Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Goodbye, City Weekly
There are a few reasons why I even have a career in journalism.NABJ is one of them.
The organization made me believe I could do this. They gave me confidence in my voice.
Michael Holley, a former Boston-area sports columnist, now of WEEI, is another. He was the first newspaperman I ever actually talked to. He met me for lunch randomly one day during my senior year. I love him for that.
And yet, one of the great thrills of my journalism career was being published over and over and over in my hometown newspaper, the Boston Globe. (I hope to God the New York Times Co. does not close its doors.)
But a portion of that newspaper's heart was cut out of the equation recently. City Weekly was the Globe's offbeat news feature section, that great slice of the local paper that tried weekly to make our relatively large city a little smaller, a little warmer, a little more, well, local. Now it's gone.
This sucks. Not afraid to say it. This really sucks.
This is not about clips, though writing for the section certainly gave me plenty of those. It means that Boston might never read about a group of young hip-hop artists coming together in Mattapan to produce a mixtape. The group of Roxbury residents trying to change city ordinances on construction noise? You'd never hear about it. And Bostonians might never read about what its like for a family to cope with the loss of a young person to a violent death.
These were just my contributions, the city as I saw it.
And there are no warm cliches. No it will be all right. No farewell. It just sucks.
Labels: layoffs
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I think this us going to manifest itself in many more places where the "local" flavor will dosappear, especially in places it's really needed.