WASHINGTON POST POLITICAL INVESTIGATIONS EDITOR MATEA GOLD HAD A COOLER JOB TITLE AT THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

Among the books I never thought I’d be reading during my recent two-week winter trip to Italy would have been the so-called Mueller Report, the exhaustive 448-page hunt for collusion and other shit with Russia by then-candidate Donald  Trump in the 2016 election  If I was locked up in the SHU at Pelican Bay and it was the only book in the cell, I’d probably read it.  

But, here I am, seven days into a getaway with my girlfriend Nancy in a 14th century hilltop town in Umbria overlooking Lake Trasimeno where Hannibal Barca wiped out 15,000 Roman soldiers in 217 B.C., and where I go to escape America and, having wrapped Michael Connelly’s latest on the airplane ride here and rushed through Lee Child’s Blue Moon in a personal best six days, I looked at what else I brought, cased the ripe bookcases here and, lo and behold,  decided to give the Washington Post’s illustrated version a shot.

Before I get to the book, let me explain, at some length, why I was even considering reading the Post’s 234 page paperback version. The reason  boils down to two words. One of them is Gold and the other is Matea.

Matea Gold, my friend of about 25 years (damn, Matea, quarter centuries fly by) had sent me the Mueller Report to me from her base at the Washington Post  where she is the National Political Enterprise and Investigations Editor. These times? That’s a cool job.

I met Matea when she had another cool job. Maybe even cooler.

This was back in the mid-1990s at the Los Angeles Times when Matea was the East L. A, Bureau Chief and I, who shared a two-top pod with her, was the Watts Bureau Chief.  We were both stringers back then and anointed ourselves those tough titles, though several staffers at the paper including our editors Bob Baker and Ed Boyer and some reporters often went along for the ride and called us that.  

To us, these two beats, East L.A., along with Boyle Heights, and Watts, along with South Central, were the thriving, rough and lonely, too-often forgotten, essential hearts of our city. We cruised those streets in search of stories not found on the City News Service wire or from cop calls. For example, in 1997, I wrote a story about a rose garden in Watts, (“Blooming of a Dream”) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-01-me-14548-story.html and Matea wrote about crime going down in Boyle Heights (“In Hollenbeck, Crime Statistics Aren’t Needed”) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-06-03-me-65061-story.html.

Our pods were not powerfully located in the City Room. They were off to a distant side, like our beats, hidden even from view of City Editor Bill Boyarsky’s desk – which he once famously stood atop to rally the troops in face of cooperate motherfuckers trying to slime into the newsroom  – by a large pillar on which health and benefits flyers were posted and ignored by the staff. To bottom it off, we sat about six feet from the entrance to the bathrooms.

But, like our beats, we turned that undesirable location completely around.  It went from a barrio and a ghetto pod to a desirable location.

Hold on. I’ll get to that Mueller book.

One of our first moves to upgrade our banished pod was that pillar. We tore down the ignored flyers about useless things like health and benefits and replaced them with photographs from the staff that didn’t make the paper. We had a closer relationship with photography department than anyone at the paper. I spent more time in the photo lab, mainly flirting with the great conflict photojournalist Carolyn Cole, than any journalist in the newsroom, even Calvin Hom and he was the assignment editor. So we, well, mainly Matea, came up with that idea get the photographers to post their unpublished photos of assignments on our pillar. The Wall, we called it.

The first one exhibit on The Wall was five or six shots from a series staff photographer Kirk McCoy did on black cowboys. Once that was up and popular, it became something of an honor to be on our Wall. We got stuff from Carolyn, Genaro Molina, Gary Friedman, Larry Ho, Anacleto Rapping, Luis Sinco, Clarence Williams, Perry Riddle, Robert Gauthier.

The staffers’ stop to the bathroom soon included a layover at our photograph Wall and a conversation with Matea and me. One memorable time, Rick Meyer, aka “The Great One”, aka Richard E. Meyer, stopped by, looked at our photo Wall and then complemented me on a story about Hells Angel leader Sonny Barger, “Good story about the Angels, Mike. How does Barger do it?” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-jul-07-mn-10485-story.html   I’ll never forget that. I didn’t even know he knew my name.

And the coup de grace of Matea and my pod was food. In particular, barbecue. I would go once a month to the two best rib joints in the city, Phillips’ BBQ in Leimert Park and Woody’s on Slauson and stash the cardboard box of beef or pork ribs - mixed sauce – in my top desk drawer. (Yeah, I had traded the classic journalists’ stash of a bourbon in the desk drawer for ribs.  But, don’t discount me. I’d return to the old school bottle soon enough.) People would come by, enticed by the waft, and inquire. I’d simply pull out my drawer and offer them a rib.  One time I was talking to legendary 89 Family Swan Bloods leader Big Evil who called collect from Men’s Central, when Bob Sipchen, who would go on to win a Pulitzer for writing about mentally ill homeless people in 2002,  walked up, pulled out my drawer, took a few chomps off a rib, closed the drawer and walked off. Never said a word. Another time or two, my editor Ed Boyer enjoyed the ribs He posted so recently on Facebook after pit master Woody Phillips died.

Anyway, Matea and I had made the best of it. She became a staff writer before I did and went on to Washington, I went to Fresno and then came home to Los Angeles. We kept in touch throughout the years. I went to her wedding in Sonoma and admired the rise of her career. I never been to the Post, but I’m sure she has a powerful desk, or even office, but no way could it be as cool as our pod.  Long live East L.A. and Watts.

Now this book. Get it. Read it. It’s fascinating, enlightening and even entertaining. It’s as fast a read as Connelly or Child. I say it again. The Mueller Report, at least the one illustrated and edited by Matea Gold, is entertaining.

If it came out back in the day, Matea and I would’ve put it up on The Wall.