Sandalow Is Coming To Town

“I got my start on Estudillo Street,” said Marc Sandalow, reknowned journalist and teacher and the next speaker at the Main Street Martinez Speaker Series on June 6. And it’s true, he did. Sandalow had just graduated from Oberlin College, and the Martinez News Gazette was his first job as a reporter. That was 1984.

Sandalow and I worked together in the tiny office; I covered City Hall, he covered the Board of Supervisors. Harriett Burt covered the school board and did Column One. Steve Dulas covered sports. Our editor was Bob Osmond. That first year, everyone filed their copy on manual typewriters.

Sandalow was fun to work with -- he had a delightful combination of innocence and cynicism that he seems to have retained. He was always curious, always questioning things, and though he had a healthy nonsense filter, he was generally upbeat and optimistic. A recent interview revealed that he has lost none of those qualities. He recalled his days working at the Gazette.

“The big fight was over development in the Alhambra Valley,” he said. “I can still remember the names of all five supervisors back then (for the record, they were Nancy Fahden, Bob Schroder, Tom Powers, Sunne McPeak and Tom Torlakson). I sat there forcing myself awake through those meetings all day long, and that’s where I learned about covering policy and politics. I learned an enormous amount about the way government works.”

Those lessons served Sandalow well. After two years of Gazette reporting, he got a chance to start writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, and became the Washington Bureau Chief for ten years. There he got a front row seat to history, covering the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, and the historic contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

He’s now the Associate Director of Journalism at the University of California Washington Center, and can be regularly heard as a commentator on KCBS radio and on Hearst TV. He also wrote a book two years ago about then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

He will speak at the Downtown Speakers Series on June 6 about “politics and journalism, and ten Washington myths, common misperceptions about politics,” he said. “For instance, if you think the country is broke, we’re not. Journalism is not dying. And they myth that partisanship has never been so bad – wrong. That things were better in the good old days –wrong.”

But he added that there will be plenty of references to his time in Martinez, which he now remembers fondly.

“Before I worked there, I knew Martinez from driving up I680 and seeing the huge refineries, and thinking it was an ugly industrial town. When I started working at the Gazette, I lived in Berkeley and commuted over Bear Creek Road, and I remember being amazed at what a beautiful place it was. It’s a very quaint town.”

And the Gazette could kindly be called a quaint place in which to work. Sandadlow tells the story of the time he saw a giant rat crawl out of the men’s room toilet. It’s an image he carries with him to this day.

These days, he’s found his calling.

“I like being able to sit on my couch, read the New York Times, and consider it work,” he said. “I love reading about policy and politics.”

But he tells his students that they should start their career at a small local paper, where you have to do a little bit of everything.

“There’s something to be said for spending your career where you can see your impact,” he said. “At the Gazette, I was one of two reporters, and we had to write three stories every day.”

Sandalow will speak Monday, June 6 at the Shell Clubhouse, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tickets are $15 and available through .