Back in the day, for several hundred days, I was the editor for three community newspapers and wrote a weekly column for a daily newspaper. That meant that everything I did that week came out on Thursday. It was the one day of the week I could take at least half a breath — and it was the day when it hit the fan. If I wasn’t getting calls about the column, then someone was accusing us of having personal vendettas against high-school kids because his kid’s photo wasn’t in the paper. Despite all that, Thursdays were actually kind of fun.
The B Section: Remember When The Supreme Court was a Thing?
This story is bananas: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/25/alito-flag-martha-ann-washington-post/
It’s hard to know where to start with this, but starting with how this story demonstrates the failure of local news seems like a good place to jump in.
OK, fine, don’t click the link. This is about Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s house that had an upside-down U.S. flag hanging outside his house after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Yes, bananas, but this happened in 2021 and The Washington Post knew about it in 2021. They didn’t report on it in 2021 because, the story says, the *now-retired* reporter and presumably his editor felt that this was a story primarily involving only Justice Alito’s wife.
They are reporting on it now because the New York Times found out about it recently and published their own story. I have to give the Post some props here for even owning this because wow, is this embarrassing. A Post reporter went and checked this out in two thousand and twenty one! And either came away thinking it was a nothing burger or was convinced of it by someone else.
It must be hard for the Post to be playing catch-up on this one, especially after passing on a big story in their own backyard. And the Times is running with this too. Jodi Kantor has been reporting the hell out of it and asking hard questions about accountability – and about the limits of incredulity. (His wife hung the flag, an international sign of distress, because of a neighbor dispute of a personal nature? And he had nothing to say about it. Really. He didn’t think that was a little much for a fight over lawn signs? No??) She also learned that they have another controversial flag flying at their other home. She’s not getting any real answers from the Supreme Court, which is self-regulated – and who apparently has been aware of this incident for about three years now.
But imagine for a moment a world in which Post reporter Robert Barnes had reported on this in real time, right between the insurrection attempt on the Capitol and Biden’s inauguration. (By the The idea that a justice was aligning himself with such imagery at a time when we were learning that Trump was actively trying to get his vice president, his supporters, politicians in other states, to overturn an election? Was he trying to pull levers in the Supreme Court as well? This is a legit question to ask.
This story is stunning, truly. It has national reverberations and it’s hard to read this information without wondering why Alito hasn’t been recused from cases involving Jan. 6. But in this context, the Post was a local paper and failed to cover its community. This reporter’s beat just happened to encompass the Supreme Court. This seems like a good illustration of what happens when you are a wee bit too comfy with your sources. I mean, to get talked out of not doing this story. Wow.
We’ll never know what would have happened if this was reported when it happened. But we know what’s happening now. Alito has refused to recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases and it’s hard to believe that he would have been able to play that card in 2021. But now? We’ve got folks who participated in the insurrection running for office, and many Republicans now are comfortable saying either that the 2020 election was fixed or that they won’t accept the election results unless Trump wins. So, this story is happening now – at a time when efforts to normalize Jan. 6 are going well!
TWA Blog and Podcast
Everyone who knows me knows that my other obsession is tennis. I did my draw prediction on my tennis blog before the start of the French Open – although I freely admit I went a little crazy on it after learning that Rafael Nadal was getting handed a pretty tough draw. Hate reading? Listen to my podcast about the French Open storylines instead! I’ll be updating the blog this weekend with a look back at the first week of the main draw and probably some other rando musings.
The B Section: The Daily #*$&#(@??The B Section:
The B Section:
The creators of “The Office” announced plans for a reboot, and instead of a paper company, it will be a newspaper. A struggling one, and the editor will be trying to keep it alive with volunteer reporters.
Honestly, my first thought was, “Yeah, that is basically what is happening now.”
Not for real, but there’s a reason they say that journalists don’t do it for the money. Anyway, there was a lot of social media reaction to this from our very pessimistic fraternity. (By the way, Greg Daniels, please hire journalists to make this the rare show about newsrooms that is realistic.)
(Second thought: What are you going to do about dialogue, what with all the swears?)
So, what are my favorite journalism movies and/or TV shows? Thought you’d never ask.
1. The Paper: This is the one that got me hooked on journalism and made me a forever fan of Michael Keaton. This movie was also helped by the fact that it was set in New York City, as was I for the first 18 years of my life. I might have been the only kid under 12 who truly was invested in the rivalry between the Daily News and Post. (All I’ll say about my family’s allegiance is that when my dad brought home a Post, we knew the newsstand was out of the Daily Newses.) The newspaper rivalry, the editor trying to do the right thing, the beginner photographer busting her hump to get a break – it was like crack for me. Probably within a year of seeing this movie, I was writing for the school newspaper and looking for journalism programs in college.
2. Spotlight: This is the one that made me realize it was time to get out of journalism. By the time I saw this one, I had gotten the job I thought I’d wanted – an assistant metro editor at a smaller but mighty newspaper in Florida. Of course, when I got there, all kinds of chaos unfolded, including (a) the editor-in-chief attempting to renege on my salary (b) a retirement that had me taking on the production of about half the damn paper it seemed (c) layoffs that gutted our team and (d) just awful leadership. I watched Spotlight and realized that I wasn’t going to ever get to do that kind of important work in a newsroom because that newsroom no longer existed. It was a bittersweet recognition, but the other option was to sit around and wait to get laid off. Still, great movie!
