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Seattle Times travel editor tells class to write the truth — even about squeaking beauty queens

By Will Mari
UW News Lab

I had heard the tales about Terry Tazioli, The Seattle Times’ travel editor. Funny ones, mostly.

During my class’s recent tour of The Times, we marched into the “fishbowl” and took our seats around a long table. Taz, as he is known, soon joined us.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Taz resembles a slightly disheveled Kelsey Grammer (imagine the fictional Dr. Fraser Crane with more gray hair, a black sweater and round glasses). The man was, to put it simply, a hoot.

We didn’t have much time so he dived right into his life story, starting with his time at the UW, where he majored in advertising and marketing.

He hated it, he said, but he got a scholarship that helped pay his way to graduation during the Vietnam War.

Next came a disastrous expedition to the University of Colorado, where Taz had a friend who was a grad student in the psych department and a counselor there. He blithely assumed he could find a graduate journalism program – but there was none to be found.

In a panic, he called an old professor from a phone booth; the professor got Taz accepted into three real grad schools, including the elite University of Missouri.

His first class was advanced reporting, “taught” in an actual newsroom of a paper owned by the university, the Columbia Missourian.

He said he had no idea what he was doing.

Taz colorfully described G. Thomas Duffy, his first editor, as a larger-than-life figure. Duffy assigned Taz his first story: a profile of Miss Teen Missouri.

“She wouldn’t speak, she would squeak,” he said. The ditzy teenager’s one-word answers to Taz’s questions had to be translated by her mother. The family’s daschund nibbled on Taz’s leg.

In short, it was a disaster. Taz returned in defeat and wrote up the story in a traditional journalistic format. 

Duffy hated it, and ordered Taz to rewrite it -- in 15 minutes.

“I had nothing to lose,” he said, so he told the story exactly as it had happened, complete with squeaking and nibbling.

Duffy read it and looked up at Taz.

“Are you pulling my leg?” he roared. When Taz meekly shook his head, Duffy hollered “Get out!”

Taz obeyed, retreating to his apartment convinced that his (one) day in journalism was over. But the next morning, he awoke to the excited knocking of his roommate.

His story was on the front page.

The rest wasn’t quite history; Taz finished J-school, then spent time helping friends open restaurants. They grew tired of his mooching and got Taz a job at a small weekly paper in Kirkland (having broken into his room to “borrow” his information for the application).

After two years of doing everything but the typesetting, Taz learned that his little paper had been purchased by the owners of the Bellevue American. (They merged the two later into a daily they renamed the Journal American.) Five years later, Taz was recruited by King 5 News to be an assignment editor,then hired by The Seattle Times to be editor of the features section (in those days the section was known as Scene). 

Looking back, Taz insisted that he learned his most important lesson back in Missouri.

“Trust your instincts,” he said. “That is the greatest thing I learned … to write the story that exists ... the story that’s right in front of your face.”

Honesty in storytelling is critical to good journalism, he said.

“You have to tell the truth of the story, no matter its size.”

The worst thing a journalist can do is embellish or concoct details that don’t exist. If necessary, make the story shorter, but don’t sacrifice your integrity.

He had some words of advice to journalists in the 21st century (i.e. me and my peers).

“You absolutely more than ever need to be a skeptical person … I think we are the last saviors of the U.S. and democracy. There isn’t anyone doing what we’re doing.”

Taz is right.

We have a responsibility to be the eyes and ears for our society.

And if that means writing about beauty queens who squeak, so be it.

WILL MARI  is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.