These women. These badass, compassionate, tough, truth-telling, tenacious, loving women. My god! If you want to find out what happens in a place over 20 years, have lunch with newspaper reporters. With tight headlines and the right set of illustrative details, we talked about mayors, murderers, colleagues, threatened defamation lawsuits, grandchildren, the PR business, the media business, COVID and Katrina. (It still wasn’t enough time with friends, of course, but we covered an impressive number of topics!
I was in the Sun Herald newsroom (Gulfport-Biloxi, Miss.) 20 years ago for just 18 months, and I see now that it wasn’t long enough. That time was some of the most important professional development time of my life.
As a profession, reporting is a free pass to being curious and telling stories about what you learned, and that felt like a miracle of awesomeness. Reporting is the ultimate #WordsMatter job for the civically minded, and if everyone knew how bad the pay was, everyone would also know it’s a job you do out of pure public service or because you’re so socially awkward and maladapted that no one else will take you.
These journalists, and a few others are the reason I start every media training with a stern lecture about Respecting The Important Role of The Media in Democracy and Understanding the Reporter’s Job.
When you’re doing work that matters, nothing else matters. I didn’t really worry about work-life balance because the news cycle doesn’t care. The public has need to know, they need to know it now, and they need to know it from us and not our competitors.
Also, every person I liked was in the newsroom. The newsroom had all the smart and funny people; it also had all the gossip in town. Why would I want to be anywhere else?
There’s not a newsroom in Gulfport any more, the big building on Debuys is just sitting empty. They publish online, but there’s not a print edition and not even an office. They’re not the only one—in New Orleans, an Uber driver pointed out the empty lot where the Times-Picayune used to be.
We talked at lunch about the dispersal of the newsroom, both after Katrina and more gradually, as the print media failed to find a business model. We talked about the public’s need for news they can trust, and a public that prefers restaurant listings to local news. We talked about the uncertain future of communities and nations in a world without journalism.
And then we talked about grandchildren, and the importance of raising headstrong, sassy, persistent, truth-telling children. The importance of these children, and the joys of them.
I’m so ridiculously grateful for time with Anita, Margaret and Melissa. You’ve gotten even cooler as time goes on, and I love that for us. Cheers to long friendships and long lunches!