Mr. Bellows is quite the inspiration

I've just finished my first monthly reading. "The Last Editor," by Jim Bellows. It was, to say the least, a pleasure.

He recounted his last fifty years in journalism. He was a pit bull, always the underdog and always fighting the big guy. His papers (and other endeavors -- save for his work with Entertainment Tonight) came to some crashing end, but all he could recount about them was the joy and excitement of being in the midst of the struggle.

And he sounded like one g-ddamned good editor. Someone who inspired the ranks. Who had the energy and passion to know when and how to go get the story.

Now, I don't have a lot of experience chasing stories, or getting anyone else to chase them, but I so identified with Bellows' character that I finished the book convinced I could start my own newspaper and gather just the right people to make is something really special.

That makes the book, and Bellows, more than a pleasure. It makes it an inspiration. It makes me curious why it would take a book to uncover that kind of self-confidence, but maybe that's the kind of thing I'll just let be.

For anyone else who likes newspapers, or just likes reading good yarns (Bellows has plenty -- he was drugged by Ku Klux Klan members early in his career, to name just one), I'd recommend picking up "The Last Editor." You may find Bellows strays a little into some self-adulation, but maybe that's not so bad for a man who often thought of himself as the little guy in the room. It sounds like he earned any praise that's thrown his way, even if it's by him. And anyway, by the end of the book, that fades into the background. It did for me anyway. I was left simply admiring a man who, when he wrote the book at 80, was still looking for the next hurdle to leap over.