After more than 45 years, it’s time for a fond farewell
This is my last byline as an employee of The Commercial Appeal.
Friday – after 45 years, 7 months and 16 days here – I unplugged my keyboard and headed into retirement.
That probably is good news to some of the critics of our editorial page, who have been especially vocal since the presidential campaign and the election of Donald Trump as president.
I started here on Aug. 15, 1971. I was working toward a degree in journalism at Memphis State University. I graduated from the old Father Bertrand High School wanting to work here, so I have been a happy camper.
I started as a copy clerk, a job technology killed. The newspaper was in a former Ford Motor Co. assembly plant. We had black rotary dial phones and Remington typewriters. A lot of the reporters and editors were fueled by nonstop smoking and multiple cups of coffee.
To me, I came here at the end of an era, when there were some reporters who still fit the movie stereotype of the rough-and-tumble news hounds who came into the newsroom around 5 p.m. to write their stories for first edition and then head to the press club across the street, where they usually got dinner, a beer or something stronger before heading back to the news room to write for the final edition.
Some would head back to the press club afterwards and stay into the wee hours.
We were a newspaper juggernaut, putting out eight editions a night, with reporters stationed across the MidSouth. The Commercial Appeal was delivered as far east as western Alabama, throughout West Tennessee, northeast Arkansas, and into the Missouri Bootheel and a portion of Western Kentucky. The CA was delivered all over north and mid-Mississippi.
Now it seems that on some days, even with all the technological advances, we sometimes have trouble getting one edition out.
I’m leaving at a time when the traditional media is struggling to grow readership and find solid financial footing in a digital world.
Stark evidence of that was demonstrated in our newsroom Tuesday when so many of my co-workers were let go.
On Tuesday, Mike Brown, a photojournalist and our video guru, was looking for photo ideas to accompany this column. He asked me if there were any particular stories I remembered.
He seemed a bit disappointed when I could not recall one.
It’s not that I’m going senile. But, after nearly 46 years, they tend to run together, and each holds a special memory.
What I remember most are the people I wrote about – the good and the bad. The sights, smells and sounds that emanated from the tragedies of life. Talking to mothers standing on the banks of ponds and lakes while rescuers searched for the body of a drowned child and then enduring the wails of anguish when the body was finally recovered. Interviewing the friends and relatives of homicide or accident victims.
Being at the old police headquarters at a time when reporters had more access to squad commanders, detectives, offense reports and arrest tickets allowed me to see firsthand the ravages of crimes beyond a brief statement from a police public information officer.
There were the stories I wrote or edited that demonstrated the goodness in people, and they far outweighed the acts of evil.
I’ll miss the electricity that permeates the newsroom when a major story is breaking – when editors, reporters, photographers and page designers congeal into an efficient, storyproducing machine.
One of those times was when I was the senior editor on duty when the Shannon Street massacre occurred in January 1983.
The police forced their way into a Hyde Park house, killing seven black members of a religious cult who had held an officer hostage for 30 hours while beating him to death. I had received a promotion two weeks earlier, so this was kind of a baptism by fire.
As a journalist, especially an editorial writer and editor, you must pay attention to a lot things. Being a Memphian has made that easier, giving me a solid foundation of institutional knowledge and background. You see that some issues seem never to go away.
An example: Too many of our elected officials still are stoking the urbansuburban divide. Race still makes some issues more complicated than they need to be.
And, it’s personally disappointing that so many politicians refuse to see the value of making investments on the front end to mitigate social ills that lead to children becoming criminals and domestic abusers on the back end. Or making investments in early childhood programs that insure children succeed in school, leading to good paying jobs. That would prevent them from having to depend on social service programs, which cost taxpayers a lot more.
And, it’s disappointing that two days before the 49th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Memphis still is dealing with a nearly 30-percent poverty rate, failing schools, an overabundance of low-paying jobs and preventable health issues, all of which disproportionately affect African Americans.
When you work at a place for nearly 46 years, your co-workers become your family. You rejoice at their triumphs and grieve in their personal losses.
I hope they know how much I respect them as tremendous journalists, co-workers and friends.
And, I owe a special thanks to all my editors and colleagues past and present. They shared their time, talent and patience to help mold me into a decent reporter and editorial writer.
That also applies to all of you in the community who shared your knowledge, time and news tips, which helped me succeed as a journalist.
As one of my longtime colleagues said the other day, I sought to be an arbiter of the truth. That may be a bit hyperbolic. Still, I never forgot that a journalist’s job is to remember that there are many sides to a story and that we have an obligation to report those sides and to paint an authentic picture of the world we cover.
Jerome Wright is former editorial page editor for The Commercial Appeal.