R.I.P. – M. Scot Skinner

People: Tribute – M. Scot Skinner, Journalist

Longtime Arizona arts reporter and journalist succumbs to bacterial infection, but M. Scot Skinner is destined to leave a lasting impression on all who knew him — even those who shared the briefest of encounters

April 4, 2016– I barely knew M. Scot Skinner. But the news of his death today keeps gonging in my head, sending a heavy rumble down my spine, and tripping some tingle to my fingertips… tap, tap, tapping on the keyboard in the endless love-hate relationship called ‘writing.’

M. Scot Skinner

Or ‘typing,’ as we journalists sometimes call it when we’re feeling particularly cynical. And we can all be so cynical. Especially now. But I don’t think Scot ever lost his journalist soul, even if it did get a little scuffed.

I could tell from the first time we spoke on the phone. It was about a year ago. I’d lost my job as national movie critic for Postmedia News and was launching The Ex-Press with some friends – all former journalists who’d paid their dues after decades in the industry, and just wanted to keep writing for the love of it.

My partner, who lives in Tucson and works for The Arizona Daily Star, had told me about Scot: A friend from the paper who’d lost his job as a movie critic in the first wave of lay-offs after the crash of 2008.

“Everybody still misses his reviews. They still ask about M. Scot Skinner,” she would say. She also said he was the wittiest presence in the newsroom, as well as one of the best writers, and all-around journos – a guy who could write anything on deadline and keep it snappy, or if he was truly interested, come up with something undeniably brilliant.

If anyone was going to understand The Ex-Press, as a concept and philosophy, he would. I emailed the link. He got back to me.

“A place for the ex-press to express…” He got it immediately, and he loved it. He’d read the site. He critiqued the movie reviews by Jay Stone and myself, and by agreeing to that first phone call, I guess gave us the all-clear as potential colleagues.

Time was the problem. And money. After he lost his gig at the Star, he told me, he’d been piecing his paychecks together – as well as his life.

We talked about the crumbling state of journalism. Our memories from the newsroom. The shitty wages paid to freelancers.

We talked about losing our jobs: The shock of it all ricocheting through the psyche, a lingering sense of injustice, a crater where ego used to be. Then laughing at the mutual recognition, maybe knowing we were probably spared the worst of what is to come.

I told him my career in corporate journalism ended 25 years to the day after it began as a cub at the Sun. “It feels like only yesterday that I was laid off after 26 years and eight months at the Star (but who’s counting?!),” he said.

Nobody really understands how much a career in journalism defines and shapes you by giving you a purpose, a platform, the power of the fourth estate. To be a passionate truth-teller, to be a fearless critic, to take on the establishment while still retaining control of the facts — these are systemic urges within the journalist’s being.

He had them all. Yet, like so many of us devalued by a system that’s lost sight of its own raison-d’etre, he was cast off as redundant: You can pull movie reviews from the wire.

Scot said he’d taken jobs as a journalism instructor at the local college, as well as a contract with the Border Service writing press releases and communiqués to make ends meet. He was also editing a book.

He was busy, and after a few tough stretches, he said his life was getting better. We talked about Obamacare, and how significantly it had changed his outlook on his own health. He told me he had a chronic health issue, and having access to pharmaceuticals and insurance was life-altering.

I asked him if he’d like to write about that, offer a first-hand account of the self-esteem shift that happens when you feel your health matters to the system. He said he was thinking of doing something like that for his blog, but like all blogs, they can become a shovel and bury you with guilt.

Without deadlines, it seems, we all have a hard time tapping the keys. And without a paycheck, it becomes an existential prospect.

Scot grew up Mormon in a small town: Safford, Arizona. You could hear it in his warm tone, a hint of Andy Griffith mingling with a whiff of Queen. He was the kid who read literature, and could still quote scripture – providing it could be used as a punchline.

“This is officially the longest [phone] conversation I have ever had with anyone, including my family,” he told me after we’d been gabbing for over an hour. And he was in the car.

We spoke on the phone a few more times, he edited our first print edition in Tucson and I finally met Scot in the flesh in February. We all went out for dinner at a mostly empty strip-mall restaurant (they are all strip-mall restaurants in Tucson) where the waiter was rude and a series of strange, string-men sculptures sat on ledges, forever tipping over and snagging themselves on anything that moved. Mostly Scot’s shoulder.

“I had such a good time with you two the other night. And it felt like I had known you a long while,” he wrote to me in a Facebook bubble a few days later. I said I felt the same way, and hoped we could do it again the next time I came to town.

I thought for sure we would. He was a young man. Just 54. But he was admitted to ICU with a bacterial infection three weeks ago. The updates were bleak. We all prayed, people raised money, but M. Scot Skinner passed on last night.

And all day long, I keep picturing him smiling at the stick figure covered in twine, carefully trying to put it back into place, and letting it rest gently on the shoulder of the string-covered stick figure next to it.

Were we all so gentle, so deep, and so compassionate with the string people around us. Scot Skinner will be sorely missed. Condolences to his family, his friends, and all those mourning the loss of his beautiful soul that I barely knew, but will always remember.

– Katherine Monk

THE EX-PRESS, April 4, 2016

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