Published September 9, 2024

I’m writing this for me. By any of today’s guidelines and metrics, it’s too long. The “readability” score will be awful. But like almost everything on this site, it’s something for me to park here and reflect on. Reflection that comes during writing is some of the best I know.

And if someone out there has run out of things to read, this is here, such that it is.

Decades ago I had an idea for a novel I’ll never write. A man in his 30s comes home from the funeral of a friend, which cut his vacation short, and hears his friend’s voice on his answering machine. The call was one of the last he made before his death, which shocked everyone.

After listening to the message many times, the protagonist gathers the circle of friends he shared with the man who died and tells them his idea. What if they eulogized each other while they’re still alive? He’d spoken at the funeral, and on the flight home he thought of so much he didn’t say.

They agree to make his idea a reality, and they convene when they can to take turns. There is even a plot twist you can probably guess.

What I am doing here, I think, is taking stock of my career. If not a eulogy per se, it’s my taking stock while I still can. Maybe I am writing my life to see what’s left for me to do to make it matter. No one can argue I am not closer to the end of it than the start of it.

Waiting around to die is an awful thing. Someday, ask me how I know.

Posting this gives it a veneer of accountability, but it’s also to prove that someone who has always felt like a failure and a tourist in her career, and an accidental tourist at that, can create the stillness to find merit and peace in her life’s work after all.

I’ll get on with this now.

It’s not the awards

My writing career ended more than a decade ago for several reasons, most of them financial. I had become too expensive as a writer and more “viable” as an editor. It was not in my wheelhouse to write, shoot video, blog, tweet, post on Facebook, do radio appearances and end up telling a sliver of the stories because I had no time to find the stories.

Before that, I won more than 70 journalism awards. Two of the plaques are on my walls at home, and I shed most of the others over the years. I still have the list of all of the awards somewhere, as if that matters.

While In bed assessing my life as I try to reset my sleep cycle and health, I realized that the things I am most proud of from my career as a reporter and columnist are not the awards. It’s the things you don’t put on a resume and barely have a chance to tell in a job interview, but they are the good stuff, the real stuff.

After thinking I could never work anywhere but at my hometown paper, I moved away and disproved that notion. Long after that, I moved far away and learned how hard it is to get up every day when you feel like a failure every day. But I got up every day.

I worked with some characters. I worked with some of the kindest people you can imagine. I never measured up to either bunch, but I was lucky to know them.

Some of the bigger moments

The biggest thrill? I covered a game that ended on a miraculous Hail Mary pass that won an ESPY Award for play of the year, and the email I received the next day became my career highlight. A mom, a professor, wrote to say she read it to her twin 12-year-old sons as an example of good storytelling. That’s my favorite memory from all of this.

After Hurricane Katrina, I wrote a column saying LSU and Arizona State should go ahead and play their football game, but not in Tiger Stadium. An LSU official told me it helped convince them to move the game to Tempe, Arizona.

I wrote a column saying The Associated Press should get out of the national championship business, that the inclusion of its Top 25 poll in the BCS formula had it covering the news and making it at the same time. My boss got a call from the AP sports editor in New York to set us both straight: AP had no plans to change anything. Not long after, AP told the BCS to take its poll out of the formula. I don’t recall being recognized for being ahead of it. My boss never said “good job,” and I am sure he didn’t get a second call from the AP sports editor.

At a time when Nick Saban struck fear in hallways and offices at LSU, I didn’t back down from him or let him bully me. I got dog-cussed a few times, but I earned his respect.

A coach got fired, and I knew within seconds of it happening. He thought I was in on it, fans who hated him thought I was in the tank for him, but I was plugged in because I never burned my sources and always kept my word. I am sure the coach thought I betrayed him, but short of being in the bag for coaches, there’s nothing reporters and columnists can do about that. I hope he found peace.

After I made a mistake in a story, I wrote a letter to a high school athlete and apologized. His dad wrote back to say I had “made a friend for life,” and it was a sweet gesture on their part. We stayed in touch over the years and had a fondness for each other that was special.

The mother of a Black track and field standout I covered sent me a touching letter, addressed on the envelope to W.E.B. DuBois. Whether that was an error or a signal of respect, I’ll never know, but I wish I had saved it.

An investigation I did for a story that changed the course of many lives and prompted death threats, all when I was too young to know to be afraid, speaks for itself.

I quit a job on principle. Big names called in support. One called it noble. I paid for it for a long time, but it led to the life I have now, and it taught me a lot.

Related, and not related, I learned that managers become managers and get to stay managers for all kinds of reasons, and that their choices are not mine to answer for.

Writing as cinema of the mind

Before Robert Olen Butler won a Pulitzer Prize for a collection of short stories, I took a film theory class from him centered on literature as cinema of the mind. It was a concept that had always invested my writing, but the class validated my approach.

Even when newspaper people were calling the game story passe, I wanted to write about games the way movie critics wrote reviews that I’d want to read even after seeing the movie. Especially after seeing the movie. I wanted people to relive it or live it for the first time if they didn’t see it, and for both groups to be able to enjoy the experience.

People stopped me in grocery stores to talk with me. Some told me that they didn’t follow sports but read my stories because of the human interest angles. It was further validation. I tried to write every story so that three different people I knew could read it and get something out of it. Thank you, Preston, Sue and rotating wild-card friend.

I wrote the first story to appear on the website of one newspaper and became the first blogger from the newsroom of another newspaper.

