Of course, what follows is pure fiction. I just felt the urge to explore fantasy and the sometimes disappointing world of make-believe.
It’s a short bit of make-believe about an old man who had spent more than a dozen years spending half of each week preparing for and teaching journalism writing classes at a relatively small, Christian university someplace above or below the Mason-Dixon Line and on either side of the Mississippi River.
The old man liked the job, because he thought he was helping
the young people learn how to better use the language skills when pursuing
careers in journalism, either print or broadcast, public relations or even
marketing.
“Bless you for what you are doing,” said famous TV
personality Robin Roberts after visiting for a few minutes with the old man. “Writing
is at the heart of it all. If you can’t write, you can’t do anything.”
Roberts was at the school to sell books but also to help
generate interest among the young people in the business of journalism. She goes lots of places. Even went to Ukraine to interview the first lady and host coverage of the Special Olympics.
"The business of journalism" or some such she had said.
It wasn’t until just this moment, when writing the sentence
above, that the old man realized again that journalism is indeed a business.
He knew it all the time. It was the business of journalism
and the fact he was writing too much about Black people and old people – “those
don’t fit in our demographic,” the high-powered exec told the then not-quite-so-old
man 15-plus years ago when he was working at a 300,000 circulation daily newspaper
whose numbers now are about 10 percent of that.
It was not long after the demographic “discussion,” that the
not-yet-so-old man was given a buyout, sworn to secrecy and against lawsuits,
reminded that he had no grounds for age discrimination complaints, told to sign the paper,
slit his finger with a knife for a blood oath and leave.
Taking the “voluntary buyout” was the only way the man was
going to be able to feed his family, and he was tired of the assholes he was
working for, so he left. The story goes that he really had no choice, anyway.
Feeling older every day, this mythical man was too old to get a job
anywhere in his village. Even guys who had worked for him, who had learned from him and used him as a primary reference for new jobs, didn't hire him when writing positions came open in their organizations.
So, the man spent about a year walking around Radnor Lake,
pondering the future and yelling at the alligator snappers. Then he found at least part-time employment and purpose as an educator.
First came a one-year contract as journalist-in-residence at
a wonderful school for wealthy white people, Asians and Blacks with athletic skill of
mid-major quality.
Good year. The man, while growing older, really loved working
with those young people at the student publication. Some remain his friends, have found success, marriage and children and they keep up with the old man.
After that contract ended, the old man continued his
freelance writing career, walking around Radnor and meeting his best friend for
lunch at a Greek greasy spoon. Chicken souvlaki or spanakopita with water and four refills of coffee.
The freelance business wasn’t bad at all. He was picked up
as the stringer for a major wire service, where he wrote about mass murders and missing bull semen and country music deaths. He also continued writing for local outlets. It was some of his career's best stuff. Much of what he wrote was about aspiring and
forgotten musicians and 104-year-old Black fellows and others ignored by so-called
major publications. A pizza and fish place that doesn't sell pizza, for example. The Palestinian used tire salesman. A beautiful heart doctor who also was a talented singer-songwriter, mother and wife.
Sometime, around 13 or more years ago, a small, Christian university
– where the old man had friends in the journalism department – called on him to
help them launch a student news product. A web site. The old man didn’t know
much about web sites, but he had been honored as one of the country’s top word
men by various journalistic organizations and associations. One year, in fact, he was proclaimed the nation's top features writer.
And that university hired him to work, a few hours each week
– even though, obsessive by nature, he treated it like a full-time job – helping students improve their
writing skills while also teaching them about such things as news value, ethics
and how to avoid academic rhetoric in their stories.
It was a great job for the old man. He loved the students
and loved talking with them about their stories, their story ideas, whatever
troubles they had, academic, professional, medical or personal.
The students constantly gave the old man high approval ratings, and he had been told he was important to the university’s continued growth in the journalism-education business. He was told he was there as long as he wanted to be there, which furthered his loyalty and passion for the job.
The old man felt good. Felt like he was part of the journalism department family. Heck, he’d gone so far as to recommend the small Christian university to young people looking for a good higher education option.
Things looked good for the old man.
Oh, the money was basically crap, but it was crap he could
rely on as he toiled to keep his freelance work above water. But a major pandemic had ended most of the
freelance work.
Instead, he began writing a book in the rest of his time. There will be a good end
on that story, when that book is published.
So, the old man continued to relish his time with the young
people at the small, Christian university.
Oh, he struggled to remain upbeat with the occasional unmotivated reporter or editor, but he liked them all and never gave up, worked hard to try to show them the way. They were far from unique in their post-millennial attitudes and excuses.