3. All the President’s Men: A little wordy at times, probably in an attempt to make sure the viewer understood everything going on, but a masterclass in how journalism is supposed to work. And if you had told me that Robert Woodward would then be the guy who held on to juicy bits to sell books during the Trump presidency, I would have punched you in the face. But then I’d be sorry about the whole thing. I mean, how could I have known?
Dishonorable mention:
2. House of Cards (American version), Season 1: I called out this show, but several shows and films over the years have used the trope of women journalists sleeping with sources to get the scoop. First, super offensive! Second, if this were a tactic women journalists used commonly, it would backfire as said source could easily roll on her. It doesn’t make sense to take that approach for a couple bylines.
1. Never Been Kissed: A copy editor with her own office. Come on now.
Recommended reading
I am a regular The Daily listener, so I recommend it to anyone who wants to keep their finger on the pulse of the world. While mostly unserious people argue about whether climate change is real, this episode is about how it impacts American homeowners.
Tennis with Attitude Podcast, Episode 2
I don’t know if you know this, but I also have a podcast about tennis! It’s called the Tennis with Attitude podcast, named for my long-running (or –suffering, the blog might argue if it had a mouth) blog about pro tennis, my tennis, your tennis, anything tennis! The podcast idea is new for this year. Have a listen!
The B Section: Liberal bias, intellectual dishonesty and J.K. Rowling
A longtime editor for NPR recently published an essay about his assertion that NPR had gone astray. If you’re someone who thinks as obsessively about good journalism as I do, you should read it. Unfortunately, it did require me to visit the Free Press website for the first time, led by Bari Weiss, and I can’t help but roll my eyes when I say or read her name. I will say she definitely draws the “I’m a” commentary. You know, “I’m a [insert very specific minority group] here, so hear me when I say the moon is made of Swiss cheese.”
And my guy Uri Berliner (that is a real-one NPR name) leans into that one right away, George Constanza-style. “My mother’s a lesbian, and I have a liberal background, so hear me when I say that NPR has a liberal bias.”
SIDEBAR: One more thing about The Free Press and then I’m gonna stop. One of the banners at the top of the page is “Witch Trials.” It’s about J.K. Rowling! OMGLOLFMLAYKM. Their slogan is “For Free People.” We’re gonna talk about what they might be free of in a minute.
I’m an NPR listener and I have even donated to their programming because I have considered their coverage to be bias-free in general, so let’s get that out of the way. I’m listening, though! Uri offers a few examples of where he felt there was bias in NPR’s coverage. One was the management of the first Trump impeachment. He recounted that NPR frequently had California congressman Adam Schiff as a guest and he argued that there was a good case for collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Once special counsel Robert Mueller’s report came out though, there was no such finding. Berliner said that NPR basically swept this under the rug and never acknowledged the finding was wrong. First of all, it seems a bit crazy to suggest that NPR didn’t cover the full findings of the Mueller report and of course they did. His specificity regarding the collusion finding is interesting to me. It’s like Berliner just wanted folks to look at that part of the Mueller findings without context. If you did that, you wouldn’t have to consider that Mueller never talked to Trump himself and says in the report that the findings were incomplete due to redacted records and restricted access to information. (By the way, if you never actually read the Mueller report, maybe listen to it?)
This isolation of information is something you’ll find a lot in the faux intellectual crowd. Other people refer to it as intellectual dishonesty. We’ve all been guilty of it, but usually, we outgrow it by the time we’re 10. Like when we accused of writing all over the walls with crayon and we deny it because it really was a pencil. You know. Anyway, this essay is a lot of that. The Hunter Biden computer thing is still a little above my understanding, but I don’t think NPR was alone in being late to this story. It was first reported by the New York Post for Pete’s sake. Regardless of whether there’s any there, Berliner accuses his colleagues of failing to pursue the story because they didn’t want to help Trump. That is a heck of an accusation and the type of thing that could isolate you from your fellow journalists. (Foreshadowing.)
Berliner’s example about COVID was also interesting. He appears to be knocking NPR for reporting evidence-based news and shying away from things that were not so easily provable. Enjoyed this paragraph, though:
There is one thing that might tie those situations and that would be an administration pushing a certain conclusion. Let’s not forget the supergenius who was in the White House at the time, routinely using racist language to refer to the coronavirus. Again: context.
That said, I still wasn’t sure what he was really so upset about until I got to the part where he digs into the newsroom’s coverage of George Floyd’s murder. I literally said out loud: “There it is.”
First of all, Uri says, NPR just took wholesale that there is systematic racism, and it seems he would have liked to have slow-walked that one. Berliner wanted an investigation into whether there’s systematic bias in America. Hm, that’s a tough one. I wonder if he personally suggested that investigation. Or if he was aware of many other pieces of journalism and research that have highlighted systematic racism in America. There’s probably just nothing out there about this at all. Definitely not any books.
Man, when they say Free Press, this must be why it’s free. Because what.
Berliner thinks that NPR shifted its focus from race unfairly to the detriment of its coverage and overall success. You can’t prove this, although Berliner tries to do so by highlighting here some of NPR’s recent financial setbacks. The only problem there is that journalism in general is facing these issues and linking it to an effort to right-side its treatment is a failure to consider other possibilities.
Berliner ends by lamenting his place as a “visible wrongthinker” at his longtime workplace. Why? Because he makes stands like:
Took a lot of nerve to link to the House bill, which, true, does not use the word “gay.” It uses “sexual orientation or gender identity”, and it does look as if the bill would like teachers to not talk or teach or mention, uh, being … sexual orientation? Wwwwhat does he think that means? He could have really kept that wrongthinking to himself and then it wouldn’t have been visible.
