Regarding today's piece about him in the Sacramento Bee...

 Rojas is a solid reporter. I've followed his career since he worked for me at UPI in the early 80s. But I think the profile is over wrought, in that it exaggerates both the good and the bad. I was never that powerful. In all the years I knew him, Hahn and I never once had a private conversation over breakfast, lunch or dinner. That was a creation of the media. It made for a better story.

And I might have been a demanding boss at UPI -- the wire service was on the verge of bankruptcy and cutting salaries by 25 percent at the time -- but I was never "brutal," an adjective usually associated with a murder! In fact, despite UPI's troubles, I found a way to double the size of the LA bureau and helped launch the careers of some great journalists, including Aurelio Rojas. The "brutal" quote comes from one employee who worked for me for a short time nearly 25 years ago. Of course, she doesn't mention what I supposedly did, just her opinion of it. And while Tony Soprano and I both come from northern New Jersey, I don't think we have that much in common.

Doug Dowie