The CharloTTe News • augusT 27, 2015 • 3
Voices There’s nothing more to write but thanks This issue marks my three-year anniversary at The Charlotte News. It also marks my final as a member of its staff. I’ve decided to step away to pursue other opportunities. With these two milestones, I can’t help but reflect on my time here, both as editor in chief and assistant editor. Shortly after starting in August 2012, several people asked me why I had moved from Wisconsin to Charlotte just to become the editor of this tiny, twice-monthly newspaper in a community I had never visited. I wanted to live in Vermont, I told them. I wanted to find a home and invest in a community after 10 years of wandering the country. Charlotte seemed like an attractive place to do this. Left largely unsaid was the deeply personal mission I had, and still have, toward community journalism. In The Charlotte News I saw an opportunity to make a difference at a newspaper that has long mattered in this community, a satisfaction I could no longer find in my job as a reporter at the newspaper I had just left. Its quality and mission became compromised by cost-cutting, most significantly in the form of the editor position. The editor I worked under was busy leading another newspaper, was disconnected, never even
visited the office. It was a newspaper that that go on behind the scenes week in put profit ahead of anything resembling and week out, were about putting readers quality, and that rankled my idealism. first, about giving Charlotters affected by In The News I found the stories we told all they the perfect venue in which needed to understand the to carry out the altruisissue and more. This wasn’t tic form of journalism I easy, though. Managing a longed to practice, one small nonprofit with more captured in this paper’s passion in its staff than mission statement, which money in the bank has its I touted whenever I could challenges, especially in these last three years: stoterms of logistics. There ries by the community for are some stories we just the community, supportcouldn’t cover because of a ed by the community. It’s lack of writers and resourca recipe that promoted a es. pure form of journalism, Working here also I thought, a kind that put required thick skin. I Brett Sigurdson the story, the information, know some readers disASSISTANT EDITOR above anything else. I’m agreed with some stories not ashamed to say we lost we told, thought I carried money on some issues because I felt we out an agenda as editor, was deliberately had stories Charlotters needed to read one-sided or unopen to other viewpoints. despite not having the advertising reve- If that was the case, all I can say is the nue or donations to support our expenses facts of the story and the interests of all (thankfully, we’d often make it up later). our readers dictated everything. That was When I felt a story warranted explora- my only agenda. tion and context, I made space for long, Of course, we did get things wrong in-depth stories (much to the chagrin of during my time here. We published corsome readers, I’m told). rections on occasion, a gesture to get the These decisions, like so many others record straight and show we’re doing our
very best—sometimes we don’t quite get it right. There are some stories I would have loved to make longer, some much shorter. But in the end, I think my run here lived up to my idealism. In closing, I’d like to thank members of the News team that helped make my time as editor in chief and assistant editor so wonderful: Vince Crockenberg, Tom O’ Brien, Nancy Wood, Shanley Hinge, Edd and Beth Merritt, Monica Marshall, Emma Slater, Barrie Dunsmore and Alex Bunten. I’d like to give a special thanks to Linda Williamson, who I worked closely with as editor in chief, and who was a vital member of our team for so long. I also want to thank community members who helped me along the way: Dean Bloch, Carrie Spear, Charles Russell, Jeannine McCrumb, Mark McDermott, Mike Russell, Stephen Brooks, Chris Davis and so many others I don’t have the space to name. Most of all, thanks to everyone who trusted me to tell their stories in these pages and to those of you who read them. I don’t know that we’ll meet again on these pages, but it’s been a privilege to have met all of you here the last three years.
