L.A. Times and U-T stars take bow

One of San Diego's most trustworthy and knowledgeable reporters and a man considered by many to be the voice of reason on the Union-Tribune’s editorial board are taking buyouts offered by Tribune Publishing, owner of the papers.

L.A. Times reporter Tony Perry and U-T editorial writer William Osborne have accepted exit packages.

"They know so much more than what's in the clip files and the comfort they have with San Diego facts and history give them so much more perspective," said Tim McClain, a business journalist and entrepreneur who now works for county supervisor Ron Roberts. "I want to thank them for all their great word-smithing and for all they've done to contribute to and insist on informed public discourse."

Perry's last day is Wednesday (November 25), he said in a telephone interview from his North County home. He has worked for newspapers for 44 years, the last 28 for the Times and 8 years for the Union-Tribune before that.

"In 1971, I was writing a graduate thesis on Shakespeare's The Tempest and I thought I'd give a newspaper job a try," Perry said. "I never got back to The Tempest.”

Perry, 68, is a familiar figure in the journalism community, doing radio, PBS news shows, and his regular Times stories. He wrote about San Diego from a regional perspective — an out-of- towner's view written by a real insider.

Perry covered zoo animals and wildfires — including being on the Times team that won a 2004 Pulitzer Prize for covering the 2003 Southern California wildfires. When he wrote about the water wars in 1995, Perry found “the poet of Imperial Valley," rancher Rick Mealey, to write the lede around.

"He's a reporter's reporter," said Rick Rogers, a former U-T reporter who covered the Marines alongside Perry. "He is deeply respected by fellow journalists, and he is also respected and trusted by the Marines and the people he covered."

After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., Perry embedded with the Marines and went to Afghanistan seven times and to Iraq seven times for long stints reporting on the wars.

"I consider it a privilege that I was able to report on them," he said. "It's not about us. It's their story. I wanted their story heard."

He was deeply affected by what he saw.

"I wanted my readers to listen to these young men and women's voices and to know what kind of people we are sending out to fight for us," Perry said.

He remembers a 19-year-old from Texas — Aaron Austin — who told him "There's no place I'd rather be than here with my Marines." The next day, he died in the battle of Fallujah, Perry said.

Rogers, now the editor of Best Self San Diego, and other reporters (including me) think of Perry as the professor emeritus of San Diego journalism. He could be counted on to help his colleagues and competitors; and more than a few of us enjoyed a free meal from Tony.

"He was a jack of all trades," Rogers said. "Everything he did, he was good at — he was good at radio, he was good on television, he was good at interviewing, he was good at sourcing….

"It really is the end of an era for San Diego and for military journalism," Rogers said. "This is a tough beat; it takes time to develop the kind of trust and respect that Tony did and very few people can put as much of themselves into it the way Tony did."

Perry isn't mourning. His wife, Ann, has him preparing for his next projects, including freelance work and beginning a book he has long wanted to write on two Marine Corps legends. With a year's severance pay, he can afford to relax, he said.

"I've had a great career," Perry said. "For a decade, I had a slice of the biggest story in the world and I wrote about it for a first-class newspaper. I'm not the oldest continuously active byline in San Diego, but I'm close."

(corrected 11/24, 10:35 a.m.)