From Writing News to Making News

You have to wonder what Paul Bond was thinking when he decided to run for a seat on the Santa Clarita City Council.

Perhaps his is just a perverse desire to explore the most despised professions in the world. Bond, 35, is already a reporter, a job with all the cachet of rat catcher in these media-hating times. He covers crime and higher education for the Antelope Valley Press in Palmdale.

What motivates someone already practicing a trade that causes people to avert their eyes and hide their daughters to want to enter politics, a field widely regarded as even more loathsome?

What’s next for Bond

Law school?

Over lunch in one of Lancaster’s premier restaurants, he gamely endures the role reversal his candidacy has exposed him to and answers questions, instead of asking them.

I try to loosen him up by telling him, truthfully, that he wasn’t my first choice as a subject for this column. My first choice was a Tupperware salesman who works in drag, moving record numbers of lettuce holders and other marvels of modern storage under the nom de plastic Pam Teflon. But our Pam was under the weather, so I undertook the next idea on my list, the reporter who ran for public office.

That seemed newsworthy because, for one thing, at most papers, including this one, working reporters can’t run for office and keep their jobs. That has traditionally been perceived as a conflict of interest, comparable to having a business or intimate relationship with a source.

Indeed, there is a colorful quip on the subject from former New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal. The original can’t be printed in a family newspaper, but the gist of it is that reporters can do anything they want with elephants, as long as they don’t cover the circus.

Bond said he entered the City Council race because he lives in Santa Clarita, and “I wanted to do what I could to improve the city.” Bond is nostalgic for the Santa Clarita that used to be when he and wife Lorri arrived eight years ago.

“My wife and I loved to sit in the backyard,” Bond said. “You couldn’t hear a car. All you ever heard was a coyote.” For him, development has stripped the Santa Clarita Valley of much of its wild charm, making it more like the San Fernando Valley, where he grew up.

A conservative Republican, a breed many people think nonexistent in journalism, Bond decided at the last possible minute to add his name as a slow-growth candidate to the field of 13 vying for two seats on the City Council. Last time that he changed jobs, moving from a position in operations at American Airlines to newspapering, he succeeded in halving his salary. Had he won the election April 9 and become a full-time councilman, he would have halved it again, to about $800 a month.

Way to go, Paul.

Nobody at the Antelope Valley Press, where Bond has worked since August, objected to his bid for office, he said. He supposes that the paper is “more tolerant” than most.

“They never once asked me to withdraw. They encouraged me, at least my fellow workers encouraged me.”

“We don’t have a firm policy on it, but we didn’t have any objections,” said the managing editor, Vern Lawson. “The fact that Paul lives in a different city than he covers made it even more acceptable. We had no problem with it.”

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Tom Reilly, who chairs the journalism department at Cal State Northridge, said the question of how involved journalists should be in public life is being debated more and more. “It seems to me that it’s up to the news organization, and the values seem to be changing,” he said.

For most of this century, American journalists have increasingly tried to eliminate any ties between themselves and story subjects to encourage objectivity and the appearance of fairness. But today, community events are sometimes covered by reporters from the news organizations that sponsor them, a growing phenomenon called “civic journalism.”

“It used to be a little more clear-cut,” Reilly said. “Now there seems to be a pretty big gray area.”

For Bond, being the subject of news stories instead of their author was sometimes trying. The Santa Clarita Signal’s acerbic John Boston seemed to delight in needling the candidate in his columns. Bond is a low-key guy, almost to the point of blandness--a quality that often works to a reporter’s advantage. But when it comes to being colorful, let’s just say that he’s no Pam Teflon.

Bond, who got his bachelor’s degree in journalism from CSUN in 1995, was briefly an intern at the Signal. Boston remembers little about him, except that “he showed up for work looking like H. R. Haldeman.”

Columnists don’t have to be objective, as other journalists strive to be, and Boston wasn’t. “We ‘tried to despise him to death with a steady neglect.’ That’s from Michel Montaigne,” the French essayist, Boston said.

Bond had no qualms about seeking office while a member of the Fourth Estate. “I don’t see anything wrong with a journalist trying to get involved in his community in a positive way,” he said. “Columnists do it all the time.”

Columnist Boston has similar views. “I have a problem ethically with politicians running for office,” he said.

Bond was not especially upset about his treatment at the hands of the Signal. “I figured any press was better than no press.”

The candidate, who had a campaign staff of his wife and six friends and relatives, spent just under $1,000--partly to avoid taking contributions from people who might want political favors and partly to avoid the government paperwork requirement that kicks in at $1,000.

But the electorate spared Bond another pay cut and additional public scorn. He came in seventh, with the council seats going to Jill Klajic and Jan Heidt.

Nevertheless, the experience taught valuable lessons: “Not to be discouraged when you’re told you don’t stand a chance. And even if you lose, there’s no way to go through the process without learning something.”

He got 886 votes, or 4.3%.

And he would run again in a heartbeat, he said.