A new journey is about to begin
The news hasn’t yet been officially announced, but it soon will be.
ThisWeek Community Newspapers, of which I’ve written literally thousands of articles for over what is nearly 28 years, will be publishing its final edition Jan. 26, 2023.
I was offered a position at the daily newspaper in my city to do something similar to what I’ve been doing, but a little more than 24 hours ago, I turned it down.
Some might say that this, by definition, makes me no longer the professional writer as I’ve been for more than half of my life.
So why exactly am I starting this Substack …
It’s because, at minimum, I have words that need to be shared — if for no other reason than to help me on a journey that I’ve really never been on before.
Journalism as many of you might have heard isn’t exactly a stable profession for most people.
Hard-working employees often are let go without cause for any number of reasons — the focus of what they wrote about was deemed to not be important enough, they weren’t providing quite enough clicks or subscriptions or downsizing in general.
Many of the skills that I’ve acquired during my time which has been spent covering mostly high school sports but also has included writing about college and pro sports as well as mundane things like advertorials about mulch businesses, absolutely would translate to other careers.
I did what I did because I loved it, plain and simple.
I love the excitement I see in teenagers faces when they’ve accomplished something that was difficult.
There’s nothing quite like the emotions you see at the end of a state championship event, when the losing team is presented a trophy that they’d probably prefer to throw in the bottom of a lake and then has to watch the other team dance around the particular venue their sport is competing in.
Everyone loves a good drama.
Sports — real sports competitions where teams or individuals are going against each other — provide the greatest reality show on earth.
And when they’re involving teenagers, it sometimes feels just a little more special because you know those young people will never forget what happened.
Having the privilege of covering these athletes is something I’ve taken pride in because I always believed it was important that they got recognized.
And yes, I was pretty decent at it, so I made into a career for as long as I possibly could.
Three decades is a long time to do anything, and as I’ve mentioned to a few people, I think it would be accurate to throw me in the risk-averse category when it comes to the big decisions in my life.
Change can be tough, but anyone who’s been involved in journalism learned long ago that there WILL come a time — or more likely, multiple times — when you’ll be faced with career decisions.
That time for me is now for a variety of reasons — everything from the frustration of continually being underpaid to the struggle of balancing a job whose hours at times are long and tedious to it just sometimes making life too damn hard because of all the weekends and late nights that are inevitable.
Work-life balance and journalism are opposites, particularly those like myself who have a family of five to consider.
I don’t know what the next few months will hold, but it brings to mind this line near the end of the movie Up: “Thanks for the adventure. Now go have a new one.”
I’m ready for whatever that looks like.