Back in September, I asked him what he would do in the event that they couldn’t raise the money.
“That’s something I’ve struggled with,” he said. “Knowing when I’ve done as much as I possibly could. At some point, I’ve got to have a real paycheck coming in. I can’t live off savings and family and friends anymore.
“So I think that if this doesn’t work, I’ll have to apply around. The shitty thing for me is that I’ve put my thumb in the Birmingham News’s eye so many times that it was eventually going to come back on me. So I’m not going to be able to go there and get a job.
“Even though I’m doing sort of the new media thing, I’m still a journalist, I’m still a newspaperman. Any other line of work would be an insufferable hell. And so I would go wherever the job is, but it’s probably not going to be Birmingham. And so all the sources I’ve spent the last ten years nurturing, all the knowledge about the community I’ve learned, I’m going to have to start all over again, and that’s really scary. But I sort of made my peace with it. If that’s what happens.
“When you go into one of these things, I don’t want to say that you have to be prepared to fail, but there have been a few times where you sort of have to look over the edge of the cliff. You do have to be prepared for that emotionally, because it might not work. But hopefully it won’t come to that.”
It didn’t come to that. He started work last Monday.
As a former PH staffer, it's nice to see a new alternative to the News. Also, Weld is a clever name for this, as the city is well known for iron processing. Good luck, guys.
#1 Posted by Angela Tant, CJR on Mon 9 May 2011 at 12:05 PM
I started as a Birmingham journalist as well, long ago--- the "penny-a-word" pay scale pushed me into a thirty-year stint as a photographer, then a complete about-face into owning a folk music venue. In my second attempt at that, I've
formed a sidebar non-profit organization to raise funds to support the for-profit operation--- asking for money that won't yield a dollar return is another sort of dreamchase altogether. What's exhausting is constantly living in the thought that this month might be my last--- then some little updraft will puff through, and that's when being stubborn reasserts itself as the most important part of the plan.
Best to you, Welders-- Birmingham media has stagnated for decades, and it has no hope if not for persistent, precocious upstarts.
#2 Posted by keith harrelson, CJR on Fri 13 May 2011 at 10:37 AM