“Hi Michael! I would love to talk to you about your
experiences in Journalism as a whole. As a young journalist starting out, I
find myself covering things that I sometimes do not understand. I'd also like
to talk to you about freelance work and things like that. My cell is
908-XXX-XXXX. Please reach"
Dear writer:
First a poem/song about writing or singing:
There's a kid out on my corner hear him strumming
like a fool
Shivering in his dungarees but still he's going to
school
His cheeks are made of peach fuzz, his hopes may be
the same
But he's signed up as a soldier out to play the
music game
There are fake patches on his jacket
He's used bleach to fade his jeans
With a brand new stay-pressed shirt
And some creased and wrinkled dreams
His face a blemish garden but his eyes are virgin
clear
His voice is Chicken Little's, but he's hearing
Paul Revere
When he catches himself giggling
He forces up a sneer
Though he'd rather have a milk shake
He keeps forcing down the beer
Just another folkie, late in coming down the pike
Riding his guitar, he left Kid brother with his
bike
And he's got Guthrie running in his bones
He's the hobo kid who's left his home
And his Beatles records and the Rolling Stones
This boy is staying acoustic
There's Seeger singing in his heart
He hopes his songs will somehow start
To heal the cracks that split apart
America gone plastic
And now there's Dylan dripping from his mouth
He's hitching himself way down south
To learn a little black and blues
From old street men who paid their dues
’Cause they knew they had nothing to lose
They knew it, so they just got to it
With cracked old Gibsons and red clay shoes
Playing 1 4 5 chords like good news
And cursed with skin that calls for blood
They put their face and feet in mud
But oh, they learned the music from way down there
The
real ones learn it somewhere
Strum
your guitar, sing it kid
Just
write about your feelings, not the things you never did
Inexperience,
it once had cursed me
But
your youth is no handicap, it's what makes you thirsty.
What Harry is telling us about this kid is he wants
to be a folk singer. He can't sing very well, bur he tells the kid to do it
anyhow. He sees a passion in the kid and wants to encourage it.
And so I have to ask you, is writing your passion?
Here's what my favorite author,
Robert Heinlien, says about writing: "Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it
in private and wash your hands afterwards."
But just in case you still want
to write, I will tell you a secret : WRITE. Write like it was your full-time
job. Research like it is your full-time job. Edit like it's your full-time job.
Because writing is your full-time passion.
You must write. You can't talk about wanting to be
a writer. You won't become one by taking courses. You have to put your hands on
a keyboard and start typing. And finish what you start. You'll never sell
a damn thing if you don't. And as soon as you submit it for publication, write
something else.
So let's talk about journalism. If you want to be in
print media such as newspapers and magazines. There is little chance you will
be able to do so. After all, there are thousands of unemployed journalists out
there because print is dying and everything is electronic. That doesn't
mean a damn thing. Do it anyhow because you'll become a far better
writer.
Newspapers don't pay very much. I started writing
for the Morris County (NJ) Daily Record in 1968 when I was a college freshman.
They paid a magnificent sum of $12.50 to be a "stringer" -- a
freelance writer hired to cover a town meeting. My first assignment was to
cover the Victory Gardens town council. Victory Gardens is the smallest town in
the state. But the mayor was getting very worried because the Borough had seen
it's very first drug bust earlier in the week. He made a quick statement
about it at the beginning of the meeting and gave me the copy. There were
probably a dozen more important things going on. There were zoning
approvals, budget issues, master planning and the cost of utilities. But that
little statement was what I grabbed.
I got back to the office and sat at a typewriter in
complete panic. "How would this read in the Record?" I asked
myself at least a dozen times before I just wrote about what I had. Who?--the
mayor; What? drug abuse: Where? Victory Gardens (the dateline); Why? Because
the mayor said drugs were spreading; How? The mayor thought pushers from the
town next door were moving in on town.
I took those basic questions and managed to spit
our eight paragraphs. The desk cut it down to four 'graphs and used it as a
filler on page 5. No byline.
But I had published something and I kept on getting
assignments. I learned to know what the issues of town government was. Or so I
thought. And I just kept writing the stories, about four nights a week. Copy
began to flow much easier. I remember I went to a very controversial board of
education meeting which was attended by more than 100 people. I immediately
called the news desk to get a photographer and I wrote 8 takes (pages) about
the meeting. They published every word and I had a front-page byline.