Berliner got suspended after this piece hit the freewaves and resigned soon after. That gives me a little pause. He was suspended for not getting permission to talk to an outside outlet, which is NPR policy and according to NPR’s reporting on … all of this, Berliner had just gotten permission to speak on another network. So he probably knew the policy. But it’s too bad he ultimately decided to quit. Yes, I just finished chewing this piece a new asshole. But there’s nothing wrong with opposing viewpoints in a newsroom. In fact, it’s better for coverage. Berliner is right about that and it’s concerning that the leadership are all registered Democrats. I don’t know what you do about that, though, besides a concerted effort to seek out conservative viewpoints. But that’s hard for a news organization these days. I don’t know how else to say this, but conservatism and facts … man, they don’t get along right now. Their candidate for president is so comfortable lying that journalism outlets have had to figure out how to fact-check him as close to real-time as possible. (This poor man.)
And related: This might also be why NPR listeners are overwhelmingly liberal. Is it possible conservatives and Trump supporters don’t like NPR because they report news that challenges what they would like to be true? Like, how do you fix that? That feels like something that should be investigated. But I’m sure that the Free Press will get right on that. As soon as they’re done with the J.K. Rowling blockbuster story about the billionaire (uh-huh) author who keeps opening her mouth and reaping consequences for it.
Which, wow, big if true.
The B Section: #ThrowbackThursday
| Right around this time in 2022, I was wandering around the University of North Carolina campus finally putting two and two together. I’d been invited to participate in a roundtable about journalism and noticed that the ride from the airport to the university was congested. The Lyft driver said something people being there for the game and I was like, huh, OK. Once I got on campus and started walking around, I realized that “the game” was the NCAA men’s basketball final and that UNC was playing in it. I hadn’t watched college basketball in probably two years at that point. And in passing, I had heard about North Carolina and the NCAA tournament but for some reason assumed it was about NC State? It was UNC, though, and that big game? It was scheduled for Monday evening – the same night of the roundtable. When I met up with the organizers of the event, we had a good laugh. No one had anticipated UNC getting that far in the tournament and now that they were, the campus was buckwild. And we had an event to do in the midst of that. I did have to warn them against listening to the first season of Serial. Have I not mentioned my Serial beef yet? I had been invited to this event partly because of an essay I had written in 2020 in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. In his case, one thing that stood out to me as it pertained to journalism was how the police had first written up the incident versus how we all now know how it unfolded. I have a lot of problems with how closely journalists work with the police and how we train reporters to do that from the beginning. But Floyd’s murder brought to mind a story I had worked on in Pittsburgh. Police were chasing a car and pursued all the way into the city’s South Side, which, even at 2 a.m. was teeming with revelers. They caught up with the car and emptied their guns in the middle of a busy street, injuring both passengers and scaring the everloving crap out of everyone pinned in and unable to flee the chaos. I had learned about the story and as I was reporting it out, one of the editors of my newspaper decided to pull it off the front page and edit it into pure nonsense.What I had navigated, along with Floyd’s story, made me think a lot about objectivity. It’s what journalists are meant to strive for. Just the facts. objectivity: lack of favoritism toward one side or another: freedom from bias The problem is that sometimes, our sources are not objective. Sometimes, our sources are very biased indeed because it protects their jobs. You cannot be ever truly objective if you are relying on one source for information. Had George Floyd’s murder been left up to the police narrative, all we would know is that he suffered a medical emergency at the scene of an arrest. I really doubt that in the absence of those eyewitness videos, that a reporter would have gone out to the area and asked folks what they saw that day. When I tried to report a crime story from the other side, I got a lecture about how hard it is to be a cop and a butchered story for my efforts. Despite the NCAA chaos, the journalism roundtable was well-attended, and a success. And unfortunately, UNC did lose. (But the campus did not riot!) One of my fellow panelists, Mackay Coppins, was a nice guy and just published a book about Mitt Romney. The day after the event, I spoke to a class of journalism students about the future of journalism and how there is still space for good, consequential storytelling. We talked about how important it is to get all sides of a story. This might not be the definition of objectivity but seeking out the truth and presenting it should be. You can do that and still not tell people what to think. Below the Fold If you haven’t yet read this story from Esquire magazine about what happened when a local news outlet outed a cross-dressing Alabama pastor, please schedule about one hour in your day, make some coffee and take it in. Usually, mainstream outlets flying in on a small town in the aftermath of tragedy doesn’t go very well, but in this case, honestly, the only place Esquire could go was up. I’ve been thinking a lot about how journalism survives, with small outlets being bought out by people just trying to make money. This story has me thinking about the pitfalls of the upstarts. But I am still digesting this story and the role of local media in an abject tragedy, so I’ll have to circle back. |
The B Section: Issue 2
Look, I didn’t care about Kate Middleton at all until the Associated Press killed that photo.
Now, she has had to go public to acknowledge a cancer diagnosis and about five minutes after she released her long-awaited public statement, people were shaming the media – and themselves – for forcing the issue with her. And given the context and just how inconsequential this story is in the grand scheme of things, it brings me no pleasure to say that the media got it right in this case.