The old man was planning on how he was going to shake things
up – he each year did this, trying to improve his writing classes as well as
his work with the student publication.
Summer approached, and the old man was already planning out
summer coverage, scoping out campus events and thinking ahead to next year.
That’s when the old man was told – not by the one who made
the decision, but by a substitute – that the Christian university was going to
take its journalism program in a different direction. The old man wasn’t needed any more. It was clear, by the color and length of his hair that he didn't fit the demographic.
Sure, he counted on the income through the summer, and summer
had arrived. But he wasn’t needed, effective immediately. It was a hard thing for the old man. Harder
still when he found out that even though he had just been told as final exams
for the students were beginning, others – so-called “friends” in high places who had promised to keep him up to date on his future – had been
working with a new boss (who never talked with the old man or visited his
classes) for several months. They apparently had sworn each other to secrecy, even to the point of intimidation. If a friend is being hurt, secret pacts should be damned: You let your friend know. Or else you are not a friend.
The plans were to get the old man out of there. As noted above, people he regarded as his family, as he's a sucker for loyalty, decided to get rid of him, but kept their mouths shut for a full semester. When he asked even the highest-ranked among his friends and colleagues if they'd heard anything about his classes for the next year, about his future, he was told the old "I don't know of anything" regarding any changes.
When bosses in a journalism school lie, bold-faced, to a long-time colleague and so-called friend, the old man wondered just how ethical and truthful the journalism department was .... When the old man went to school, many, many decades before, the journalism department where he studied put the highest priority on truth-telling. Lying was not a thing practiced by his professors, many of whom were former big-time anchors and also covered World War II with Edward R. Murrow. Murrow, it is said, did not approve of lying in life or in the news. Not even to get the biggest story.
The old man felt gut-jabbed by the action, but even more so by the subterfuge that kept him from making alternate employment plans. Sure, writing was important. But, apparently not as
important to the school as it was to the old man, who loved his classes and told
others his classes had been the best yet this year.
“I really love these kids,” he said, when called into an
office to be told his time was up. The substitute – remember, in this fictional
story, the person who made the decision did not visit with the old man about
the decision – shrugged and said “It’s time.”
The old man was told he should come to the end-of-the-year luncheon, when seniors would be saluted. He figured he should, just for the kids. Remember, in his mind, it all was about these kids. He was expecting to be thanked for his work. He neither expected nor appreciated a half-ass collage of so-called “memories” – mostly including things that had no bearing on what he did for the school -- in a Walmart shadow box. Nobody even knew what he’d been doing for a dozen-plus years, apparently. He was gracious and said some words about how much he loved his time there, especially loved the students. He did not bring up the lies, as this was a program for the students, and they all loved him.
The frame soon will hold a Rolling Stones poster, probably the one he got from Mick and the Boys during the Voodoo Lounge tour of years before.
The old man went home and took about the task of writing
letters to officials at the university, remember it is a Christian university
in this fairy tale, about how he was wronged. He was careful and non-accusatory. The letters did not address lying and subterfuge. Only hurt.
Despite hours of fashioning well-written tales, he got terse, one-sentence replies from the highest and mightiest at the Christian school. "You have been terminated," one official wrote.
"I'll be back," the old man countered, thinking of the "Terminator" jargon. But he knew he was done.
Basically, the officials said he was as lucky as Jesus on
Good Friday. Christ, you know it ain't easy, the old man said, spittle on his chin, water in his eyes. You know how hard it can be. I guess that's the old man's cross to bear as he works through his moments of doubt and pain.
The people he regarded as friends at the small Christian
university didn’t even bother to answer his letters, or attempt to help him
chase off the Black Dogs of Depression. Good thing he has a
family and a cat. And real friends.
Former students, once they heard about what had happened,
burned their diplomas, forever forsaking the small Christian university for its
treatment of the old man. Remember, this is a work of fiction, of course. No diplomas would be burned if this was a true story.
But the figurative diploma-torching didn’t matter in this little bit of fiction.
“God bless you for what you are doing,” Robin Roberts had
said about the old man and his work, his dedication to the students at the Christian
university.
But, in the end, God had nothing to do with it. The old man
was told to leave. You don't look like you're from this part of the country. They see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em, he'd been told long ago.
The best his friends at the Christian university could do was call him up the next day after the public flogging to ask if he could work with them this summer on what were the things that worked best in his classes, so they could be incorporated into their planning for the person selected five months before to take over the old man's classes. “So, I lost my job yesterday, after more than a dozen years, and you want me to train my replacements?” said the old man. Here comes that spittle again.
He would have told them to go to hell, but they already were
working at a small, Christian university.
I am glad this is not a true story, because surely they
couldn’t be that mean-spirited at such a place.
