Wednesday, January 28, 2004
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Wednesday, January 28, 2004 |
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Mike says goodbye By MICHAEL BOYLAN Five and a half years ago, a skinny punk entered the offices of The Citizen and begged for a job. He had just moved back home after spending an extra year in Athens after graduating from college. He had a journalism degree - in telecommunications - and had recently been working in the Housewares department of Rich’s. He needed something better, fast, and The Citizen was most certainly better than selling cookware to people. The boss gave the kid a chance, a one-time audition. “Cover this weekend’s games and we’ll see how it goes,” he said. It must have gone O.K., because the kid never left. It was rocky at the beginning, mainly because he had never written sports and the only thing he had to go on was the sports section of big city papers covering professional teams. There was a pow-wow with the boss a few weeks later where an important lesson was drummed in quite well. “This is a community paper and the athletes are high school athletes. They don’t get covered like the Falcons get covered. You can’t be negative.” From then on, the sailing was much smoother. Colleagues began to take the kid under their wings and teach him what they knew. He was learning something new every day and he began to hit his stride. Soon afterward, the kid got to take over the Weekend beat and he really blossomed. While he was a sports fan, his true love had always been entertainment. Now he could cover theater, movies, concerts, festivals, books and local celebrities. It was more work and more responsibility, but he was ready to prove himself. It even gave him a chance to write a weekly column and though they were hit and miss for the first year or two, eventually he found his voice, albeit an eccentric one. When he wasn’t writing about Country Monkeys, he was filling people in on his life and what it was like to be a Yankee, growing up and coming into his own, in Fayette County. The Citizen was his ticket to all sorts of amazing events and adventures. He met famous people like Herschel Walker, Speech and Wayne Newton and not so famous people like a 70-year-old rodeo clown. He got to attend concerts and festivals, free of charge, and also got to learn how to perform on a trapeze and fire a gun. It seemed like all he had to do was think of things he wanted to write about and he could do almost anything or meet almost anyone he wanted. Sometimes, he would look into the future and try to see himself 10, 20 and 30 years down the line. Would he still be at the paper, connecting and communicating with the community? It was a murky vision and he began to wonder, is that really what I want? This query then led to a more important and much more murky question: what do I want? He pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind, got rid of the sports beat after four years, and started covering some news beats. It was a challenge at first, because the King of Fluff was now expected to deliver the news to the community. Once he realized that it just boiled down to covering the meeting so that the reader felt like he or she was there, there was no problem. Except that the meetings were often boring and some of the groups meeting had no clear direction, which made meetings that were already boring and long, seem even longer and more boring. As frustrated as he was, the young reporter, no longer a kid but still too fresh-faced to be considered a grizzled veteran, plugged away. Until he saw an ad for another position in town. The new job would be something he knew he could do. There was a chance for advancement and more doors opening in his future. It would be like it was when he got the job at The Citizen, where he learned something new every day and built a reputation from the ground up. It would mean leaving the comfort of his current job and all of the friendships he had established in the office and in the community, but it was an exciting opportunity. He tossed and turned in bed as he mulled it over, trying to sleep. He listed pros and cons over and over in his head, like counting sheep. As he finally drifted off, he decided to go for it. He put in his two weeks, trying to tie up all loose ends and get his seat ready for his successor and he wrote his final column. He wanted the column to be a thank you to everyone who helped him become a good reporter and a solid member of the community. He had grown significantly, this former skinny punk, and now it was time to leave and grow again. Thanks everybody. I’m out of here.
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