After writing for about six months, I went into the
Army Reserves. When I returned, I began working for the competition, The Daily
Advance.
And I had a beat. I started writing about Hackettstown,
Mount Olive and Allamuchy. Two of those towns were the only ones in Warren
County we covered so I covered the county freeholders and occasionally the county
court.
I got to know a lot of politicians and civic
leaders, as well as just plain people. This was the time when young Christians
were becoming known as "Jesus Freaks." and that stirred a bit
of controversy. And I looked for controversy throughout the town. And
I found the most at the Hackettstown Council meeting. There always seemed
to be problems. And I wrote about them. My editors loved it and gave me pretty
much free rein on my articles.
And then came election night. The Republicans had a
five-to-one majority on the council but lost the two seats that were up that
year. After getting a couple of quotes from the Mayor, I went over to the
Democrats party. Suddenly all the people who had been complaining about the
"problems" were there. I felt I had been sucker punched.
I spent the next year trying to be more balanced.
And we endorsed the Republicans the next year.
I also managed to get a number of feature stories.
Google Paula Grossman. She was a transexual music teacher who lost his job when
he became a she. This was happening in Bernards Township, well out of our
circulation area. I mentioned to my editor that he/she was my music teacher for
three years. He got that manic grin on his face and insisted I go to Plainfield
and interview her.
And so I wrote my first major feature story.
It was more than 1,000 words and it started on the front page and jumped
to page three, tying up nearly half the page.
The lead was like this: "
PLAINFIELD -- "My, you've changed," said
Paula Grossman as she welcomed me to her modest Tudor home. "But then, who
am I to talk?" Paula has indeed changed. When she taught me in the
Bernards Township schools, she was a he named Paul.
The story was one of the hardest I ever had to
write. I had to do research on sex changes, and it wasn't available in our
local libraries, nor in the newly-opened library at the local community
college. I had to do my research at Rutgers University's main campus and also
had to talk with the Board of Education members and their lawyer. I also did
phone interviews with doctors.
It took about 20 hours to do the story. I did the
interview on a Monday morning and turned it in on Tuesday close to midnight.
That story was a turning point for me. While I did a lot of town meetings, I
also began to search out human interest stories. And I was trusted with
more assignments. I became the reporter on the Presidential election, following
candidates as they stumped the state. I was very tight with our
convention delegates and had on-the-scene accounts of what was
happening at the national conventions.
I finally ended my days as a beat reporter
and covered the courthouse, which included the prosecutor's office. I had
a solid relationship with then Judge Brendan Byrne and managed to get
him to pose for a photo by his office door (photos were banned in the courthouse in those days) as he left to run for New Jersey
governor. The photo made the state AP wire.
There were a lot of good times with my fellow
reporters. Most of us were single (It's kind of tough to find someone when we
worked every night until 1 a.m.). And so we went to a local diner to solve all
the problems of the world, staying until about 3 a.m. One night, we spotted a
man wanted for murder and called the cops from the pay phone. Within minutes
there were at least 20 cops there. Our Photographer was hanging with us and he
got a photo that went national. We made the new guy go back to the newsroom and
write the story, but we also phoned it in to back up. It's the only time I've
ever seen six bylines.
Four years after that Victory Gardens story, I had
it with writing about the same things. I took an opening with a weekly
newspaper. I wanted to do more than just write. I wanted to learn layout,
editing and general newspaper management. Those days we had type set and pasted
up our weekly 20 pages. In addition to doing some reporting, I wrote a weekly
column and one about off-road motorcycles won a New Jersey Press Association
award,
It was a great run, but Journalism never paid
enough to support a family. I hated to stop it, but a pregnant wife forced me
to take a job pushing photographic products as a technical writer. After a
couple of years, I had a reputation and was offered a job editing a trade
magazine for professional photographers. After that, five years working for
Canon USA’s ad agency writing technical materials, press releases, price lists,
and more.
The career went on. I wrote stuff for the inventor
of the MRI scanner, countless articles for business trade magazines and more
until I developed carpal tunnel syndrome after an auto accident. And so I had a
second career as a school teacher, making kids write about history.
These days, I don’t write for anyone but myself. I
don’t care who reads it. I’m retired. But I still have a passion for it. I’ve
travelled cross country four times and have gone up and down the Atlantic and
Pacific coasts. I’ve been in 112 degree heat in the Badlands, and under four
feet of blizzard in the same place.
So kid, if you want to be a writer. Just write.
