Walter Shapiro Unhappy about Losing 'USA Today' Column

By: Joe Strupp Walter Shapiro, whose twice-weekly USA Today politics column has just been dropped by editors after nine years, hopes to continue the effort somewhere else, he told E&P Wednesday.

Just hours after the publication of his last column on Wednesday, Shapiro compared his forced departure from the national daily to dental surgery, explaining that "it's hard to sort out which aspect of it you like least."

But Shapiro, 57, said he is already in talks with other news outlets to continue the column elsewhere, and plans to begin research on a book about the Democratic Party. "It will be on the Democratic Party's quest for reinvention over the next two years," he said. His last book, "One Car Caravan," about the 2004 Democratic presidential primary fight, was published one year ago.

Shapiro said he was grateful for the paper and editor Ken Paulson allowing him to "break my own news" by mentioning in the final column that he did not really want to leave. He said Paulson told him eight days before Election Day that his contract would not be renewed.

"Ken Paulson told me it was for reasons of copy hole and budget," Shapiro said. "That is what they emphasized. They did not want to commit to the column running twice a week. They basically decided they have no room to run the column."

When asked if he believed he was treated unfairly by anyone at the paper, he declined to be specific, adding "let us merely say the suspects are obvious."

Paulson, who took over the editor's post earlier this year following the firing of Karen Jurgensen, would not comment on why Shapiro's column was discontinued. But, he praised his work and said it had nothing to do with the column's quality. "It was very amicable," Paulson told E&P. "He served us and our readers well for many years."

Shapiro, who began the column in 1995 under former publisher Tom Curley and then-editor David Mazzarella, believed the managerial changes at USA Today in recent years were part of the reason for his leaving. In addition to a different editor, a new publisher, Craig Moon, took over for Curley in 2003.

"There is a new team there and none of them were there when the column was created," Shapiro explained, adding that he did not believe his dismissal was based on ideological disagreements. "Nine years is a good run. I think I wrote a damn good column and I would like to continue."

Shapiro says his column, which he compared to those of Murray Kempton and Mary McGrory, is still worthwhile because it goes beyond the right vs. left rhetoric. "There is a lot of politics that is she said and he responded and he said and she responded," he added. "I think I cut through the pomposity and it is always a fun column because I try to bring people on to the campaign trail or into the hearing room."