Jane Ely 1940-2009

As literacy declines, and people disregard current events in favor of infotainment shoveled in at sixty cycles per second, once-great newspapers are falling by the wayside.

And the reporters that used to work at these papers will be gone too. Some will go into public relations, some into law or teaching, some retire, and eventually, all will meet the ultimate deadline.

Reporter and columnist Jane Ely passed away Monday. She had retired from the Chronicle in 2004 and no doubt had strong opinions about this once robust daily going insubstantial. I wish I’d got to hear them.

Ely started as a police reporter at The Houston Post in the 1960’s. Her boss was the estimable Bill Hobby, whose family had bought The Post from Jessie H. Jones, who thought it unseemly to own both of Houston’s major newspapers. (Somebody ought to tell that to all the greedheads like Rupert Murdoch who are playing monopoly with the media today.)

When Hearst absorbed The Post in 1988, Ely joined The Chronicle, reporting on national politics until she became a full–time columnist.

When I was out somewhere and saw her, as when Paul Tsongas came to town to talk up the Concord Coalition, or at a Craig Washington fundraiser, where he wondered aloud why Sheila Jackson Lee was entering the race against him, I knew that I was at a real news event, and that somebody was fixin’ to commit journalism. She would sit up front, her gravitational force drawing folks around her, where they could get the jokes.

The press; get it while you can.