00:08 - Afternoon, everybody.

00:09 - And please continue eating your lunch.

00:11 - And we want to thank you all for being in the room this afternoon.

00:14 - As many of you know, and at any heart that we come to you today.

00:19 - We're breaking with our format a bit and beg your indulgence,

00:23 - but, Press Club founder, one of the founding members, John Mayer,

00:28 - who would be in this very spot.

00:29 - In fact, the first several years I ever came to the press club, this was his role.

00:34 - He passed away last week after a battle with cancer.

00:37 - John meant so much to so many of us.

00:38 - He had a great week. He was a terrific writer.

00:41 - He was a mentor to many of us.

00:43 - I'm one of them.

00:44 - We certainly appreciate, all he gave to our industry.

00:49 - And it's just a cliche to say he will be missed here.

00:51 - Can't, this this doesn't seem adequate somehow.

00:55 - And I would like to call it this time.

00:57 - One should at press one more. Who knew John?

00:59 - Well, many years to offer a tribute.

01:00 - Ladies and gentlemen, Jack.

01:01 - Great.

01:07 - Thank you, thank you.

01:08 - Dennis,

01:09 - on behalf of the Pennsylvania Press for Press Club board,

01:13 - I want to express our profound sadness at the death of John Baer.

01:17 - As Dennis said, he was a founder of this organization and its first president.

01:22 - We extend our condolences to John's wife, Rosemary,

01:25 - his sons, Johnny and James, and his three grandchildren.

01:30 - We've lost, journalism and trying.

01:33 - I could wax poetically about what a great man

01:36 - he was and how much he will be missed, which he will.

01:40 - I could provide the details of his life and incredible career,

01:44 - but he would have hated that.

01:46 - So here's my attempt at a fitting tribute.

01:50 - There are people who cover politics, people who understand politics,

01:55 - and people who sometimes somehow either manage to survive decades of politics

02:00 - without losing either their sense of humor or their mind.

02:04 - John Maher managed all three.

02:07 - John, who many people simply called

02:10 - bear, spent a career asking politicians

02:14 - the question they absolutely did not want to hear.

02:18 - Usually at the exact moment they least wanted to hear it.

02:22 - For generations of reporters who passed

02:24 - through the Pennsylvania Capitol, bear was a fixture.

02:28 - Although fixture seems far too stationary a word for

02:32 - someone who always seemed to know what was happening behind the scenes.

02:37 - That came from something increasingly difficult to acquire

02:41 - and impossible to fake institutional memory and the

02:45 - trust of a bevy of sources who couldn't wait to tell him what they knew.

02:51 - What he

02:51 - knew was that Pennsylvania government and politics is not simply a collection

02:56 - of names, offices, elections, and legislative battles.

03:01 - Instead, he treated it as one long,

03:04 - sometimes flawed human story.

03:07 - He recognized the good and the bad of it.

03:10 - He also knew where the bodies were buried

03:14 - and who issued the press release denying their existence.

03:17 - While the excavation was still underway.

03:21 - But that alone wasn't what made Bear Bear.

03:24 - It was his instant instinct of cutting through official explanation

03:29 - and getting to the question everyone else in the room was thinking,

03:33 - but hadn't quite figured out how to ask him.

03:38 - And for all his skepticism, John wasn't a cynic.

03:42 - Beneath the tough exterior and sharp prose was a belief

03:46 - the government mattered, democracy mattered, and public officials mattered

03:51 - and ought to be held accountable precisely because of the stakes at hand.

03:56 - In some ways, he could be described as an idealist.

04:00 - There was something essential about his approach.

04:03 - His criticism was nonpartizan.

04:07 - Everyone got a turn.

04:10 - That may be one of

04:10 - the finest descriptions of a political reporter's résumé.

04:14 - He annoyed everyone equally,

04:18 - and usually he did it with a sense of humor.

04:21 - John had this kind of dry wit that didn't need a long setup.

04:26 - Sometimes it barely needed a sentence.

04:30 - One story captures it perfectly.

04:32 - A particular person at the Capitol who got under John's skin

04:38 - told him that the two of them really ought to have lunch sometime.

04:42 - John's response why?

04:46 - That's it.

04:47 - One word.

04:49 - It's difficult to imagine a more efficient user

04:52 - of the English language just read his political columns

04:57 - that were extended well beyond the printed page.

05:00 - It found a natural home not only in the craziness of the Capitol

05:04 - newsroom, but in the capitals former gridiron tradition,

05:09 - where Baer helped write the political satire

05:12 - that allowed journalists and politicians to laugh at themselves.

05:16 - So for failing that, to sit there while everyone else laughed,

05:21 - he made an

05:22 - enormous contribution to those shows

05:25 - and understood that politics becomes considerably easier to endure

05:30 - when we are all willing to make light of it.

05:34 - But for all the jerk,

05:35 - all the jokes and sharp edges, there was also a teacher.

05:40 - His knowledge was something he readily passed on.

05:44 - Recently, the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents Association

05:48 - decided, appropriately to name its internship program

05:52 - the John Barron Legislative Reporting Internship.

05:56 - He had a huge impact on young journalists.

05:59 - I myself met John when I was an intern, when I had that internship,

06:04 - and he was so open to, people just starting out.

06:09 - And I'm so fortunate to stay.

06:11 - We say we stayed great friends throughout the decades.

06:16 - He understood that journalism survives because one reporter teaches

06:20 - another reporter how to do the job, how to ask the second question,

06:25 - how to cut through the B.S., and occasionally how to determine that

06:29 - the proper response to an unwanted lunch invitation is simply why.

06:36 - Sadly, future interns

06:38 - won't have the true gift of meeting John.

06:42 - But maybe in the most fitting tribute of all,

06:47 - a new generation of reporters

06:49 - will learn his name, learn from his work, and with any luck,

06:54 - ask a few tough questions of somebody in the capital

06:58 - that I think we can all agree is a hell of a legacy.

07:02 - Thank you very much.

07:10 - And now I would just ask that

07:12 - we take a moment, to,

07:17 - in respect of of John's passing.

07:26 - Thank you very much.