Remembering Jeff and Ann Fairbanks
It will be ten years this Friday, Nov. 25th.
On Nov. 25, 1995, a tragic car accident on Highway 46 claimed the lives of Jeff and Ann Fairbanks, their daughter Sienna, and two other people. It was also, I submit, the beginning of the end of local media on the Central Coast.
Jeff Fairbanks was the editor of the Telegram-Tribune, having joined the paper as a reporter in the late '70s and working his way up the ranks to the top spot. His wife Ann, a graduate of both Stanford and Columbia Universities, was quite simply the best reporter to ever work on the Central Coast in either print or broadcast. The couple stayed on the Central Coast to raise their three daughters and rejected offers at larger papers. Ann covered health issues for the paper and wrote amazing feature articles about the California Valley and a Cal Poly provost battling depression.
They were coming home from Fresno that Saturday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend, their oldest daughter having run in a high school cross country meet. About 22 miles east of Paso Robles, an RV drifted across the road and smashed head on into the Fairbanks' Volvo. The couple and one daughter were killed instantly. A second daughter was miraculously pulled from the car before it completely burst into flames.
To me, this tragedy marked a seismic shift in the local media community. Prior to 1995, we had folks like Jeff and Ann, along with Dorie Bentley, Carol Roberts, Dan Clarkson, Bill Benica, Fred Peterson --- broadcast and print professionals who decided to make a career on the Central Coast. Being a part of the community they covered. No more. Now both KSBY and the Tribune are a revolving door for reporters anxious to move on to bigger markets. Management no longer promotes from within so now we have editors and news directors who hail from Kentucky and Colorado. It's all Knight-Ridder and Clear Channel, with talk now of a national chain taking over New Times this spring.
The transformation of Central Coast media took ten years. It started on a crisp November afternoon out on Highway 46 with the deaths of two of the best and the brightest.
I hope you'll take a moment sometime this week and keep a good thought for Jeff and Ann. We will not see their likes again.
On Nov. 25, 1995, a tragic car accident on Highway 46 claimed the lives of Jeff and Ann Fairbanks, their daughter Sienna, and two other people. It was also, I submit, the beginning of the end of local media on the Central Coast.
Jeff Fairbanks was the editor of the Telegram-Tribune, having joined the paper as a reporter in the late '70s and working his way up the ranks to the top spot. His wife Ann, a graduate of both Stanford and Columbia Universities, was quite simply the best reporter to ever work on the Central Coast in either print or broadcast. The couple stayed on the Central Coast to raise their three daughters and rejected offers at larger papers. Ann covered health issues for the paper and wrote amazing feature articles about the California Valley and a Cal Poly provost battling depression.
They were coming home from Fresno that Saturday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend, their oldest daughter having run in a high school cross country meet. About 22 miles east of Paso Robles, an RV drifted across the road and smashed head on into the Fairbanks' Volvo. The couple and one daughter were killed instantly. A second daughter was miraculously pulled from the car before it completely burst into flames.
To me, this tragedy marked a seismic shift in the local media community. Prior to 1995, we had folks like Jeff and Ann, along with Dorie Bentley, Carol Roberts, Dan Clarkson, Bill Benica, Fred Peterson --- broadcast and print professionals who decided to make a career on the Central Coast. Being a part of the community they covered. No more. Now both KSBY and the Tribune are a revolving door for reporters anxious to move on to bigger markets. Management no longer promotes from within so now we have editors and news directors who hail from Kentucky and Colorado. It's all Knight-Ridder and Clear Channel, with talk now of a national chain taking over New Times this spring.
The transformation of Central Coast media took ten years. It started on a crisp November afternoon out on Highway 46 with the deaths of two of the best and the brightest.
I hope you'll take a moment sometime this week and keep a good thought for Jeff and Ann. We will not see their likes again.
posted by Dave Congalton at 11:33 PM
4 Comments:
Thanks for your tribute to Jeff and Ann. I had the privilege of working with them both, and now, as a college journalism professor, I am privileged to have their memory to guide my students.
Thanks for the reminder, Dave -- and for reviving some very fond memories. I think of the Fairbankses every time we drive from the Valley to the Coast, but I had no idea it had been 10 years... I agree with your comments about journalism; believe me, the problem isn't limited to the Central Coast. But people like Kathy Campbell offer hope for the future.
I think SLO changed a bit after their loss...the T was never the same. I used to think of them often as I walked out by their memorial at the Elfin forest.
Ten years later, the tragedy still hurts. I was one of those lucky folks to work with Jeff and Ann at the T-T, and yes, they were really that good, professionally and personally. We must remember them. Jeff and I had a running gag in the newsroom that life was racing ahead too fast -- that the seventies were leaving too quickly. So at the change of the decade, at the start of 1980, we agreed to hold a reunion for newsroom people in 1990. True to their word, Jeff and Ann hosted the party. They didn't forget old friends. Nor will the rest of us.
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