I heard it through the grapevine

One of the things we lost when the newspapers started to crash was gossip columns. You may be old enough to remember these. Some writer was appointed to keep an ear open to the latest rumors in local high society. Back in Jersey City many years ago, there was a guy named Nat Berg whose column, deep inside the folds of the Jersey Journal, was a must-read. In New York, there was Walter Winchell, and didn't Ed Sullivan start out as that kind of reporter? There was also a woman named Hedda Hopper, if I'm remembering this right.

Here in Portland, for a good while we had Phil Stanford, whose column in the Oregonian always had the latest dirt. Phil also got into some serious stuff, like who really killed Michael Francke. (I guess we'll never know, except that the official story line, which the Salem powers maintain to this day, is total crap.) There was also a guy named Jonathan Nicholas, whose stuff was lighter weight. I even made it into his column one time, identified as an "über-blogger," which was kind of flattering.

The heavy hitters in the reporter ranks would sometimes look down on these writers. But looking back on them now, I have to hand it to them. They knew everybody, and heard everything. And they knew when a story sounded right, in which case they would run with it, and when it didn't, in which case they would sit on it.

One thing about their columns was that the local celebs were always named in bold type. But even better was when they left out the name entirely and you had to guess whom they were gossiping about. That kept readers thinking about the latest rumors even longer and harder.

With that, let me play Hedda Hopper for a day. A reader who's in the know told me today that a very, very big name in Portland society has, like Homer Williams, "given up" on Portland and is in the process of selling off his several houses in the area and moving to San Diego. With him will go lots of philanthropy, which has benefited our city greatly over the years. You'd know his name right away if you heard it, but there's no bold type in this column. You have to guess.