Readers of yesterday’s New York Times Arts & Leisure section learned the following tidbit: Steve Sansweet ended a 26-year career as a prize-winning investigative reporter and Los Angeles bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal to go to work for … Yoda.
More specifically, Sansweet, who claims to own the world’s largest private collection of Star Wars memorabilia, and who has written several books deconstructing Star Wars, jumped ship to become head of fan relations for Lucasfilm.
Asked if that unconventional career move troubled him, Paul Steiger, the Journal‘s managing editor, conceded that, yeah, it did, but not in the manner you might imagine; what really bothers Steiger is that Sansweet got to act out his fantasy, whereas Steiger is still stuck running a newspaper — albeit a newspaper that is one of Amerca’s best.
“I totally understand this,” Steiger, a notorious Los Angeles Dodgers fan, told the Times, a trifle wistfully. “If Paul DePodesta wanted to give me his job as general manager of the Dodgers, I’d take it in a minute.”
–Steve Lovelady
Steve Lovelady was editor of CJR Daily.