New writer has reported from Mideast to Midwest
Staff writer
Let’s get this out of the way first: If you see a hybrid Prius with Massachusetts plates around town, it’s me.
Don’t jump to stereotypes. Yes, Boston is my home now, but I grew up partly in the South and partly in Pennsylvania, where my dad ran vocational schools and helped put on the annual Pennsylvania Farm Show.
That was a long time ago, but I’ve been around: reported from all 50 states and six of seven continents. (I missed the Antarctic. My son, who is in the State Department, says he will beat me there. My daughter, also a journalist, laughs at us both.)
I’ve even been through Marion, a few years ago, for a story on people walking across the country.
In decades as a reporter, I spent many years in the Middle East, covering a bunch of wars and conflicts for the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun, detoured to Japan and Korea for four years, and ended up covering Canada and the Arctic between stints in Baghdad.
But in the course of getting there, I covered local issues ranging from city councils to prisons to a board that decides the fate of single city trees. There were huge fights over trees.
For the last 17 years, I squeezed my reporting around a job teaching journalism at a college in Boston.
I preached with annoying repetition to my students that they should stop trying to work in the big cities and get out into the country to talk to people, find out what’s on their minds, and learn the skills of journalism that reflect the lives of the readers.
So when Clara Germani, whom you have met in this space and maybe seen out on stories, called me up and said I should come to Marion for a stint to get back to my reporting roots and get out of Boston, I could not say no.
I agreed to help for a bit at the Record for two reasons. One, Clara is an incredibly wise journalist who was my editor at three different news outlets, so when she says go, I go. Second, I truly believe what I told my students: Local news is the thread that keeps the fabric of communities together, and the loss of that journalism deals a serious blow to communities.
I’ll probably ask questions that seem obvious to you. Be patient with me and maybe test your own local knowledge by explaining it to me. I’ll listen. I’ll even buy the coffee.