Because

/ jerirowe

For years, I’ve stood before college journalists and told them about the chase.

It’s the chase for information, the need to tell readers who we are and how we live so we can function in our messy place we call home.

I give them pointers on how to interview, how to turn a clock into your friend and how to make their copy dance. Then, I have them stand up, raise their arms and wiggle.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Welcome to Journalism Church, I tell them. They laugh. I want them to laugh. But really, I want to get their attention.

I want them to loosen up their writing. That’s why they wiggle. Young writers, they often write stiff, and they need to work on ways to help their writing flow.

Once they sit down, we talk about techniques that can help them be more insightful in their reporting and more succinct in how they write. Above all, I want to help them understand the crucial role they play in our democracy.

We talk about all that. Then, we have a little fun.

I ask them to write about their worst date, their biggest fear or the most powerful love in their life. I set a deadline of 10 minutes or so, and after a session of free writing, I have them read what they wrote out loud.

Always, I tell them, read your stories out loud because all stories need to have rhythm, like “All Blues” from Miles Davis. They often look at me a bit mute and clueless. That is, if they don’t know anything about Miles Davis, let alone “Kind of Blue.” Still, I hope the exercise helps show them how to write with heart and use their words to create something beautiful, moving and true.

That’s my Journalism Church.

I thought about those lessons after Wednesday. We all know what happened Wednesday.

Thousands of insurrectionists goaded by our narcissistic Grifter In Chief stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop the electoral count that would make official a guy named Joe our next president.

That happened. But not before this.

The collection of photos from the Washington Post, Reuters and Getty Images below will give you an idea of the bedlam that became our Wednesday.

Scroll through. See for yourself.

Lord, have mercy.

What I saw and read has kept me up at night.  But what really has cranked me were the stories I read and the videos I saw of journalists getting attacked for doing their job.

“You’re a communist!” a member of the mob yelled at a WaPo videographer.

“Fuck you! I hope you die soon!” yelled another member of the mob at a writer from Playboy.

“There are no journalists anymore,” a hater wrote on Twitter. “You are all propagandists!”

“You Antifa? You Antifa?” yelled another mob member at an AP photographer after he was pushed and tumbled over a wall.

Members of the mob destroyed thousands of dollars of TV equipment, and some insurrectionist turned a cable from a TV crew into a noose and hung it from a tree.

Beautiful.

Then, there were the three words someone scrawled on a door during Wednesday’s melee.

Murder the media.

Those words are chilling to me –– almost as chilling as seeing as member of the insurrectionist mob carrying a Confederate flag through the halls of the U.S. Capitol.

A Confederate flag, a symbol of white supremacy, has never been brought inside the U.S. Capitol. Moreover, our Capitol hasn’t been invaded like that since 1814 when the British burned down our U.S. Capitol and the White House during the War of 1812.

Let that sink in a minute. Then, do the math. That’s 207 years.

I am numb. Just numb.

I spent nearly 30 years as a daily journalist, with nearly a quarter century at the News & Record, a newsroom in the city I call GSO. That newsroom, a pirate ship of a professional place, was full of friends. They became my second family.

During that time, I’ve had my share of run-ins with readers. I got threatened, intimidated, blistered online and challenged to a fight in a parking lot by a drunk. I also got called all kind of names and received nasty voicemails at all hours of the day. Loved listening to those. And once, I had a father escort me from his front porch and off his property as he pointed a shotgun at my chest.

He was angry over what I wrote.

Nice.

In the fall of 2014, I left my daily story chase and accepted a job as the senior writer at High Point University. My professional life now moves much slower and saner. The worst thing I get these days is hearing someone say “Rowe, you sold out!” for leaving newspaper journalism and flacking for a university.

I do miss newspapers, and I do miss the chase. But quite honestly, I don’t think I would’ve handled all too well the hatred for the press I see today. I would’ve been one pissed-off reporter all the time, hearing readers holler “Fake News!’’ or “You’re a Communist!” or “Fuck you. I hope you die soon!”

Or worse.

Of course, we know why that has happened. The steak salesman in the White House, our narcissistic grifter, lit the match and became an arsonist that fanned those hatred flames.

For the past four years, he has channeled his inner Stalin. He began calling journalists the “enemy of the people” because, like that father armed with a shotgun, the man with the notorious comb-over didn’t like what he saw on TV or read in print.

Since then, journalists have become targets. I remember the story about a reporter being body-slammed by a politician a few years back and hearing our steak salesman applaud the move.

That freaked me out. But nothing made me more wide-eyed than what I saw and read Wednesday.

And nothing is more shocking than what happened to AP photographer John Minchillo.

It’s below.

You’ll find more stories about Wednesday’s press hatred here. And here. And here.

Oh, I’m angry. But my anger ebbs when I realize these threats didn’t stop anyone with a steno pad, a camera or a Go Pro from doing their job in that hellscape. They weaved into that crowd of sedition-crazed insurrectionists Wednesday and worked to chronicle in the most accurate ways possible the craziness of what they saw and heard.

Click here to see what Louie Palu, a photographer with National Geographic, found Wednesday through his work. The morning after the Capitol siege, Louie sent a colleague a text. He had barely slept the night before, but that time away from Wednesday’s frenetic rush, gave him time to reflect on what he caught on his Go Pro.

