Hey everyone, thank you for reading and commenting. You made my day, just in the nick of time.
And thank you, my sweet, brilliant Joe, for monitoring this site for me from your and Marie’s adorable apartment in the Czech Republic (it’s after 11 p.m. in Ostrava).
I woke up today feeling – to quote a certain publisher -crappy. Ever since I was told to leave the paper, I’ve tried to keep a stiff upper lip about being dumped at the curb like a sack of trash. I’m an optimist. I tried to tell myself that I’m not homeless and I don’t have cancer and my loved ones are OK.
I tried to put on a happy face in my redding.com comments. I tried to not show how terribly sad I felt.
But today it hit me that my newspaper career, all I’d worked for for more than 10 years, was flushed by a 30-something editor who’d only been there four months.
That night, and the next, I had wine for dinner. I didn’t fill bird feeders. I didn’t cook. I didn’t leave the house unless I had to. OK, I was depressed.
E-mails arrived by the hundreds, and the phone rang and rang (it’s still ringing). I spent (spend) a lot of time in sweats, trying to keep up (dial-up, out here in the boondocks), but I couldn’t. (Still haven’t. Forgive me.)
The messages were (are) so lovely, and honest and supportive and funny and so very, very smart and rightiously outraged, not just about my situation, but the plight of the Record Searchlight.
It was an odd position for me, a person so unaccustomed to and uncomfortable with charity (for me).
Anyway, back to the firing, or before the firing. I remember at some point during the many uber-stressful meetings I had with the new editor (beginning the first Monday after Greg Clark was gone) I told him that I thought he was making a huge mistake to replace me and my column with a destructive pit bull column.
He said some people might call him crazy for doing it (I agreed), but as editor, he “owned” that decision.
Yes, he does.
Now, it strikes me as an ironic twist when I think of how he first described that aggressive “metro” columnist he dreamed of, someone who’d dig stuff up, hold people’s feet to the fire and hold people accountable.
Readers would be so excited to see what fresh mound of warm, juicy nuggets had been unearthed, three to four times a week, sometimes on the front page, that they’d rush to buy newspapers. Readership would increase. Oh happy day.
I wonder if he ever imagined that the feet held to the fire might be his? I wonder if he ever imagined those held accountable might be himself, and the people above him?
Life’s funny that way, don’t you think?
Here’s another funny thought, from my wise and witty husband. You’ve heard that it’s a bad idea to argue with people who buy ink by the barrel.
That’s so old school. Because, for all its faults, the Internet levels the communication playing field.
We don’t need no stinkin’ ink, here in Blogland.
Oh happy day.
OK, I’m going to get dressed now, and fill the bird feeders.
Take care. Keep the faith. Thank you for reading. Doni
