More than a few friends have asked what I planned to write my last essay as the editor of Nieman Storyboard (published Sept. 27, 2024). One headed his email: “Here’s to a memorable closing newsletter.” (This from a guy who knows how hard it is to write things that are truly memorable.) Others suggested I needed to write something profound, perhaps a grand statement about the imperative of narrative nonfiction in these TikTok times or a reminder of the need for empathy in journalism or a mini-memoir that reinforces my fierce belief in a free, independent and responsible press. Many asked the inevitable “what’s next” question, then urged their own dreams on me: Travel the world, write a book, study the birds.
I’m grateful for all the notes. I hate to let people down. But, with apologies, I’ll paraphrase a line from Annette Benning in “The American President:” You’ll have to learn to live with disappointment.
No grand wrap-ups here. I don’t consider this my career -30- note — something I wrote about a month ago, when I announced that the Nieman Foundation would soon be posting an opening for the next editor of Storyboard. (Great gig. Give it a close look.)
If there’s a difference from leaving the eight other full-time jobs I’ve held in journalism, it’s that I am stepping away from institutional affiliation for the first time in 50 years; 57 if you count the village newspaperI wrote for in high school, my college newspaper and various internships. Demands will continue, of course; bills don’t slow down just because I might. But professional expectations going forward will be no one’s but my own — a bit discomfiting after all those decades filing stories on deadline and finding time for the students lined up outside my office and meeting the responsibilities that came with the paychecks. (When I first became an editor, I told myself I would be the kind of editor I had always wanted. I got over that delusion quickly, and tried to be the kind of editor each of the people around me needed. Maybe now I’ll have to learn what kind of boss and motivator I can be for myself.)
I do want to study the birds a bit. (The first entry on my lifetime list through the Merlin app is a pygmy nuthatch, in case you wondered.) But I’m not retiring my smudgy keyboard. My restless fingers wouldn’t know what to do without it. When I can’t sleep at night or am pondering a problem, I air-type by reflex. If I ever flunk the Medicare three-noun dementia test, I bet I’ll still be able to rattle off the order of the QWERTY keyboard.
More writing, teaching, time and thought
But as I type into whatever is my “what’s next,” I want to do it less frantically and more thoughtfully. I want to grab a fountain pen as often as I fire up my laptop, letting longhand slow me down and access other layers of my mental wanderings. I plan to plow through the boxes of old clips and files in my garage to see if they hold anything of value. (The first box, which I tackled earlier this month, was so musty and dusty that it set off the smoke alarm when I opened it.) I want to actually write and send the many letters I pen in my mind as I’m cleaning or walking or staring out an airplane window. And I want to work more one-on-one and in small groups, giving them undistracted attention.
That latter is somewhat selfish on my part. I always feel I get more than I give when I am trusted to teach, whether as an editor or in a workshop/classroom. No doubt that’s because the relationships are more intimate than those possible when sending ideas out to an anonymous mass audience. My most recent workshop, with five wise and wide-open women who gathered around my dining room table, reinforced that. We parted not just as appreciative colleagues, but as knowing friends. So many of the people I hold dear have come to me through one of dual doors of journalism and teaching.
My datebook shows six workshops scheduled between now and next June. Each will arrive sooner than I expected and sooner than I feel fully ready for. That’s OK. Deadlines are so embedded in how I work that I have come to see them as a gift, and my ability to meet them a strength.
Now it’s the spaces in between that really intrigue and challenge me. I hope to enter them with the attitude of a beloved writer friend who also is at a transition point in a a high-pressure life and career: “I am trying harder to give myself more time, more care and more grace.”
I know the work it took to reach this point I also know what a privilege it is to have arrived. Going forward, I will try to honor the life advice of kick-ass, bad-ass and beloved editor Deborah Howell. Every time I left the newsroom on a big assignment, her words trailed after me: “Don’t f**k it up. And remember to have fun.”
PS: A last bit of lagniappe
First, reporter-turned-novelist Bryan Gruley recently posted a tribute to his marriage on Facebook: “Forty four years. Ten homes. Five cities. More than a dozen jobs. Three kids. Five grandkids. And more to come.” Terrific bit of journalism: A clear focus, with everything that needed to be said, and nothing that didn’t. Try it as a writing exercise about some part of your life.
Next, the same writer friend who wished me a memorable last newsletter added an appreciation for Storyboard, calling it a “lone voice for narrative and storytelling in the wider world of journalism.” Agreed, and I couldn’t be more grateful for its place in my life as follower, contributor and editor. I look forward to returning to those first two roles.
Finally from the unparalleled Dame Maggie Smith, who died Sept. 27, I leave you with a favorite moment from the 2021 Netflix movie “A Boy Called Christmas.” You can read more about it in a Storyboard post I wrote at the time, but here’s moment that has been a North Star in the constellations of my life: “Because the world is made of stories, not atoms.”
