Friday, May 16, 2003 4:07 PM
By Michael Collins
Last month’s column gave tribute to Charles Rappleye, former news editor and staff writer for the L.A. Weekly. But, here I am writing about Charlie again, and for good reason. This stalwart of the paper, and the Press Club, has decided to leave the Weekly after a wonderful and illustri- ous career at the paper after the publication and Charlie came to a mutual agreement that, effectively, ended his employment at the largest alternative news weekly in the nation. This came as a shock to the Press Club’s mem- bers.
This hard-charging Gentleman was the editor of umpteen L.A. Weekly pieces of yours truly but I won’t sing of our praises. I’ll let others do that because Charles Rappleye has been a jewel for the Press Club and the Weekly. But first, note that Charlie has ink running in his veins since he grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts and attended the University of Wisconsin, where he majored in
economics. At that esteemed university, he was a writer and editor of the Daily Cardinal. Upon graduating, Charlie traveled to California and worked at the Santa Barbara News and Review before knocking it out at newspapers in Ukiah, Whittier and the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.
Mr. Rappleye also penned a tome about John Rosselli, who was apparently recruited by the CIA to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
In 1994, Charlie became the news editor of the L.A. Weekly, where his leadership caused ‘shock and awe’ content for the largest alter-
native paper in the nation. In
1996, Charlie won first place in the Press Club competition for his column about the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of journalist Gary Webb’s exposes on the connection between the CIA, the Contras and the crack cocaine epi- demic. Last year, Mr. Rappleye won the Press Club’s prestigious first place award for Investigative Journalism for 2000.
Charlie is now working on
several impending book
deals, crafting numerous
investigative pieces for sever-
al publications, including the
Weekly, while continuing to
help bring up his bright boy
Dexter, 16, and his amazing daughter, Kelly, 11.
The praises for this amazing man have been over- whelming. “Charlie is not just an editor, but a mentor, a guy who was as interested in having your take on a story as he was in the story itself,” Erin Aubry Kaplan, staff writer for the Weekly, told me.
I ran into Erin at a boisterous sendoff for Charlie at the Cat & Fiddle in Hollywood, where I presented Charlie with a 12-year-old bottle of Glenfiddich and a bottle of water with a Boeing/Rocketdyne logo on it. Charlie looked
shocked and said, “Is this for real–I can drink this?” To which I responded, “Why not, everybody else is!”
Others at the party included Weekly stalwarts Dave Shulman, Ted Soqui, Christine Pelisek, Michael Seeley, Jim Crogan, David Cogan and Tulsa Kinney.
Later, I heard from Howard Blume, the Weekly’s Associate News Editor, who told me: “Charlie edited some of the work that I am most proud of … Charlie can be dif- ficult and uncompromising, but it’s almost always for the right reasons, a desire to do meaningful stories and do them right. He’s also a tireless investigator as a reporter who has a deep knowledge of the way the city works and a keen intuition about the way things work in general. When Charles Rappleye writes a story, I always assume it’s something I need to read as a citizen of Los Angeles.”
Mr. Rappleye made the Press Club a better organization, according to my favorite firebrand and fellow Board Member, Jill Stewart. “Charlie forced the Board to face facts 5 or 6 years ago, when they were moving from place to place every year and sometimes more than once a year, that the club needed a stable home. He and others spent a lot of time searching for a permanent headquarters, and his commitment caused the Board to realize it was killing the club not to have a reliable location. The underlying reason the club has been in a stable spot for the first time in more than a decade, even though Charlie was gone by the time we found the Los Angeles Film School Building, is because of Charlie Rappleye’s insistence that we have a home.
“Charlie was brought in to the Club when Bill Rosendahl was trying to attract young journalists to revive the Club. I will forever be grateful to Charlie for taking on the ridiculous Board procedures we used to have to follow, using Roberts Rules of Order, that caused the meetings to
drag on for an extra hour or two. ‘Point of order this, and point of order that.’ Jeez, it was awful. It drove Charlie nuts and he let it be known! I loved him for that! Eventually, the Board began to realize that what Charlie had been saying was right on. Now we just hold meet- ings like normal adults, and it’s far more friendly and pro- ductive than ever before.”
Jill isn’t alone in her prais- es of Charlie. Mary Moore, former President of the Press Club, who is in Pakistan on a humanitarian mission, had this to say. “Charlie is one guy who is not afraid to piss anyone off. And I admire him for that. I first met Charlie
when I wrote a few stories for the L.A. Weekly. He was the best kind of editor. Every story idea I offered, Charlie found a way – with a tweak here and there — to get excit- ed about it. His is not contrived excitement, but rather (his) is a journalistic passion that can give even a mediocre story a boost. I trusted his judgment and he never disappointed me.”
Charlie has never disappointed the Press Club or me. Looking up ‘class act’ in the dictionary, I saw Charlie’s photo next to the definition.
