As a Black child growing up in the 1950s in Washington, DC, my family subscribed to The Washington Afro-American, and my grandmother brought home the Washington Daily News, a Scripps Howard tabloid with the lighthouse icon in the masthead’s upper-left corner.
The only time I saw Black people in that paper were thumbnail mugshots of some alleged criminal. Didn’t see anyone who looked like me, my family or teachers in any local newspaper back then.
My first encounter with The Washington Post Times Herald came somewhere along the way when, as a teenager, I got a carrier job delivering it in Southeast Washington, in arguably the roughest part of town, the public housing development known as Barry Farms.
The Sunday paper was so humongous that my manager had to drop off bundles in different parts of my route.
I had to get an early start on Sundays, because I had to insert the heavy Sunday color section for the first half of my delivery, and then along Firth Sterling Avenue, I inserted the other 50 copies for my door-to-door deliveries.
I never got stiffed by my customers or robbed by the homeboys, many of whom I played basketball with at the playground.
My customers may have been low income, but I know they were well informed by my Post product.
Fast forward. In high school, I wrecked my knee in football practice and became the team manager. I was tapped to phone in our Friday game results to the Post sports desk, earning $10 as a stringer. Perhaps that is when I was first bitten by the Bug Of Journalism.
But if not then, the glorious infection came after my Air Force enlistment in the Vietnam War. During that tour, the Chicago Tribune gave us troops free subscriptions, and I read pages of news to better understand what was happening at home — because it was hard to find the truth from my commanders overseas. I also grabbed copies of the New York Daily News and Sports Illustrated when I wasn’t engaged in war.
After the military and returning to Washington, I saw a posting at D.C. Teachers College for a dictation clerk at The Post.
Applicants had to have good command of the English language and type at least 60 words per minute.
Well, I could always type like the wind, thanks to practicing on the second-hand Royal manual typewriter my Dad got me when I was about 12.
Now, my plan was to become a
history teacher. But…somewhere along the line I got bit by that old Bug Of Journalism, this time for sure.
As a dictation clerk, I took reporters’ live copy on six-part or four-part paper, depending on which desk it was destined for.
I took Metro, National and Foreign reporters, including dictation from the vaunted Black staff who collectively became the Metro Seven. I took dictation from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein before they became the celebrated Watergate scandal duo. I recall frequently asking Carl questions about his awkward copy (similar to a rewrite man, even though that wasn’t my lane.)
My gosh, in retrospect, I was imbibing in the caviar of my future craft.
But I left The Post after two years, knowing that they were never going to promote me to become a journalist.
It took some years for The Bug to work its infectious grace as I changed majors to print journalism and started stringing for The Afro before they finally put me on its tiny staff.
Later, I became its local reporter and sports editor, covering DC high school sports, Howard University and the Redskins before moving to Greensboro, North Carolina, for my first mainstream journalism job.
There, I was on the staff that became a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for its deep coverage of the infamous Klan-Nazi shootout in a Black public housing development in 1979. (Five protesters were killed that day. The white shooters were never convicted.)
After that journey, it was on to The Philadelphia Inquirer and the hardscrabble streets of Camden, New Jersey and Philly.
Wanting more challenges — and money — it was then on to The Washington Times, the conservative morning paper and an alternative to The Post’s liberalism. My beats, as one of four Black reporters, were everything the national desk didn’t see as top tier: Housing, Labor, Transportation and Minority Affairs. I was the only minority on National, but I carved out stories highlighting what even the Post didn’t see as viable.
Ronald Reagan had ascended to the presidency, and soon thereafter was sending aid to Chad to combat Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi incursion into the former French colony.
Onward to Chad, where I was met by Leon Dash, the Post’s intrepid Africa correspondent who took me under his wing. No matter that we worked for competitors. We were brothers in arms, in journalism and in our blackness.
We were surrounded by gunfire and Third World living conditions. We had to bribe officials to get our stories transmitted to Europe and beyond. Without Leon, one of the Metro Seven and a future Pulitzer winner, I sincerely doubt I could have returned a success.
Looking back, when I was at the Afro, I tried to do a story about heroin and D.C’s children encased in the rampant drug trade plaguing my home town.
I came close, but nobody, not the druggies, not the dealers, not the kids, not cops nor the prostitutes — they would trust and talk to me about the criminality, but never on the record.
Man, did I try. To no avail.
When I was in Philadelphia, I learned that someone at the Post had indeed written that pièce de résistance. Her name was Janet Cooke, and she was awarded a Pulitzer for “Jimmy’s Story,” about a Black boy with a heroin addiction.
“Damn, she did it,” I recall ruefully saying again and again. She did what I had failed to do.
I wanted to kick myself.
But it wasn't long thereafter when the world found out she had made up the whole thing. A work of pure fiction that had bamboozled all of journalism for a few disgraceful minutes.
But her stain hit me and my fellow Black journalists in Philly — because we knew our editors would distrust us more than ever, for no other reason than they thought we collectively couldn’t be trusted.
When her chicanery was discovered, a group of us congregated at a Center City bar to contemplate the inevitable blowback with editors looking at us and our copy sideways.
Thanks, Janet. Thanks Washington Post.
We survived. And there were a bevy of my former colleagues who wound up at The Post, where they did some solid journalism. Some of you are my Facebook friends whose daily journalistic superiority should have remained the gold standard in this Digital Age.
Even when the Post’s “Potomac”Sunday magazine delivered a hit job on young Blacks who were barred from downtown jewelry stores and the ensuing boycott, I marveled at its coverage.
Some of that period was included in Jill Nelson's wonderful novel, “Volunteer Slavery.” It was a treatise of mistreatment inside and outside The Post, and it should have been a lesson on respecting a largely loyal audience.
Not so, I regret to say. As the years passed, I have watched the newspaper’s demise, from journalistic icon into a laughingstock.
Early this century, I became editor in chief of The Afro, and tried to fill the void. I saw how the Post invariably missed stories in the city, how it wasn’t covering City Hall, the neighborhoods or its people. There was no sense of community in its metro pages. Even the sports section was empty as famed sports columnists Shirley Povich and Bob Addie were long departed.
So, today’s announcement of the gutting of The Post’s newsroom is most assuredly the anticipated death knell.
What was great is no more. What was a legacy of truth, accuracy and accountability is now a Dumpster fire.
This goes beyond my love for the craft of journalism. Today, the pulse of our democracy has lost its heart.
The Post’s motto has been “Democracy Dies In Darkness.”
Well, that light is now out.
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