From the left — for a decade
Times Eagle turns 10
By DAVID HARLAN
O f The Daily Astorian
Maybe Spiro T. Agnew said it best.
When the former vice president — in a brief
moment of relative lucidity during a 1970 speech
in San Diego — branded some o f the more
outspoken voices among the dark forces of
liberalism as “ nattering nabobs of negativism,”
he might as well have been referring to Michael
McCusker by name.
“ I wear the triple N with pride,” said
McCusker, as he prepared to publish the
1 Oth-anniversary issue of the North Coast Times
Eagle, that eccentric combination of prose, poetry
and liberal politics he has published and edited
on something less than a shoestring for the past
decade.
The monthly alternative newspaper was
rekindled in its present form on July 20, 1979,
following McCusker’s return from a short stint as
a Guam-based copy editor for the Pacific Daily
News of Honolulu.
“ This was a terrible newspaper,” he recalled.
‘ ‘They were very right wing. They revered the
memory o f Chiang Kai Shek. ’ ’
THURSDAY WAS ALSO the 20th aniversary
of the publication o f the first edition o f the
original Times Eagle in Wheeler, as well as
humanity’s first visit to the surface of the moon.
McCusker was 37 and had spent roughly 15
years in and out of the newspaper racket when he
churned out his first issue of the Times Eagle.
“ I put out the paper and then I went home,
watched ‘Lou Grant’ and said, ‘Me and you,
Lou,’ ” he remembered.
A decade later McCusker is still waiting on
one more thrill: turning a profit.
‘ ‘The N tT E has yet to break even on a single
issue, a ten-year record which surely must be
worth a category in Guinness,” he editorializes in
the current issue o f the Times Eagle.
The blame, McCusker says, lies largely with
himself. Advertising sales — the lifeblood of any
newspaper — are not one o f his long suits,
despite a small but loyal core o f advertisers.
‘ ‘A newspaper to me is accidentally a
business,” he says. “ 1 would really honestly
rather wash dishes than sell ads.”
McCusker has washed his share of dishes
during a decade of holding down a series of
outside jobs to support his monthly publication
habit.
“ Shooting one’s mouth off does have its
penalties and I guess washing dishes and hauling
garbage is part of that,” he says.
“ BUT IT ’S W HAT I want to do,” he adds.
“ It just means a lot to me to put out a little rag
where 1 can print my heresies under my by-line.”
The physical process involved with
accomplishing that on a monthly basis is
anything but modem.
Copy for the paper is set on a hulking and
cantankerous 1952 IBM Executive, an ancient
electric typewriter that can take anywhere from
15 minutes to a half hour to warm to a
semi-operable state. The space bar sticks for
several long seconds before delivering the desired
result with a perfunctory clunk.
Warmth is a necessity when McCusker applies
his fingers to the keyboard of the aged Executive.
Page 2 PANACHEI, Aatona. Oregon, Friday, July 21, 1989
Th» Dally Astortan— D AVID HARLAN
Michael McCusker publishes the North Coast Times Eagle out of his Astoria home.
“ I have to have the temperature sub-tropical. It
has to be at least 100 degrees for it to work,”
McCusker claims.
The metal monster survived an April 25 fire
that left McCusker out of doors and threatened to
put an end to the Times Eagle before its 10th
birthday.
McCusker is at least as resilient as the old
IBM.
A Los Angeles native, he started his newspaper
career “ as the oldest copy boy in California”
with the Independent Star News of Pasadena.
“ I STARTED THE day Kennedy was
killed,” McCusker recalls.
After a short and boring stint as sports editor of
an area weekly, McCusker joined the U.S.
Marine Corps in 1966 and headed for the far
shores o f Vietnam.
His year as combat correspondent earned him
three writing awards and some indelible marks on
his memory.
Those awards landed him a staff position with
The Associated Press in Fargo, N.D., when he
returned, a job he later lost because of his less
than popular views on the war effort.
After short stints with several other news
organizations and helping to found Vietnam
Veterans Against the War, McCusker came to
Oregon for the first time as part o f the 1968
presidential campaign of Sen. Eugene McCarthy.
After he came back for a second look he went
to work for the original North Coast Times Eagle
in 1971, splitting his time between the newspaper
and the more profitable pursuit of commercial
albacore fishing.
Dissatisfied after the newspaper changed
hands, McCusker was lured away to become a
copy editor on Guam. The Times Eagle,
meanwhile, quitely died.
WHEN THE JOB on Guam failed to live up
to expectations, McCusker decided to return to
Clatsop County and reincarnate the monthly
publication.
Social injustice and environmental
responsibility are recurring themes in
McCusker’s writings. Democracy and capitalism
— two decidely different concepts in his point of
view — have become indistinguishable in
modem American society, he argues. The
A 1952 IB M Executive is McCusker’s
vehicle for bringing the Times Eagle to its
readers.
Democratic and Republican parties are too
similar in their stands on too many issues to suit
McCusker’s tastes.
“ You just can’t make good choices unless you
have choices,” he says.
Giving people alternative sources of
information is what the Times Eagle is about,
McCusker said.
“ There are people who really disagree
intensely with me but who realize and appreciate
the First Amendment,” he says. “ I know people
who say they get the paper every month to find
out what the commies are up to. ”
Available at a number o f local shops and
restaurants, the Times Eagle serves as an
important forum for many members of the North
Coast community who have kept faith with the
beliefs of their less settled pasts, McCusker
believes. Many o f the articles printed in the paper
are written by its readers. Its readers are also the
source o f the poetry it prints.
See Times Eagle, Page 14
On the cover
Editor and publisher Michael McCusker
displays the 1 Oth-anniversary Issue o f the
North Coast Times Eagle, festooned with
the words ‘ ‘The Eagle Has Landed. ’ ’ The
photograph is by David Harlan.