|
|
Mike Moser Will newspaper writing be fun again? You can blame Ralph Emery for this column.
And possibly, my fragile state of being. I have had his book More Memories for years
but am just now getting around to reading it. I don't read much
at home anymore. Like writing, after reading other people's work
and issues and propaganda from the spin mills, I just don't have
the stomach to read and write when I get home at night. Ralph's book is only the second book I have
attempted in the past year. A passage in his book, however, put
my nostalgic and self-pitying wheels in motion and now, as Ralph
did in his book, maybe it is time for confession, of purging
my soul. Emery started out in a small radio market,
much like I started out in small newspaper market. At age 20
I left a job as a second butcher making $168 a week, which was
pretty good money back then, for an $88-a-week newspaper job
in Alabama because I thirsted to be a great writer. After all, if Ernest Hemingway and Mark Twain
could launch their careers in newspaper ink, why couldn't I?
Just one of the many great lies I would encounter along the way. I never told my new boss of the salary cut
I took. I was scared he wouldn't hire me. Like Emery, that small market, privately owned
media that "let me be me," allowed me to develop an
intimacy with my readers similar to what he developed with his
listeners. I had freedom to write, to report, to discover, to
uncover. And my columns were intimate letters to my readers who
grew to know me better than I knew myself. I will share Ralph's words: "But if I
were starting my career anew in radio as we knew it, I'd rather
sell aluminum siding. In short, I would not want any part of
the medium to which I once devoted my life, unless I could be
me." I used to peck out my stories and columns
on an awful green Royal manual typewriter and hand them over
to Blanche Moody, the typesetter who was the real editor of the
newspaper. I carried the title, she kept me on the straight and
narrow. Even after computers invaded our newspaper,
I still pecked away on my old manual, too stubborn to move on
with the times. And I did some of my best work during those years.
I had freedom to write. Freedom to pursue.
Freedom to work the hours, unstructured, needed to get the job
done. And our newspaper thrived in a town of 6,000 people. Oh
yes, did I tell you, there were three weekly newspapers in Clanton,
AL at the time? Today there is one daily ... the same paper where
I got my start. The day the music died for me was in 1975
when I showed up for work one morning and my publisher, Tommy
Patterson, took me into his office where strangers sat and said,
"These are the new owners." A newspaper chain out of
Tuscaloosa. We had been so successful that our product attracted
the attention of a newspaper chain. I was shocked and stunned. I had grown with
the Advertiser, which was less than a year old when I joined
the paper. I thought the newspaper and myself were one and the
same. I lasted only a few weeks. Just like I was
with the introduction of computers, I couldn't adapt to the change
from independence to corporate business. Suddenly newspapering
wasn't an art, it was business. And it wasn't fun. The defining moment was when I went to cover
a farm pond drowning of a socially challenged youth that occurred
during a family reunion. The rescue squad was called to drag
the pond and I arrived as they did, to record their work. I had been around long enough to know the
look on a rescue squad member's face when he hooks a body during
dragging operations, and as the squad members removed their caps
and the boat slowly made its way to the bank, the crowd of onlookers
surged forward to get a better view. I even saw one man lift
a child over his head so that the youngster could get a better
view of the poor victim's body. I was sickened and I immediately went to the
office on that Sunday afternoon and pounded out a column titled,
"I didn't know drowning was a spectator sport." And
I was foolish enough to run that column. The day the paper came out the new publisher
called me into his office and said, "We don't do things
like that." Who is "we?" I learned straightaway
and that afternoon I walked out of the newspaper and went to
work for the Chilton County Sheriff's Department. After a short stay away, the ink lured me
back but reporting and writing opinion was never the same. Wednesday a lady came to the office to see
me and, after having read a news story about our schools and
wages of school employees and other education issues, asked a
question important to her. I didn't really listen, but instead
tried to explain to her that in the big picture, her issue paled
in comparison to other problems. In retrospect I was wrong for that attitude.
Isn't the big picture made up of little pictures? This lady simply wanted to know where the
money appropriated for employees goes when an employee dies,
or is run off, or quits, or is fired. She went on to explain
that on more than one occasion in her job as a custodian, she
has had co-workers leave for various reasons. The positions remain
unfilled for great lengths while she pulls double duty without
being paid for the extra work. "I'm an old lady and I can't continue
to do my job and someone else's," she said. "Where
does the money go (for the vacant positions)?" There was a time when I would have jumped
on such an issue. Tommy Patterson told me when I went to work
for him these things: "We want to be fair. We want to be
honest in our effort. We want to be for the little guy." Maybe it is time I started being me again.
Maybe newspapering can be fulfilling and fun. Maybe a newspaper
doesn't have to lose its soul just because it is computer-generated
and more of a business today than yesterday. There is nothing wrong with being a business
... as long as that business has a soul. And maybe people don't
have to lose their souls just because the world is spinning out
of balance all around us. If it is true that confession is good for
the soul, then here is my confession. Time to go, there is much
work to be done. |