“I realize I personally witnessed one of the saddest days I had ever felt in America.”

— Louie Palu, photographer

Frightening.

I’ve jumped headfirst into that sort of newsy craziness before, and like Jacqui Banaszynski, the journalist with the Pulitzer, I do miss the scrum.

Jacqui B is now a faculty member at the Poynter Institute, the school for journalists in Florida, as well the editor of Nieman Storyboard, the website for stellar stories at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation. In her Nieman Storyboard newsletter Friday, Jacqui B wrote:

Jacqui B.

I know I can’t do that kind of chaotic street reporting anymore: It takes physical agility and stability that I can no longer conjure. It takes astonishing endurance — something that can be fueled by adrenalin but must be paced: It is a marathon run at sprint speed, and I’m out of shape. It also takes a certain kind of calm — the ability to set aside opinion and emotion except as informants of sharper reporting; at this point, I haven’t been able to cool my white-hot rage or soothe my shattered heart.

So, what makes me yearn to be out there? Grief for my Energizer Bunny youth, no doubt. And nostalgia for the sense of fellowship that comes with being part of a newsroom determined to rise above any and all challenges.

But I realize the real attraction is the clarity and purpose that kind of work brings. There is no time to rail with futility or pace with helplessness. The tumble-dryer of noise in your brain fades to a whisper as all your attention lasers on getting the story and getting the story right. The never-ending rise of questions aren’t troubling nags, but valuable assets: The job demands that you quit stewing and go in search of answers. Anxiety funnels to a point of clear action.

Most of all, you feel useful.

Dozens, maybe hundreds, of journalists stood in that crucible of purpose Wednesday, on the streets or in whatever space serves as their newsroom these days. And, in what has to be seen as a gift to the world, some were in the Capitol itself. A report from one of them caught my attention Thursday morning, and spoke to all that I was feeling.

The report Jacqui B speaks of came from Sarah Wire, a congressional reporter for the L.A. Times. Like many journalists, Sarah found herself at the U.S. Capitol to cover history Wednesday. And like the other journalists that day, she stayed. She hunkered down and wrote about what she saw and heard.

Sarah ended her piece this way:

Sarah Wire

Kimbriell Kelly, my boss, sent me a message asking for a first-person video of what it was like in the room. I said I couldn’t. Lawmakers were “panicked that I might inadvertently give away their location,” I told her. “I’ll do in writing if that’s ok?”

That detail “just hit me in the gut,” she wrote back.

An hour passed. My husband sent me a photo of my baby smiling. It teared me up.

Just after 5:30 p.m., the sergeant at arms, the House’s top security official, announced the Capitol had been secured but urged members to stay in place. He wanted a bit more time, he said, to guarantee their safety. Ninety minutes later, Pelosi came by to address the remaining members (some had slipped back to their offices). The speaker criticized the “mobs desecrating the halls of the Capitol of the United States” and declared that the House and Senate would return immediately to finish their work. The speaker said she didn’t want the rioters to think they had won.

Forty-five minutes later, more than four hours after being locked inside, I was permitted to leave. There was only one place for me to go.

I headed upstairs back in the gallery — to chronicle history.

To chronicle history. That’s it.

At UNC-Chapel Hill, where my wife Kath got her journalism degree – “That’s the best journalism school in the country,” she always teases me –– you’ll see the First Amendment carved into the wall. Every time I pass it, I get that same spine shimmer I once felt when I hung close to the huge printing press at the N&R.

It would often be after deadline, and the hour was always late. I’d walk into our pressroom and just stand. I’d feel from my head to my toes the thrum-thrum-thrum of our press. It was like standing too close to a big speaker during a raucous show at The Blind Tiger. I’d smell the ink, feel the heat of the room, hear the churn of the press, and I’d watch the click-click-click of a conveyor belt roll out copy after copy of the next day’s news.

That was my happy place.

Surrounded by a machine as big as an ocean liner –– at least to me –– I knew all of us in that building in downtown GSO were participating in something so much bigger than ourselves.

I felt we were doing our part in greasing the wheels of democracy. We were giving readers information they could trust and context they could use to help navigate their day and understand much better the world they live in.

That probably makes me sound like a pie-eyed optimist. But that’s what I felt. I’d stand beside that huge press and the thrum-thrum-thrum boxing my ears would be the sound of our city, our GSO, in motion. We in that ugly box of a building were locking down the city’s first draft of history in pictures and ink.

I thought about that this week when I saw Thursday’s front pages.

Enemy, my ass.

What I read this week did make me feel powerless from where I stand now. But I also felt proud.

I felt proud because of the work journalists did Wednesday and what they’ll continue to do to keep our government honest. They’ll work to shine a light into corners of our country to uncover what many want to remain hidden forever. Or they’ll simply tell stories that we all need to hear and read.

Stories do connect us. They remind us of our humanity and show us what we all have in common. When that connection happens, it’s hard to hate what you’ve come to know.

It all reminds of what I saw on a T-shirt this week. But it’s more than just a catchy slogan. It’s what we all need to remember.

Journalism Matters. Today More Than Ever.

That’s it, too.

Amen.

7 thoughts on “Because”

  3. Pingback: Two Ribbons | JRowe's Walk

Leave a comment