LEAVING THE HERALD: Good-bye to all that

Aside from the speeches, a big card and drinks at the Shakespeare Tavern afterwards, I don't remember much about my last day at the Herald in late 2004.

But I can certainly remember why I left after 17 years.

The Herald was very good to me. When asked about it I would tell people that it was like going to university and studying a new course every week. You had to pick up a topic and learn it immediately.

I'd arrived as a senior feature writer – some time I will tell the odd story about why and how that happened – and that meant interviewing people of all persuasions (literally hundreds and hundreds of musicians, writers and artists in that 17 years).

But also writing political feature articles, travel stories, profiles, the occasional piece on the death someone famous (Princess Diana, John F Kennedy Jr) and also satirical articles (which some people took at face value and wrote letters of complaint) and much more.

Including thousands of record, book, film restaurant and concert reviews.

Yes, the Herald was very good to me. I loved it.

And I was good to the Herald in return, winning – or being nominated for – many journalism awards, not the least the Media Peace Prize in 2002 for my time in the Solomon Islands where I was sent to try and explain that morass of cultural, political and tribal divides to New Zealand Herald readers.

I traveled a lot for the Herald, sometimes to interview musicians in Australia, London, the US and Japan, and at other times for political reasons (Taiwan and Japan).

Often I would pay for the airfares on my Diners Card and the Herald would recompense me. But I got the airpoints.

Sometimes on trips away I'd add on a few days or a week as holidays so I could poke around a bit more, and get some travel stories or other profiles.

This was all great fun and never really tiring. It wasn't uncommon that I would arrive back in Auckland from LA in the morning and go straight to work. Some weeks I was out four or five nights running at concerts and turning around the review for a deadline of midnight.

Yes, I love it all.

But then something happened.

Because I was a fast turnaround guy I found myself more and more in the office.

I've mentioned this before but this became my habit: at an editorial meeting on a Wednesday I would get a topic for the big Saturday edition (Why so many women terrorists lately? How are the rich different? What's up with this clash of civilizations?) and that afternoon and night I would do my research – in the days before the internet it was in books and magazines.

I'd clean up the research on the Thursday morning.

Thursday lunchtime I'd disappear off to Tony's restaurant on Wellesley St, get a bottle of red wine and spread my notes out. Once they were ordered I'd have lunch, relax and every now and again have another look, and through arrows and deletions have the story right there.

As I passed my editor's office I would cheerily say, “It's just a typing job, John” and by noon on Friday, if not before, the story was done and filed.

I loved the whole process.

But it became an albatross around my neck.

I was the fast turnaround guy and so there I was, stuck in the office. Week after week, month after month. Previously I had seen places and met people I could never possibly have imagined.

Now the furtherest I'd been in the previous year was to the North Shore to interview some National Party guy. Hardly up there with New York on the first anniversary of 9/11, interviewing Arnie and George Clooney in Hollywood, or getting around Taiwan by myself.

This was made even more galling by the well-meaning editor sometimes dropping by to remind me of how good my travel stories or whatever had been and saying, “You do your best work out of the office, Graham”.

And it was true so . . .

One day in early 2004 some collar'n'tie guy I'd never seen before appeared at my desk and told me was from HR or somewhere. He was here to tell me I needed to start using up my accrued holidays.

“How many days do I have?”

Three months' worth.

And the decision was made: my wife Megan and I decided we would travel around the States for the whole of that time; drive from LA to the Florida Keys through the South, fly to New York City for a while, fly to San Francisco and then drive the coastal route back down to LA.

We mostly avoided the interstate highways but hit the smaller roads through abandoned towns and strange little settlements which seemed forgotten by progress. I wrote a weekly travel column on the road for the Herald and amassed any number of stories, some of which appeared in my travel books Postcards from Elsewhere and The Idiot Boy Who Flew.

It was a wonderful trip and in the last week I said to Megan I liked myself better when I didn't work, and that when I got back I'd give the Herald a month and see what happened.

And so I did, but at the end of that month I was once again the fast turnaround go-to guy going nowhere again.

So I gave a months notice – they convinced me to stay an extra fortnight to get things in place – but finally my great Herald adventure was over.

On that last Friday the editor made a very generous speech calling me a “Renaissance man” (which is lofty speak for jack-of-all-trades) and I thanked everyone, especially the sub-editors who had prevented me from looking foolish from time to time.

Then it was off to the pub.

A couple of people said I was irreplaceable which was nice.

On Monday Scott Kara was sitting at my desk.

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These entries are of little consequence to anyone other than me Graham Reid, the author of this site, and maybe my family, researchers and those with too much time on their hands.

Enjoy these random oddities at Personal Elsewhere.