I’M OUTTA HERE! Seriously. I’m gone. Right now, I’m probably trying to decide the first three books I’ll read in the coming weeks, mulling a morning walking routine or perusing my ever-growing “to do” list.
On Friday, I retired. At least, physically. It’s going to take a while for me to emotionally embrace the idea. That happens when you’ve devoted most of your life to a profession to which you identify and have become identified. Especially one from which you derive deep emotional satisfaction. Especially if you’ve spent your entire career with one company, as I have.
For 41 years – first as a summer college reporting intern, then as a reporter, editor, recruiting director/commentary editor and, finally, as public editor – The Virginian-Pilot has been my “second home.”
The period spans old upright Royal to IBM Selectric typewriters to computers. From hot type to cold type, to the Internet and the blogsophere.
Along with those changes has come, sometimes in fits and starts, an ever-increasing awareness of the need for diversity in the gathering, interpretation and dissemination of the news. The need to see the world through brown eyes as well as blue, because it’s the right thing to do, and as a bottom-line financial consideration.
As the paper’s first black summer reporting intern (1966), first black staff writer and first black newsroom editor, I often had to fight to help make our coverage more diverse, accurate and balanced. It was, and continues to be, an up-and-down march, with battles within (stereotypical thinking, the need for sensitivity, etc.) and without (black community expectations, biases against the mainstream media).
Looking back, some things stand out. For example:
- Successfully pushing to convince the newsroom that it was discriminatory to report the race of blacks charged with crimes but not that of whites.
- Refusing as a first-time editor to run a story about a school for pregnant girls until the photographer, who had taken only photos of black girls, returned with images of some of the white girls in the story.
- Ending the practice of a white reporter who frequently peppered his stories with comments from “a source close to the black community.” The source, I learned, was a white man frequently critical of blacks.
- Refusing to be involved with coverage of what turned out to be the 1989 Labor Day weekend “Greekfest Riots” in Virginia Beach unless the promising young minority staffers I wanted were also involved. Now-editorial page editor Dennis Hartig, who was guiding coverage, made it happen.
- Helping to recruit more minority staffers, including reporters, copy editors, photographers and graphic artists.
- Conceiving, narrating and hosting the television documentary “Church Street: Harlem of the South” and helping to conceive and edit the three-day newspaper series “Church Street: What Was Lost” – both award winners.
When I became public editor in January 1999, I told readers that I felt like I’d “crossed The Great Divide, going from the newsroom to the the public editor’s office.” To reporters, I had moved from the “Us” to the “Them” side of the aisle. I had become the readers’ advocate.
It’s been my most visible and satisfying job. But it was nowhere near as powerful a position as some readers perceived it to be. Frequently, I was blamed – or praised – for everything from editorial stances the paper took to changes in the comics to our coverage, none of which I had any control over.
My job was to help the paper be accurate, fair and balanced. Some reporters and editors occasionally chided me for pursuing accuracy with gusto, for correcting even “minor” errors. For the most part, though, I found newsroom staffers deeply committed to accuracy. They know that it’s a cornerstone of credibility.
Readers, whose deeply held commitment to the paper sometimes genuinely amazed me, were a big asset. I will miss calls from folks like the eagle-eyed Barbara Zimmer, and Flora Goldman, with her warmth and good humor. But I won’t miss callers who spewed racist diatribes.
I owe a well of gratitude to my assistant, Deborah Alexander Marshall, who helped with reader concerns and made coming to work fun. Also, associate editorial page editor Roger Chesley, for whom I rarely made my noon Thursday column deadline (“I’m writing it in my head,” I’d tell him). Finally, a deep bow to the newsroom copy editors. They’ve saved me several times from embarrassing myself.