A quick rehash (or just a hash for those of us who really were not that into this to begin with): Catherine, otherwise known as Kate Middleton or the Princess of Wales or the wife of Prince William, who is next in line as king of England, was last seen publicly on Christmas. In early January, Kensington Palace1 announced that Kate had had abdominal surgery and that things were going well. She was also under doctor’s orders to stay at home until after Easter. OK. At the same time King Charles (I am old enough to remember Princess Diana and just typing that has me, like, aghast, for real) announces that he is being treated for an enlarged prostate, which is a fairly common condition. Later in January, Charles had surgery and the two of them returned home at the same time. A few days later, on Feb. 5, Charles announces that he has cancer and is undergoing treatment. He continued his work and has been seen in public. Meanwhile, Kate’s nowhere to be found and as previously noted, who cares. She did say she was laying low, so. But then on March 10, Kensington Palace drops a photo of Kate with her kids wishing everyone Mother’s Day2 UNSOLICITED, meaning no one asked for it. Once the photo was published, people started to notice that there was something hinky with it, like it had been edited in weird ways. Then the Associated Press and other news agencies issued a kill order on it, noting that it looked manipulated by the source, which was Kensington Palace, which is an arm of the Royal Family, which (for some reason) is a political arm of a country. The next day, Kate took responsibility for the editing. That doesn’t make sense for a ton of reasons, but whatever. The damage was done. Rumors were rampant by the time Kate finally acknowledged on March 22 that she’d been diagnosed with cancer and was doing preventive chemotherapy.
SIDEBAR: It’s not like the AP kills photos all the time. It shouldn’t have to – the photos it publishes should be coming from trusted and vetted sources. The Royal Family’s Insta maybe isn’t that trusted now?
That is a scary diagnosis for anyone, let alone a mother of three small children. Having said that, this whole situation reminds me of people blowing up their entire lives and careers on Twitter by making some stupid statement that no one had asked for. If Kate wanted to keep her condition close to the vest or reveal it when she was ready, the way to do it is to not lie when you don’t need to. She had already said she was staying home on doctor’s orders. Now that approach might have been a bit complicated by the fact that her father-in-law was handling his cancer diagnosis a bit differently. But they did already had a party line, and it was nothing to stick with it.
The idea that they released that photo because of people gossiping almost makes it sound as if British tabloids are actually considered valid news sources. Hi, they are being sued constantly for lying and frequently have to pay up. Hmm, there is a recent case right on the tip of my brain but it escapes me right now. (The history cited in this story is absolutely, straight-up bananas.)
When someone is lying to you, it is normal to wonder why. This is true in real life as well as with people you don’t know or care about. It is normal for the media to ask why someone powerful might be lying – it is actually their job, which some outlets seem to forget at times because they don’t do it consistently. So that’s why it’s weird sometimes when they get it right – like now. When there is nothing consequential on the line.
Cool. Cool.
People are second-guessing themselves because the truth of this matter was a little less scandalous than they had been wanting. Why were we so nosy? they’re asking themselves. Because you were being lied to. It’s OK. When you’re a public figure, especially a political public figure, the public has an expectation to know more about your personal life. Is this fair? I don’t know. I mean, a person’s health is a private thing. It’s private because people make assumptions about people diagnosed with conditions, any conditions. And the instinct is to keep people from treating you like a disease/illness instead of treating you like a person.
Last thing on this: Wow, that chick who was rumored to be having an affair with Prince William must be going through it right now. Pour one out for that woman and her husband. To have your whole life scrutinized because of a PhotoShop situation and then tossed aside when this cancer diagnosis comes out? Whew.
Footnotes
- You learn something new every day. I did not know that Kensington Palace represents the Prince and Princess of Wales while Buckingham Palace handles the King and Queen! Or Queen Console, which, you know what? Don’t even get me started.
- Another new thing I learned: Mother’s Day in England is in March! Another example of things we do that’s better than the original. Imagine me walking around in a jacket on Mother’s Day. As if!
The B Section: Issue 1
Hi! I’m starting a newsletter!
I have been thinking about doing this for more than a year. But when your perfectionism is crippling – as mine can be – you convince yourself that you have to do so much work to get it out there. Which service? Who should I send it to? What will I put in it if I haven’t had anything published recently? Font? Length? Subject matter?
I have this quote on my laptop screen and I’ve been using it to motivate me to do more writing. Today, it hit me in the newsletter breadbasket and it’s probably why you’re also reading this right now.
This quote is from a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear and it’s pretty straightforward. Time for action.
Anyway, why a newsletter? Mainly, it’s because social media is unreliable at best these days, and it seems like a good time to create a direct line of communication between me and my readers/skimmers/somewhat-interested parties. When I was forced to share my work, I usually did it on Twitter which seems like not really a great idea anymore. (You know, there was a time when I felt as if Twitter was the beginning of the end for journalism, and now that it’s in its death throes, I’m sad because it was a great way to share … journalism. It’s also a great way to share the worst stuff, but I’ll digress. For today.)
The bottom line: I’m a former award-winning journalist who would still be doing it if I had time and energy for job insecurity and low pay. Now I want to spread the message of media literacy because boy do we all need to learn that right now.
Lots of first going on for me right now, like the fact that my longtime tennis blog is now a podcast! Check it out!
Like, review, share, repeat, repeat …
And please do the same for this newsletter, if you think there’s someone who’d benefit from it. Bye now.
Sept. 11, 2001
The early part of Sept. 11, in my memory, is like in the movies when memories move around the screen with streaks. It’s me, stirring from a sleep, straining to listen to a voicemail being downstairs in my townhouse left by the man who will be my boyfriend, my husband, my ex-husband as he vocally illustrates what he’s seeing on his own TV screen as he sits in front of his own, presumably channel surfing himself until he came upon horror. And he called me.
