This week Cayuga County is losing a journalist with three decades in the local newspaper business. The Post Standard's David Shaw, who started working in journalism when Richard Nixon was still in the White House, finishes up this week as the Post's education reporter.

For many David Shaw has been a reporter's reporter. He wasn't the story, but knew how to get 5 w's of journalism (the who, what, where, when and why) into every story he wrote. He most likely has attended more meetings of legislative, school, town and village boards than anyone in Cayuga and Seneca counties' history.

Unlike many newspaper people who write a column, his regular (Reporter's Notebook on Education) or seasonal (Political Notebook), were pieces that gave information, and were rarely editorial in content (the one exception in memory was his occasional list of write-in votes every election season which allowed him to make a subtle comment or two).

Shaw came to the Post Standard in the first crop of journalists that was to come from the Watergate era of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. Living in Seneca County he was in the Post's Seneca County Bureau, until it dissolved into the Post's Auburn Bureau.

For decades he has been a fixture in local journalism for his balance and clarity. Many leaders, both elected and appointed, like to give him the story first, not because he would spin it their way (often a hope of those who leak things early), but because they knew he would give them a balanced and fair shake. He liked to be first with breaking news, and often was. Much of that was due to the fact that no one ever questioned his motives when it came to news.

Where some reporters are known for their flamboyance, the University of West Virginia journalism graduate was very low key. He was the guy you would see in the background of a gaggle of reporters trying to inch their way to an interview or a sound byte. From time to time he also was a panelist in local political forums# - his weren't the convoluted multi-part or trick questions, but the simple, let's find out where you stand on this issue or that issue type.

Shaw has survived many of his contemporaries, mainly because of his journalist ethics.

For many Shaw's departure marks a real turning point for local journalism. Not only does the community lose a first-class journalist, but a person who has one of the great institutional memories of events, facts and people who have been part of local governments, politics and school districts over the last 34 years. His simple prose and clarity will be missed by those he reported on and those who read him.

Cosentino is a former mayor of the city of Auburn and can be contacted at cozguytho@aol.com