OutTakes
when Slugger Anne’s and the Fillmore shortly after settling in with us. Although East were only handstands away from my I don’t remember exactly how that came apartment and this cool band, the Velvet about, Jamaica appeared in the form of Underground, played just around the cor- one of the most attractive young women I ner at Max’s Kansas City, and Lou Reed had ever laid eyes upon, and the rest of us was “stuck in a rock ‘n roll band” singing always made a point of being around when about Sweet Jane approximately, a song she arrived. No sooner had she become a soon to be covered by another favorite regular visitor than her boyfriend’s hair group with a great name who recorded begin to sprout, and the suit found its way out of a Canadian cathedral, the Cowboy to the far reaches of his closet. He did save Junkies. something appropriate to wear during the Now, who can claim that MJ isn’t workday, but at night he was straight out worth legalizing? After of the Islands. Brubeck landing in the city folbit the dust, replaced by lowing my Navy stint, reggae, Stones, the Fugs No sooner had she and one of the warm-up I had three friends who proved the point weekbands at the Fillmore become a regular ly and still managed to that had been formed by hold down very respon- visitor than her boy- yet another friend. sible positions, two in friend’s hair begin to The night I rememcity governance, bright ber best in terms of sprout, and the suit checking out changes in young men recruited specifically out of gradreality brought found its way to the virtual uate school to turn New about by marijuana was far reaches of his York around, the third one in which it led us recruited as a counsel- closet. … Brubeck bit down Abbey Road. We or in a drug treatment decided to test a rumor program. Me? I was a the dust, replaced by about the Beatles. Word “Mad Man”—a copyrampant in papers reggae, Stones, the ran writer for what they like the Village Voice Fugs called an “ethical drug that Paul McCartney agency,” meaning one was dead, and all you that handled prescriphad to do was view him tion drug advertising barefoot on the cover of (What’s so ethical about that?). the album, listen carefully as you rotated My drug counselor friend and I had the record backwards and hear between both just been released from the service. the verses going forward a ghostly voice The other two had met in graduate school. saying “Paul is dead. Paul is dead.” One of them and I were friends from Well, we nodded along with all this undergraduate days. He had majored in nonsense, rolled a joint every now and theater, and as I reflect upon our time in then and came to an absolute conclusion New York, the wacky weed we imbibed that, no, Paul was not dead but the rest of may, in fact, have opened a couple of the Beatles were. (Don’t ask me to explain stage vents in our brains. The fourth friend the logic behind our reasoning.) had been living at home and was itching One of my reasons for exploring this to leave suburbia. I recall his arrival at topic now is where these friends went our door vividly, a stack of Dave Brubeck from the mid-sixties of random drug records under one arm, his hair cut to a T usage to their business careers. All of us and trimmed well above his ears, and he bagged MJ after a short spell. None of us was wearing a tan suit with an Ivy League became junkies or moved on to stronger buckle on the back of the pants. Even I narcotics. None of us lost job leverage knew better than that. because of it. The Jamaican girlfriend However, he discovered the Caribbean disappeared and was later replaced by
a phenomenally bright and successful woman who served several capacities in our nation’s government. Her husband became involved in independent power production as a founder and CEO. The drug counselor stuck with medicine, following our time in the “Village” by becoming CEO and President of six successful medical technology companies dealing with emerging imaging software and Internet-based medical services. My undergraduate friend retired as VP of a major international financial institution and took up dog sitting with his fourlegged heroes of the midway. Leave it to say only that I hop scotched around Vermont, ending up in Charlotte. From these experiences, I would rather see marijuana become a legally controlled, saleable substance—put it in a growler if you’d like or a keg-bong, because it seems much safer to use than nicotine and, many smokers would argue, a hell of a lot more fun. If Trump had only had the brains to get himself drafted, he could have bought some high-test weed on the Saigon street corner or lost at Russian roulette like Christopher Walken in “The Deer Hunter. He might even have shared a cage with McCain in the “Hanoi Hilton.”
Commentary by Edd Merritt
Last Dance with Mary Jane . . . When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead And the white knight is talking backwards And the red queen’s off with her head Remember what the dormouse said Feed your head, feed your head. White Rabbit – Jefferson Airplane It has been difficult since my last column to select a topic for this one. I kept notes on three things that happened nationally since then, three things that linked to my own past and about which I had some rather strong feelings. One was Donald Trump’s remark in which he wants to detach John McCain from war hero status. Having been on a carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin at the same time as McCain, I could have told Trump to take his bone spur and plant it somewhere in the Mekong Delta. A second was a trip Bernie Sanders made to Rochester, Minnesota, when he was touring Iowa on a primary run. I still would love to get Bernie’s opinion of Rochester, my hometown, which, decades ago, was a node of conservatism in the middle of an otherwise liberal Democratic Farm Labor land. And the third was the debate over the value of legalizing marijuana in Vermont. As you may note by the order of topics (not to mention the Grace Slick lyrics at the top of the page) I think I’ll focus on the third one because it’s far out, man, if for no other reason than it brings back a time of life in New York’s East Village
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