Shortly after, my acting managing editor calls, because I work at a newspaper, all hands on deck and he wants me in, now. And I, in year two of my journalism career, I say no. I was born in Brooklyn, and I have family who works in Manhattan. I’ll be in at my normal time, which is around 5 p.m., I say. The phone lines. I can’t even reach my mother.
I do report to work later that day, having ascertained that my mother, my cousin and her husband are OK, and are coming home. My aunt, she is OK. I report to work and everything is apeshit. There are reports of bomb threats against the GW Bridge. This is a moment when anything can happen. You built a cocoon with you, and your hitting partner in tennis who will become your boyfriend, and your workplace, and suddenly, anything is possible. A bomb could land on you right now and it would feel the way it felt for you to sing hymns about death in church every Sunday, except it was for you, your sweet hour of prayer.
No. You’re in the newsroom, combing the wires. Your job, as a copy editor as this newspaper, is clear. Tell the story and you are faced with raw, unedited images and information which oddly helps you compartmentalize. But the thing is that you are seated almost directly across from the city editor that night, and he copes like you cope. He tells jokes. But they are not landing with you tonight. You want to turn and scream at him for joking about the GW Bridge blowing up as he edits copy. You don’t because, you’re what, 20 years younger than you are now? It’s not funny, and you don’t have what you have now — the nerve to tell him to shut up.
It takes a couple days for you to approach the city desk and say you want to write about New York, the way you remember it and the way it’ll never be again. And your column publishes and your heart swells. It’s a record. Now, Hudson River Park is etched in the memory of my readers like it is with me. I believe we’ll rise from the ashes. Together.
But the letters to the editor begin pouring in. Maybe most are good and kind but the ones who accuse of me off … taking advantage of my connection to the city? … Stop whining. Stop bragging. We get it already, oh my god.
There weren’t that many like that. But enough to remember.
It’s enough to remember why Sept. 11 hits me different twenty years later. Those people intent on eviscerating my narrative amounted to a muffled whine then. Maybe they didn’t know how to process the feelings they held. But now they surely do.
Now, we’re in a pandemic and people refuse to do the basics in protecting each other. And in the midst of this, this anniversary. And I’m supposed to believe we are really stopping and reflecting? Because now, thousands die a day in an attack we can see coming and we … well, sweet hour of prayer. No. The people dying now were meant to live, as were the people who died when terrorism struck them down. They should be alive today and I would argue that the balance of them would tip us enough to where we’d not argue about keeping each other safe. An entire flight of people decided, You know what? We’re not going to be pawns. Let’s not be pawns. Whatever happens, we won’t be pawns. They knew the risk.
We continue to hold this day in reverence. But just as many just go through the motions. We don’t experience this day the same now as we did then, and the difference is that those of us old enough, we now know it.
Blast to the … Present
What I’m Working On
For years, I’ve been compiling information about a housing development in Polk County called Indian Lake Estates. When we first moved here, we looked at a house there, which was almost perfect. Ultimately, we didn’t get it, but this development was started in the 1960s and is still somehow incomplete. Once I found out the developer who created ILE had committed suicide, I was hooked.
So I’ve been spending time in newspaper archives when I get a chance and sometimes, I get sidetracked, which is probably a good part of the reason why this idea is taking so long to solidify into a story. But anyway, take a look at this page from a 1961 issue of The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware:
First of all, hug your nearest copy editor if you still read newspapers because you’ll never again see a page as busy as this one. Where to start?
2. The wordplay is just there for the taking in that Grabs centerpiece. What, they didn’t have puns back then? They didn’t have “19th kid up for Grabs” back then?! Come on!
3. Good to see our struggle with proper mask wearing goes back decades, as Mr. Grabs demonstrates. There’s a joke in there about him, masks, and contraception in there, but I’m not making it.
4. Part of what’s fun about reading old newspapers is realizing how little has actually changed. Take a look at the story in the second and third columns at the bottom of the page, the “Brood Eager to Blast Off” story. It suggests that commercial space travel could be available by 1975-1980. Well, we’re close. The world’s richest men are getting ready to gallavant around space. And this round trip from the Earth to the moon has got me stumped, I have to say. Were we going to make the moon a vacation resort?
5. The idea that we wanted to go to space and couldn’t figure out why discriminating against black people here on Earth is wrong would be funny if it weren’t so very American. The article about the restaurant policy is fascinating. OK, so the federal government was trying to convince Maryland restaurant owners to serve black people because it made America look bad overseas. The response from these owners, some of them, was to leave the room because they didn’t want to lose their white customers by being inclusive. Even the pressure from the government resulted only in the owners forming an exploratory committee into the restaurant policy. They were going to look into the racism, folks. The closing quote on that story is something else, too: “If you don’t want to have in 10 years … a Red flag flying over the Capitol, I think that we have to start wondering what this uncommitted world is thinking.” Mr. Sanjuan, sir!
What I’m Reading
You ever find yourself following someone on Twitter because their tweets are funny, but you don’t know anything about them?
Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about the way I use social media, and part of that consideration involves the idea of maybe actively following someone from Twitter and not just “following” them. That’s why I finally cracked open “Thick and Other Essays” by Tressie McMillan Cottom.