For one preseason football story, I led with a Winnie the Pooh quote. I may be the only person to write about college football and include quotes from Pooh and Sylvia Plath.

After one team’s record-setting performance on offense, I wrote five items focusing on that, but in an opinion piece, I told the hard truth that they’d still lost by four touchdowns. I got hate mail for that and later read that one fan wanted to trip me as I walked down the stadium steps before the end of another game.

In my naivete, I let a coach set me up so I’d lean into the punch, in this case an interview boycott and receiving a package with cheese and dog shit in it. I still remember that the receptionist called the newsroom and said, “Could someone come get the mail? It stinks.” Sometimes you learn the hard way. I learned, and in the ugly aftermath of that, so many people had my back, including the late Kent Heitholt.

After Saban mentioned “Seabiscuit,” I got my hands on the book and connected what he said to parts of the story. That was a long day. I wore myself out trying to get my hands on Lawrence Taylor’s autobiography the day before what turned out to be a three-minute interview with him. I never found the book, but I don’t regret trying.

Funny what you remember

If anything, I overprepared. I’d record TV shows and documentaries in case they’d someday prove helpful. After the game with the play that won the ESPY, I had a readymade followup story because of that video library.

All the extra time I spent at practices and at the batting cages pregame eventually paid off. I was lucky to be sent on the road, but even showing up two hours early for home games was a winning strategy for greater depth of coverage. It also taught me a lesson about exhaustion and unpaid labor, and that human beings can and do have real limits.

I got called a dick for not sharing info with other reporters, but the paper didn’t send me on the road to gather it for other papers. I didn’t arrive early and stay late and nurture sources to work for free for rival papers. Eventually they got it and offered to trade a nugget for a nugget.

Years after they said pretty harsh things about me to my face and behind my back, coaches told me they often privately admitted that I’d been right, that the truth hurt. I appreciated the courtesy of telling me. They didn’t have to. They also could have rubbed my nose in my mistakes, but they didn’t, and I appreciate that.

I made mistakes. Too many. Trying to show off my knowledge early in my career, I made a comparison that wounded an athlete and angered his father, who threatened me. They are on my list of people to track down and apologize to if I can. It’s not a long list, but it stings.

A quote from “Absence of Malice” followed me throughout my career: “I know how to print what’s true. And I know how not to hurt people. I don’t know how to do both at the same time, and neither do you.”

A belief that the truth will typeset you free

I never had any interest in sales jobs, although I came close to selling insurance before my newspaper career began. Can you imagine? I never believed in anything enough to want to sell it to someone. The only thing that came close was reporting truth to the best of my ability. It was the only path for me at the time.

It wasn’t long before I realized all you have is your integrity and your reputation. Lose those and it’s over. I preach that to anyone who will listen.

And there is always someone who can overrule you. Writing for a publication called The Advocate and not being allowed to advocate for certain things, having some columns spiked, taught me a few things about words and how they get used.

I made unpopular suggestions in newsrooms that eventually went that way. Whether I influenced them or not, I felt vindicated.

Someone I worked with more than a decade ago was a reference for me when I applied for another job. He said I had “otherworldly” attention to detail. Can I put that on a resume?

Seven-plus years of editing hard news taught me a lot. That knowledge filled what had been a big gap, a gap that remains for many in my world.

I did all this amid the onset of accelerated ADHD, anxiety, depression and gender dysphoria and vision problems from birth that worsened over time. Somehow, I did okay, even when I woke up thousands of miles away from everything I knew and felt like a total failure.

Now I edit for a New York Times-owned company. As I’ve said before, I think my dad and my first boss would get a kick out of seeing the NYT logo on my paycheck and on the administrata of my continuing career, and nytimes.com on our story links. They’d also like that I was one of three hired for a position that had 446 applicants.

Not bad, really, for someone who more or less stumbled into this as a career.

There is a photo you can find online of Saban holding a purple and gold sombrero he was about to present to me to mark one of my worst predictions ever. One thing I love about it is he got credit for giving it to me before a news conference, but my co-workers were the ones who bought it for me while I was ailing. Nice of the fellas to do that.

If all this sounds like I think I am done, let me say that I don’t. I have more to give. People should listen to me more than they do, and I’m not afraid to say that. I’m not intimidated by big names or big organizations.

One thing I love about where I work is we have so many women and people who are not middle-aged (or older) straight white men. I love that. Better late than never.

I’m not trying to climb. I’ve had enough of teachers’ pets and climbers who don’t care who they step on. I’m not trying to impress anyone, not looking to win more awards. Now while I still look out for myself, I hope to make things better for overworked teammates. I have less of a future than they do, so I can say the unpopular things to the bosses that they can’t.

“When in doubt,” amid conflicting guidance, “do what’s best for the reader,” a wise former colleague told me two years ago. That may be the best advice I’ve ever received.

I work for the readers, the writers, my teammates and the company, in that order. If I work for those first three, the company is guaranteed to benefit. I know what I’m doing. I’m not afraid to say that anymore. Sometimes a company doesn’t know how to get out of its own way and let its professionals do the jobs they know how to do.

From now on, I work like the main character in “Perfect Days.” If you don’t get the reference, watch the movie and tell me if you understand. All I can do is tend to my little corner of the world.

It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for anybody. I think it has a chance.

---

Photo of stack of newspapers by eric1513 via iStock.