By Tom Shales

People sometimes told me they couldn’t imagine the Washington Post’s Style section without me, which was flattering in a way, but what came to pass was considerably more surprising: the Washington Post without the Washington Post. Yes, the paper still exists and appears daily, but its golden age fades further and further into the mists of memory.

Another thing I used to hear about me and the Post, where I spent roughly 39 varyingly rewarding years, most of those as TV critic, was that my pristine copy veritably flew out of my typewriter (later the PC) and directly into the newspaper with nary so much as a glance from an editor. That is not at all true. Some pieces were edited lightly and some were mutilated but all passed before the eyes of several editors, including the much-maligned Style copy desk.

I regularly denounced editors as a species, insulting them with such disparagements as, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach; those who can’t even teach, edit.” Editors, I liked to say, were all failed writers, and bitter about it, but that kind of logic produces such similarly flawed thoughts as critics are all failed performers or failed somethings. Having now reached an age of reason, that little lull just before senility, I do feel inclined to apologize for those blanket indictments of all editors.