All I knew about her previously was that she was an academic, an author and co-podcaster with Roxane Gay, and through that association, I thought I understood what I’d be getting in this book. It really wasn’t what I expected at all. Her writing combines research, personal essay and cultural critiques in a way I haven’t seen before and the results can make you laugh, make you point at the book like this
and make you angry.
The angriest I’ve ever been reading a book, in fact, was in reading “Thick.” I don’t think I’ve ever had to put a book down before and take a minute before this book, specifically the essay Dying to Be Competent. McMillan Cottom recounts her miscarriage and how she had tried to advocate for herself, tell the staff that there was something wrong. Once, she was told she wouldn’t get pain medication if she weren’t quiet. This might have been the first time I put the book down. Then, after her daughter dies, a nurse told her that they couldn’t have done anything more because she didn’t tell them she was in labor.
“Like millions of women of color, especially black women, I was churned through a healthcare machine that neglected and ignored me until I was incompetent,” she writes. Statistically, black women are dying either during or after childbirth at rates that compare to women in poorer countries, all because their humanity isn’t honored, even in what is supposed to be the best moment of their lives.
But her experience was familiar. I had two babies at the same hospital and each birth showed what I thought was merely an incompetent health care system. Now, it feels If women like McMillan Cottom, an academic, or one like Serena Williams, a global celebrity, can’t get the maternal treatment they deserve, what about us?
What about me? My daughter was about a week late and she went from zero to get-me-out-this-womb in about 36 seconds. It was after 2 a.m. when I got to the hospital, partly because I had been afraid to move because any slight shift caused a wave of pain. I looked like a mess — dressed in my husband’s oversized, non-matching sweats that he had to apply v-e-r-y slowly and my hair, I don’t even know. Maybe I looked strung out. I don’t know. Anyway, she arrived shortly after I got there and she was fine. The next morning, the pediatrician doing rounds happened to be my regular one. He checked out my chart and chuckled. “What, are you smoking weed or something?” I didn’t get the joke. It turned out my daughter’s urine had been screened for drugs. No one could answer for this while I was in the hospital and at one point, they’d even denied this had happened. My pediatrician, to his credit, did not go along with that narrative. And the hospital shouldn’t have either, by the way. One look at my records would have shown I’d been under a doctor’s care for the entire pregnancy.
If I had been a “normal” black woman, they would have ignored my repeated requests for more information about the drug screening. I know this because that is what they did for weeks. Until I let them know that I was also a columnist for the local newspaper and planning to write about my treatment at their hospital. You can’t just be a new black mom looking out for you and your baby. You have to pull a Serena “Do You Know Who I Am” Williams card to get hospitals to take you seriously. And when I pulled mine, suddenly I was provided with my medical records, where I did indeed see that a drug screen had been ordered. I demanded a meeting with the medical staff and an explanation. I got the meeting, but no real explanation. When I asked point black if I was profiled that night, they fell all over themselves in denial. One of the women acted shocked and almost insulted that I would even suggest such a thing.
The thing is, as McMillan Cottom notes, is that these kinds of things don’t happen to everyone. They happen to black women. When my column published, I got a voicemail from a reader who said only, “I hope you know that happened to you because you were black.”
One of her other essays, “Girl 6,” was about her desire to see a black woman as an op-ed writer for a newspaper of record. I think the thing about McMillan Cottom’s work is that I had thought that many of my experiences were exclusive to me, and she demonstrates how untrue that is in her work. In this essay is a nod to black women, like herself, who research and write about race, but never really get to do that work full-time. It took me back to my days as a columnist in Pittsburgh. My full-time job was as editor for three community newspapers and I was given the chance to try out doing a column. Five years, billboards around the city, and a few local, state and national awards and citations later, I asked if I could do the column full-time. The answer was no — they needed me in my first-shift job as editor, as McMillan Cottom would put it. Even now, I squeeze in the type of writing I want to do behind my full-time job and parenting responsibilities. As does a brilliant mind like McMillan Cottom. Me, I get. Tressie?! This book is brilliant and everyone should read it. No skips on these essays.
Next!
Have I mentioned here before how antsy I get when I run low on books? When I say “low on books,” it doesn’t mean I’m out of books I haven’t read, because that hasn’t happened since I was in grade school. No, we’re talking mostly about library books. Or new books. Anyway, when this happens, I can’t just get one book. Or two. No, we’re at
this many.
What I’m Reading
One thing I’m enjoying is this book called “Stories,” edited by Al Sarrantonio and Neil Gaiman. Sarrantonio is the author of this horror book I read as a teen called “October.” It’s one of those non-classic, not-special books that has always stayed with me, especially the ending. The ending was actually the best part of the whole book. I began reading it again and yeah, definitely not the best book.
But anyway. These Stories. The idea here was to challenge well-known writers to just tell a good story, sort of in the campfire vein. It features a few of my favorites, such as Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates, Jeffery Deaver and Joe Hill. And as with any combination of talent, you will find a variation in what (they think?) counts as a good story. Some of them were solid and stayed with me for days after I read it (Gaiman’s The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, Catch and Release by Lawrence Block, Hill’s The Devil On the Staircase and Deaver’s The Therapist are a few). Some of them, I’m still wondering, like, what? The one I can’t stop thinking about for not-good reasons is Samantha’s Diary, about a young woman whose diary was discovered in the future. She had become the living embodiment of the “12 Days of Christmas” poem. It was a great premise, one where the horror of the situation is balanced with the humor of someone bringing geese a-laying to your doorstep every day, but the end was a letdown. I spent several days asking myself, “But why?” I guess the answer is that it’s the nature of the campfire stories. Some are great and some are not.
