aftermath of the election a pall hung over the newsroom. Somebody, to lighten the mood, made the mistake of walking over and putting a "Yorty for Mayor" bumper sticker on the front of Ken's desk. (The Times newsroom sometimes took on attributes of an Army barracks cum fraternity house.) Reich's reaction was volcanic. Overreaction? Perhaps, but Ken was constitutionally unable to lighten up. It was his greatest weakness and probably his greatest strength.

Needless to say, one doesn't find many like Ken Reich entering journalism these days. The driving ambition that carried him from obscurity as a reporter in the Westside zone sections to the top of his profession is conspicuously absent from today's recruits. It's not their fault. Newspapers don't have the self-confidence that they used to have when Ken Reich was covering politics.

Retired Los Angeles City Councilman Bob Ronka had this to add:

As the author of the L.A. city charter amendment that ensured local taxpayers would not foot the bill for the 1984 Olympics Games, I remember the significant role Times reporter Ken Reich played in raising public awareness of this important issue.

Ken reported on the public hearings I chaired investigating the potentially budget-busting consequences of hosting the Olympics. He gave prominent coverage to the testimony of my key witness, a city councilman from Montreal, who said International Olympic Committee demands for elaborate new facilities left his city with a billion dollar deficit after hosting the 1976 Olympics. The Canadian lawmaker warned L.A. could face a similar fate without strict cost controls.

Taking these warnings to heart, the voters of L.A. overwhelmingly adopted the Olympics Cost Control amendment to the city charter in November 1978. This led to the 1984 Games being successfully run and financed, for the first time in Olympics history, not by a host city but by a private committee, and at no cost to L.A. taxpayers.

Ken Reich's thorough and aggressive reporting on L.A.'s bid for the 1984 Games galvanized voter awareness of the need for cost controls and helped L.A. make Olympics history.

And reader Simmone Reynolds, of Santa Monica, wrote in with more modest, but equally heartfelt, praise:

I was saddened to read about the passing of Times reporter Kenneth Reich. His obituary did not mention that among his many accomplishments he also at one time ran a Consumer Help column once a week.

In March 2000, he promptly helped me in getting a refund of $1,400 after problems I had had between a local car dealership and a car rental agency. My condolences to his family.

For more tributes to Reich visit his blog, Take Back the Times, and latimes.com.

Each week, Letters to the Editor receives thousands of e-mails, dozens of letters through the mail, and even a few faxes here and there.

After we cut out spam, obscene mail, letters addressed to more than one recipient, letters that seem to be the fruit of letter-writing campaigns and letters with attachments (which gum up our computer systems,) we usually are left with several hundred eligible items, from which we select the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper.

Last week, we received more than 600 usable letters, 331 of which were in our Top Five Topics:

• Guns: (a whopping) 176 letters, reacting to the Supreme Court decision on gun ownership and to an opinion piece suggesting gunmakers take responsibility for reducing gun injuries and death;

• Gay marriage: 47 letters, pondering several stories dealing with same-sex marriage in California;
• Energy: 45 letters, responding to stories about the skyrocketing cost of oil and gas;
• McCain: 32 letters, responding to stories about the candidate;
• Obama: 31 letters, responding to stories about the candidate.

Early contenders for the Top Five this week include Jonah Goldberg's column on national service and Nancy Soderberg's opinion piece on the FISA compromise.

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