This is a retirement column. Today is my last day working for Essex Media Group (EMG).
The time has come to bring new perspectives into my life. What will I do in retirement? I would tell you scholarship, service, travel and chasing my granddaughter around loom in my future.
I leave Bank Square (look it up on an older Lynn map) immensely grateful to have spent the last eight years of my career working for a media company defying the odds in an industry decimated by mega-corporate cuts.
I always wanted to do newspaper work. I love the smell of ink and the crisp slapping sound a newspaper makes when you open it right off the rack.
I remember the thrill of seeing my byline above a story in my high school newspaper. I half dozed through Boston University journalism classes, but wrote and rewrote wire copy that spewed out of bygone teletype machines, trying to get my sentences as air-tight and punchy as the ones crafted by wire service scribes.
I have been incredibly fortunate in a journalism career spanning 38 years, including more than 34 at The Item. The best part of the job has been working with a cast of characters, some who had their doubts about me, many who put their faith in me, others who couldn’t get rid of me when I latched onto them intent on learning all their tricks of the trade.
I think news reporting is an acquired skill and I guess you can be trained to do it. But I think good reporters have something deep down in their gut that demands they ask one more question, make one more call, dive deeper into the paperwork and spend hours chasing down that key interview subject.
I’ve already thanked the person who hired me to work at the-then Daily Evening Item (I was 10 minutes late for the interview and the great Dave Liscio barged into it to convince Ted Grant to hold the paper for a murder story).
I am one of those extremely lucky men who is in love with and married to a woman who brought me back down to earth when I thought I wrote the Column of the Century, and who told me things would get better when I slogged through tough times. She consistently reminded me why I love the job and bolstered that enthusiasm with our shared interest in politics and history.
Newspaper work is about challenging people for answers, never taking no for an answer, and never being satisfied with your work — and always making deadline.
It’s not a job for everyone: People who are smarter and better-educated than I am abruptly quit newspaper work in the face of some horrific tragedy unfolding in front of them.
People who love chasing news are people who lie awake at night rewriting leads in their heads; who read a competitor’s story and game out how they would write it.
It’s a job for people who get a spark out of seeing their byline and who can’t wait to hear the reaction to a good, hard-punching story.
Ted took a chance last year filling our newsroom with young people just out of school and I am confident we have a crew possessing the passion and perseverance underpinning good newswomen and newsmen.
A half dozen of these kids started a newspaper in Marblehead last summer and they will go on to greater things.
I’ve always been wary of advice, partly because it tends to be equal part experience and opinion. The only advice I can give young people in the business is find someone who does the job better than you do and study and learn how they do it. I am lucky to have worked with people who fit that description.
In the short term, I’ll endeavor to touch base with everyone who meant so much to me over so many years. If you want to get a hold of me, email [email protected]
Thank you, one and all, and let me ask again that question you’ve heard me ask before: “Anything I can do for you?”
Permit me to sign off with the mark editors used when I got started in the business to designate the end of the story.
-30-