And I just started “Thick” by Tressie McMillan Cottom. I’m trying to stop just following people on social media and actually read their work. Cottom is so good on Twitter (my girl tweeted about water bottles and opened up a discourse on wealth and privilege that lasted most of the day) but I realized I had no idea who she was really, besides podcast cohost with Roxane Gay. That first essay fixed my feet (you gotta read the essay to get it) and I am ready to read all her stuff now.
What I’m Listening To
I was all set to recommend this podcast I’d started listening to during my evening walks called “Unf*ck Your Brain.” It’s hosted by thought work coach Kara Lowentheil and no, I still don’t fully understand what thought work is because it sounds like you’re teaching yourself to view things from a different perspective, which can be helpful, but also sounds too easy to be considered work. Her mantra is “Thoughts lead to feelings and feelings lead to action.” Lowentheil focuses mainly on your professional life and how to think about setting goals. The goals has been top of mind for me as I try to focus on several things at once right now without forsaking the work I wanted to do as a writer this year. And as it pertained to how I think about my full-time job, a lot of what she said resonated with me and actually helped me think differently about my professional challenges.
Kara was on a roll with me, so I thought to myself, “Let’s see what she has to say about personal relationships and the difficult feelings that come from those.” I decided to listen to the episode called “Drama & Toxic People” for reasons I’m not getting into, thinking she could offer some tips on dealing with difficult people. But I was surprised to learn that there are no such thing as toxic people! Or drama! It’s all in your brain! The solution is not to cut these people out of your life, but how to deal with your thoughts about them and their actions. And because people aren’t literally radioactive, they’re not toxic, either, it turns out. A “toxic” person is only someone you can’t manage your mind around. So no one else is responsible for drama and toxicity is you. There’s also no such thing as gaslighting and emotional abuse! It’s all in your head! Why would you allow someone to make you feel that way?
This was wild enough to begin with, and I almost threw my phone into the lake, but then I managed my mind and turned off the podcast instead. This took me back to the main list of episodes and I noticed there was a Q&A episode, the first one, and directly after the drama episode. After what I’d heard in the previous episode, it occurred to me that other people might have had the same WTF reactions I did. And sure enough, there came in a question about emotional abuse and accountability on the part of the abuser. Her answer was that the anger the abused person is feeling is because of the way she chooses to think about the situation and that she allows herself to expend excess energy on this person and to feel anger.
Yeah.
At the end of that Q&A episode, there was a question about straightening your hair for professional purposes versus keeping it curly, and THAT was the one she found fascinating and wanted to discuss further.
That was the last time I listened to it. I was almost at a place where I was going to recommend her episodes about goals and nothing else. I still kind of might? But it is actually dangerous to suggest to people that you should find another way to think about people mistreating you — suggesting even that sticking around and learning to manage your thoughts in the behavior of terrible behavior, what, builds character? Builds strong thought work? And it’s not to say that you don’t have to come to a place of peace within yourself in the aftermath of these encounters, because it’s not healthy to get flared up every time you see this person/people. But this is work that is hand-in-hand with understanding what has happened to you and how to recover whenever possible, not mentally minimizing what has happened to you.
I think the overall problem with this podcast is that Lowentheil is a very fortunate person to appears to have never been in emotionally abusive or difficult relationships or in work situations with people who are overtly racist or sexist. I did see she has an episode on racism after George Floyd and I’m not doing that to myself. But if the limits of the challenges in your life keep you from understanding what others have been through and why thought work probably doesn’t help with truly terrible things that can happen to a person, then there are topics you shouldn’t touch. It’s better to know your own blind spots coming in as opposed to having others discover them for you.
I don’t know — that feels like a thought-worky thought.
This, by the way, is why I stick with true crime podcasts. I don’t need this angst and am probably about done with the self-help podcast genre unless someone has an idea that will keep my phone dry.
Let’s end on a positive note: The other thing I’ve listened to recently that I liked: “The Line.” Now that is a great series about a topic I did not think I wanted to hear about and not from Dan Taberski. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Taberski — it’s just that his storytelling style wouldn’t seem to fit with a story about a Navy SEAL who killed a war criminal in Iraq. But it fits (like his Heather Locklear analogy — just listen to it) because he can tell a good story without forsaking his style. I definitely didn’t think I wanted to hear from Eddie Gallagher, who I felt previously was a war criminal who got a pardon from a president who gave them out like candy. But Taberski actually landed the interview with him, his wife and his brother, and then saved the mic drop for the appropriate moment.
Plus, the podcast is tied to an Apple TV documentary by Alex Gibney (the “Going Clear” guy).
Fine. Just take my money.
All Kinds of Firsts
Apparently, it’s March. I feel like we just started this year. And yet it feels like it’s been going on forever. It’s wild.
Part of it, I know, is that my life has been like a load of clothes in a dryer: just everything tossed about under intense heat. The good news is that the cycle is just about over. But there’s always dirty laundry, so.
I had some pretty well-defined goals for this year and in preparation for the year. I was going to have my business plan complete, my website updated, blogging at least twice a month, reviving Tennis With Attitude, writing a book proposal. All of this and more. However, there’s been a slight hiccup.
While I was supposed to setting up a schedule to start the year off with the bang it would need to be in order to do all of this, something else happened. I decided to leave my 15-year marriage. All I’ll say now is that it wasn’t an easy choice, but it was the best one available. It was also the rightest one. Yeah, no, that’s not a word.
