As Christmas draws near, Hanukkah begins and Kwanzaa is not far away, we all will have opportunities to be around friends, family and even new acquaintances. For those who, like me, are “between jobs,” there probably will be questions about the employment search. Also, people we just met might ask what line of work we’re in.
My advice: Be prepared; don’t be like Piglet.
When my sons were young, they were “Winnie the Pooh” fans, and I recall one episode of the cartoon where a wind-up monkey named Bruno became friends with the denizens of the Hundred-Acre Wood. As they all got acquainted, Bruno asked Piglet, Pooh’s devoted but meek pal, “What do YOU do?”
Piglet, who had seen Bruno’s antics and was clearly uncomfortable at the question, replied, “Well, I … er …. um … uh… nothing.” Of course, Bruno howled with laughter at the answer.
You may not be questioned by a wind-up monkey, but you need to have an answer ready besides “nothing.” Try “I’m exploring multiple job opportunities” (true, but vague enough that there probably won’t be a follow-up question). Or “the possibilities are endless” (probably will prompt a laugh but will effectively end the discussion of the topic). There are a variety of answers you could give that would indicate you’re hopeful and have been working very hard to find a position that matches your skill set, or perhaps you’re trying to upgrade your skills to better fit the job market.
This is where I am, by the way. I’ve sold some freelance pieces, am trying to sell a few more and still looking for something long term. But even if you haven’t had a nibble, try to stay upbeat.
My Christmas note: As a Christian, I believe that this is a season of hope. Our assistant pastor, Steve, carried his baby daughter with him to the altar yesterday as he did the Communion prayer. It was a vivid reminder of the hope that a baby brought to the world.
In the post-Watergate era, many budding journalists envisioned themselves as the next Woodward or Bernstein and looked for a scandal around every corner. But the newspaper business, especially in a small town, is far less glamorous than that. Sometimes it can be downright hard.
In the small North Carolina town where I first worked, I was shooting the breeze with the police chief in his office one day when a call came in on the police scanner about a child being hit by a car. I drove out to the location and was greeted by a horrific scene: A 12-year-old girl lying dead by the side of the road next to her crumpled bicycle, as her grieving mother knelt over her body and wailed. Just thinking about it now puts me on the verge of tears.
I was only 22 or 23 at the time, and this was my first journalistic experience of this nature. My first reaction was to feel as if I had to throw up, but then I remembered I was a newsman and I had my camera. I was in position to get a picture that would capture the raw emotion of the scene and would certainly run on the front page.
Before I could push the shutter, though, a wave of disgust came over me. I felt like an intruder, invading the privacy of this mother and daughter no less than if I had stood outside their home and peered in the window. I took no pictures. I just stood there and watched as authorities covered the girl’s body and drove the mother away in a squad car, as she leaned her head out the window and continued wailing.
When I got back to the office, another reporter asked what had happened. When I told her about the picture I couldn’t take, she was incredulous, and said it would have been a prize-winner. I sincerely doubted she could have taken the picture, either, but that wasn’t the point. I figure that although I may have lost a little of my journalistic credibility, I preserved all of my humanity.
Shortly after I moved from New Jersey to a small town in northeastern North Carolina in 1976, a native told me, “No matter how long you live here, you’ll always be a Yankee.” Grateful for that warm welcome, I resisted the urge to say, “Well, at least we’re 1-0 in Civil Wars.” With the exception of a six-month stint in Pennsylvania in 1978, I’ve been in the South ever since.
The community newspaper, which came out three times a week then and still does, was the first small-town paper in my career. I later worked for two other North Carolina papers, both weeklies. One advantage of small-town papers: Everyone knows who you are. It’s hard to blend in when you’re the one with a camera, pen and notepad.
But having a high profile can come in handy when news breaks. I got along well with the police chief in one town, and after he turned in his resignation to the mayor one day, I was one of the first people he told.
I then went to the mayor and asked him about it. “How’d you find out?” he asked. Of course, I didn’t answer.
“I’m gonna MAKE you tell me,” he continued. Of course, he couldn’t. Actually, the mayor’s wife previously ran the newspaper, so he was only halfheartedly trying to strongarm me.
The visibility of the small-town journalist can also be a detriment. I remember having someone come to the newsroom and lead me out to their truck, where they wanted me to take a picture of a deer they had killed. Or when I was sitting at home watching TV on a Sunday afternoon and someone knocked on my door and asked me to take a picture of them with a big fish they had just caught or the big watermelon they grew.
In some ways the small-town journalist’s life is similar to everyone else’s; people are friendly until you do something they don’t like (like write something unflattering).
One night I was standing outside City Hall after a City Council meeting when I saw the town’s ambulance go out. I recognized the driver and then saw her toddler son, who was probably about 3, in the front with her. When the next issue of our weekly paper came out, I wrote a column that included a few paragraphs about how rescue squad members shouldn’t put their children in potentially dangerous situations.
For a long time after that, I was thankful I didn’t have a wreck that would require ambulance transport. I could envision having the plug pulled on me, no matter my condition.
I really had no choice but to go into newspapers. I grew up in Linwood, N.J., next door to the editor of the local weekly paper. The neighbor on the other side owned and operated a service station, so clearly I picked the less lucrative career. Good thing I didn’t grow up next to an ax murderer, I guess.
Perhaps it was through some form of osmosis, but by the time I was in elementary school, I knew I wanted to make newspapers my career. At age 10, I started a neighborhood paper with one of my friends. Gary and I one-finger-typed it on portable typewriters (you know, those things that are all in museums now), using a carbon, and went door-to-door in the neighborhood, selling them for a nickel. I actually did this for a few summers; we were responsible for our own amusement a lot more in the pre-Playstation days.
Our paper contained “news” you wouldn’t find in any other publication (with good reason, I suppose). When my mother had a tooth pulled, it was front-page news in the Crestlea Park Press. When Gary’s dog, Taffy, had an operation, we reported it without the indelicate details. We lifted riddles from a book (c’mon, who would sue a child for copyright infringement?) and included several. Here’s one I remember:
Q. Who is bigger, Mr. Bigger or Mr. Bigger’s baby?
A. The baby is a little Bigger.
People actually paid for this stuff! And a nickel was big money in the mid-’60s.
We included Little League standings, and my team was in capital letters, the same way big-city papers handled standings for their hometown baseball teams.
One time in July 1965, we actually had breaking news in the paper. Gary and I were busily churning out an issue when we heard that Adlai Stevenson had died. Along with the neighborhood news in The Crestlea Park Press was this: “Flash! Adlai Stevenson just died. They will perform an autopsy.”
Context wasn’t important to us at that age; besides, we probably didn’t even know who he was. We heard on TV that he had died, so we figured he must have been important.
I can’t remember if the breaking news helped our sales that week. Our customers were loyal, but they DID have other sources for news.
