Mac Clayton: The Good Editor

Mark Trautwein is retiring as editor of Perspectives after 24 years, and Mac Clayton looks back on what it was like to work together.

If you’re listening to this, you might be a devoted listener to the Perspectives essays that appear for two minutes twice a day, every day. Or you might have just tuned in on your commute and happened to hear this. Either way, you’ve likely been touched by what you’ve heard.

Stimulated, almost always. Made happy, often. Annoyed, occasionally, if you disagreed with the sentiment expressed. But unfailingly moved.

For that journey, in no small part you have Mark Trautwein to thank.

I started submitting Perspectives pieces more than ten years ago and have recorded on average a couple a year. Every one of them was made better by Mark. At various times he has gently, and sometimes not so gently, insisted I check my privilege or my political bias. Many times he has seen better than I what I was getting at and patiently helped me say it as well as I could.

Sometimes he’s said, “No, that’s not for us.” Once he said, “You can record that if you wish, but I wonder if you want to, given the firestorm it will generate.” (I didn’t. The gentle wisdom of Mark’s “go ahead if you must” caused me to step back and better appreciate how others might take what I was saying in ways I didn’t think I intended but were, when I thought about it, so obvious that maybe subconsciously I did.)

Every story has two participants, the storyteller and the listener. In the case of a good story, both are enriched. The listeners of KQED have been educated and challenged countless times because of Mark’s thoughtful and modest attention to the stories he edits. And for me, as an occasional contributor, Mark’s insights, patience, kindness, sense of humor and, dare I say, perspective, have made me not only a better essayist, but a better man.

With a Perspective, I’m Mac Clayton.

Mac Clayton is an author living in Palo Alto.