But this choice was all-consuming for the first part of this year, to say the least. I’m still getting physically and emotionally settled, to the point where I can start to even approach the goals stated above. And because of these recent personal changes, it does appear that some rebranding is in order and this is daunting. My TWA blog was never done under my real name, but my journalism career is mostly bylined by a name I’d rather never use again. My website, for Pete’s sake. So it’s going to be weird. But I’m going to figure it all out and I would like to do it this month. Stop laughing.
One of my goals that have been calling out to me has been about my fiction writing. What fiction writing, you’re saying. Oh, the fiction I write and then shove it under my bed and forget about it. That fiction. You wouldn’t know it from my body of work, but my first love is fiction writing. I wrote a short story (at about 2,000, that’s the shortest I get) late last year and submitted it. It was rejected about three weeks later, but it was a step.
Another big step I took this year was participating in a virtual open-mic and I actually read my fiction work out loud! Before I continue, please support Galleyway if you can. Camille Wanliss is an amazing writer and created this space for people of color to write together. It’s a beautiful thing. For its fifth-year anniversary, Camille held a virtual event for writers to read what they’ve been working on, and wow. So many amazing writers out there who you’ve never heard of. Yet. I’m excited on your behalf, that you’ll have the chance to read them one day. Like I said, I read also and I didn’t pass out from nerves, so that’s a win.
What I’m Reading
I just finished Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” and wow. Yes, it’s an ambitious story and well-told but it’s made me think about my work. Specifically, whether it’s OK to have characters in your stories that serve no real purpose. Every person in the book that Shadow touches plays a real role in the unfolding of the story. And we’re not talking about just a few people. This book is over 500 pages.
I have a work in progress with a character I’m on the fence about. If I’m honest, she’s in there for my amusement because she’s a crossover character from one of my short stories. I thought it’d be a nice touch, but only as a callback to another piece. Ultimately, she’s not central to the plot, the character’s development or even as those deus ex machina-type roles. Still, it’s fun scene — I think so. So I don’t know. I so admired the way Gaiman didn’t waste a person or a word in this book that I’m feeling deep shame over this character.
Anyone else throw in characters that aren’t necessary just for giggles? I’m trying to think of one book I’ve read that I enjoyed where rando characters were just tossed in and out and coming up short.
What I’m Listening To
One day, the answer to this question will be music, new and interesting music that has nothing to do with my weekly PlyoJam sessions. This is not that day and I am still obsessed with podcasts.
Two this week that I’ve been thinking a lot about: “Through The Cracks” coming by way of WAMU. Journalist Jonquilyn Hill (would not be surprised at all if that was a West Indian name) takes us to the failures that led to the disappearance of eight-year-old Relisha Rudd from a shelter where her family was living. I’d heard about this case before, but this was the most exhaustive look so far at the history and the institutions involved with her disappearance. The most unusual aspect of this case is that Relisha had been missing for nearly a month before
The most obvious (and only) answer to many is that her family failed her. This is fair and true, but Hill, through the format of this podcast, argues that there were several factors at play. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but she’s right. The school system dropped the ball. The city-operated shelter in the D.C. area allowed a person with a criminal record to work at this shelter — when he shouldn’t have been. Hill, I think, is asking us to weigh all these factors equally. The reason I enjoy this podcast is that she makes a compelling case, and presents us with a panoramic view of this story, which I love to see in journalism. But I have to admit that the most recent episode gave me pause. Again, no real spoilers here, but Hill considers the role of Shamika Young, Relisha’s mom, in this case, and, unlike in other episodes, she pulls her punches. At the end of the day, the parents are the main people responsible for the care of their child. And Hill is going to have to issue a heckuva final episode to make a clear case for why that might not apply here. But I’m definitely going to hear her out.
The other podcast I’m enjoying is not true-crime related! I know, right? “Business Wars” from Wondery is a look behind the scenes at the business rivalries that have played out in public over the years. There are about 50 seasons (slight exaggeration) of this show, but I jumped right in to Mattel vs. Hasbro because I’m a child of the 1980s. Wondery podcasts are sort of known for using imagined dialogue to paint a picture and it mostly works here. But especially for this season, I’m kind of fascinated that toy companies … take it so seriously? The other thing that blew me away was that I was not only a child of the ’80s, I was a Jem girl. You know, Jem, who’s fashion contagious! Outrageous! Jem is my naaaame, no one else is the same, Jem is my name! Jem! OK, so I was a Jem girl and it turns out that Mattel found out Hasbro was planning a rocker doll and that’s how Barbie and the Rockers were born. I definitely remember Barbie and the Rockers and to my nine-year-old-ish brain, I knew it was a bite-off of Jem. But apparently, the Rockers made enough noise to push Jem aside. And now that I’ve listened to this podcast, it’s answered the question I’ve had for years: With everything that’s getting a reboot these days, why not Jem? Because Mattel is cutthroat, I guess. Also, for the record, I don’t want a reboot of Jem or of anything from the 80s and 90s. Let’s maybe make new things!
All right, I’ve read this graph and it appears that I really have a lot of childhood trauma around Jem. So I guess I need a deep breath and a different season of this show. Hm, one of the most recent ones is about Estee Lauder vs. L’Oreal. See, the test of this podcast will be to make me, a person who last bought perfume in the 90s, care about this catfight. We shall see.