Seventy-seven-year-old Paul Linnman looks back on his broadcast news career with emotion. He feels blessed to have the opportunity to cover historical events and the freedom to pursue special stories that pique his interest. But it’s not all good memories. That’s the exploding whale.
In November 1970, Linman traveled to the coastal town of Florence, Oregon, where the carcass of a 45-foot-long sperm whale washed up on the beach. No one knew how to move it, so the state highway department decided to blow it up. Linman fills the scene with humor and alliteration: “The dunes there were crowded with spectators and landlubber newsmen, who soon became the new ones as the explosion blew the blubber away beyond all credence.”
Linman didn’t realize how the story would unfold. It was replayed across the country, and the exploding whale became a kind of mascot of Florence and a source of pride for many residents. As for Linman himself, he will always be associated with explosions. In Winslow Crane-Murdock’s documentary short “Oh, the Whale,” Linman returns to that fateful beach and reunites with his old partner Doug Brazil, as the two reflect on the strangeness of that day and the story’s uncanny persistence. It wasn’t the loftiest moment of Linman’s career, nor what he hoped to be famous for, but as one local told him of what his work meant to the town, “It’s important, and it’s good.”