The Paper

I've done more running around in the last three days than I've done in the last six months together. Meetings, callbacks, writing, editing, A train to 3 train to 4 train to a walk crosstown, all in the name of getting things back on track. And yes there's a serious urgency for all of this which I may or may not discuss at a later date. But as yesterday came to a close I felt a kind of alive that I hadn't in a long time, the high that comes for me when I'm getting things done. And that's perhaps the deepest addiction of them all for me, which is not a bad thing. I like when the phone rings. I like deadlines. I like that feeling of coming up the stairs to the lodge feelin like "Damn, I need to sit my ass down for a minute and rest."

As the world is being remade around me the understanding that I've been searching for within the past few years became abundantly clear, like a light bulb that just wasn't screwed in all the way, exploding to life with just a slight twist. I have wandered in a labryinth trying to find this particular door. And now I am finally going through it. As I cross it's threshold I'm leaving so much of my anger behind. In white light even a chameleon can't hide its try colors. But this is just an aside.

As a part of our Wire discussions, Benita and I have been talking about the state of journalism these days, and how the business we both wanted a part of since our youth is dying a slow and painful death in the face of corporate owners who don't give a damn, a next generation who has less and less interest in what we do, and a middle of the road Black press who had adopted a "We should just be glad that we all have something" philosophy that has turned any of us who are truly critical about what we see hear and reader in "haters" in the public view. As as the gap between the have and have nots in out community only continues to grow, I've had to come to the conclusion that there is, in truth, no real Black community anymore, more like a series of subset groups who happen to share the same ancestry, unless somebody gets killed in a hate crime or wins an Academy award or puts out a movie that we all identify with. But I'm starting to ramble so let me reel myself in.

When I was a boy my only dreams were to be a staff writer at the Washington Post. I started writing for my elementary school paper when I was nine of ten, which led to summer programs, and internships and even the scholarships that got me through four years at Morehouse without having to take out too many loans. But here and now, some eleven years (that darn number again) after my graduation, everyone I know in the newspaper business is running for cover, getting bought out, quitting, or watering down what they do in the name or survival. And it's not just because fewer people are reading newspapers. It's actually that the papers themselves are investing less and less into putting out a product that's accessible to a new generation. While the internet should have been a way and means journalism to get a foothold in a new medium that you didn't have to print of fold, it has instead become the very thing that is seemingly undoing a cultural institution of the last several centuries. But then again all change is inevitable.

Lately I've found myself thinking back to those Saturday mornings I spent at the Washington Association of Black Journalist's journalism workshop (shoutout to Ken Cooper, Phil Dixon, Angela Robinson, Donna Britt, Pierre, Shelly and all y'all) held at Howard's School of Communications. From ten in the morning to two in the afternoon for a good six weeks at a time we learned everything from a team of Black pros who felt an obligation to homegrow the next generation of local journalists. Some of us actually went on to become a part of the field or at least the fields surrounding it. My greatest honor was seeing some of those men and women at NABJ conferences and even at my own booksignings cheering me on even though the better part of 20 years had passed since they'd stood before me.

Now I worry that some other young punk like myself won't get that kind of experience, or that if he does it will center more around what kind of toilet paper Britney bought at Sam's clubs or the new position Brad and Angelina are trying out behind closed doors. And with the people upstairs making all kinds of invisible decisions about content, etc. there will be no telling what kinds of rags the future will bring. Hell, give it long enough and the whole paper will just be written by publicists from the company that owns it.

So as I continue to grind so hard with what I do, and as I see that the future holds a life far beyond the goals I set out to make real in my childhood, I am being forced to grow up for real. And being a grownup is nowhere near as fun as it seemed on TV. Out.