Monday, May 11, 2009

In defense of newspapers

Thirty years ago last month, I began my association with what was then the Daily Evening Item. Now it's simply The Daily Item.

I bring this up not to seek accolades, but to comment that much has changed in our industry since that Tuesday morning in 1979 when I walked into the second-floor newsroom to begin what has been an enriching and rewarding career at the paper.

In 1979, newspapers still held the upper hand in the gathering and dissemination of information, although television was – and in some cases still is – an unwelcome intrusion into the world of serious journalism. Even then, print people despised the “mike jockeys” as “rip and readers” whose only attributes were their voices and their looks.

Today, of course, the print medium – judging from the depressing advertising and circulation figures we’re seeing daily – would appear to be pretty far down the list of preferred news sources. There was no internet in 1979, and therefore no explosion of free, easy, and often glaringly biased information tailored to fit the political slant of just about everyone who has an opinion.

We are what we’ve always been … a slow-moving industry (printing once a day in an age of lightning-fast dissemination of news tends to paint you with that brush) that, while flawed by natural human imperfections, still holds to a uniform set of standards and is still bound by a uniform set of laws. And while there are some serious and responsible blogs on the web, it’s also true that, for the most part, internet postings are impervious to the types of checks and balances that at least attempt to keep the print medium fair.

Newspapers aren’t dead, but their print editions are in trouble. It’s likely that if you added the number of editions sold and the number of hits papers get on their websites (and this is especially true for papers that update their sites frequently) one could conclude the industry is as healthy as it ever was.

But that doesn’t explain why papers such as the Chicago Tribune and the Boston Globe are reeling, and why other papers have shut down their print editions entirely. I will leave it to those with far more expertise in the business side than me to explain that!

We stand to lose something very valuable if newspapers are to fall victim to the Information Age. And I’m not talking about the eradication of democracy as we know it (I don’t like that argument very much, frankly).

Of course, it’s true that a good newspaper holds the powerful accountable (often to the chagrin of the powerful and their allies). But whatever flaws there may be in the internet’s ability to be restrained and responsible, holding the powerful accountable is well within its capabilities.

But newspapers have other purposes. Even with a laptop and wireless, eating breakfast with your computer can be cumbersome. Eating it with the paper spread out in front of you is saner, neater and far less expensive if you spill your cereal or get crumbs all over the place.

Joking aside, I got into this business, and gravitated toward newspapers, because I always saw them as communities unto themselves. They were one-stop shopping vehicles where you could find out what was going on in your communities, find out who died, who got arrested, which local teams won, what was playing at the local theaters, which store was selling hamburg at five percent off, and what was on TV tonight. At the same time, you could clip coupons, do the crossword, play bridge and even chess, do word puzzles, check box scores and standings.

And best of all, you could do all of the above in some degree of comfort and with absolutely no pressure to be technologically current.

I’m sure someone from every generation has said this, but it’s doubly true now: this is a terrifyingly fast, impersonal age. Advances in technology happen faster than most of us can fathom, and there’s more and more pressure to either keep up with them or fall hopelessly behind.

The pace may be slower with newspapers, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Even with things changing a mile a minute, it’s necessary sometimes to digest, and to process. It’s also necessary to preserve and remember.

Newspapers give you something you’ll never find on the internet: A daily snapshot of life. Years from now, you can go back to an edition from The Item, and get a pretty accurate picture of what life was like on that day. It would really, really be a shame to sacrifice that for the convenience of staring at life through a monitor.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Reflections on Brother Linus, CFX, upon the dedication of the new athletic complex in his name at St. John's Preparatory School ... my alma mater.

Brother Linus was my religion teacher in my freshman year at St. John’s Prep … but to end the sentence there does monumental injustice to the man.

He was so much more.

He was, all at once, a coach, a teacher, a mentor, a guidance counselor, and, perhaps most of all, a shepherd … taking the often-frightened freshmen who swarmed into the school each September and guiding them through that transition into young adulthood.

Schools such as St. John’s Prep are not for everyone. Even if you do have an above-average intelligence quotient, a place like The Prep demands so much more in the way of academic accountability than simply the natural, sometimes effortless ability to absorb information.

In fact, if you’re academically gifted, and expect to coast through St. John’s Prep based solely on that good fortune, save your money. You’ll have missed the entire point of what makes The Prep special.

Every school of this type needs a Brother Linus … someone who is not afraid to remind a 14-year-old kid that he’s just entered the world of high expectations while, at the same time, making it clear that he has that young man’s back as he navigates the rough waters of adjustment.

In 1967, I was that 14-year-old kid, catapulted out of the cocoon of Sacred Heart School in Lynn and thrust into the social maelstrom of The Prep. I had no idea what to expect. I knew this wasn’t Lynn Classical. For one thing, the school resembled a small college campus (my grandmother could never get used to that; she’d always ask me “how’s college?” when she inquired about school). And, back in 1967, residents boarded there. But otherwise, it was all new … and terrifying.

It was major culture shock … not to mention culture clash. One of my classmates came from Aruba, and had never seen snow until the first time we got some that winter. And boy, did we get some … a sneak snowstorm in November that made a major mess out of the commute home. I can still remember sitting in a parking lot that was Route 128, until well past nightfall, in a car with four other classmates and one beleaguered mother whose turn it was – sadly, for her -- to carpool.

Welcome to the winter wonderland, Mike Maxey (the classmate) and Mary McGovern (the mom).

Maxey must have liked the snow, by the way. He lives in Quincy now.

My freshman class was divided into seven groups, ranging from Offical Class (O.C.) Zero (the exceptionally smart ones) to O.C. Six (do the math). The only thing all of us had in common that year was the religion teacher: Brother Linus. I’m sure that, since we were at a school staffed with Xaverian Brothers, this not due to a shortage of religion teachers; nor was it any accident.

As a freshman guidance counselor, Brother Linus was – for all intents and purposes – the official “shepherd” of the ninth grade, whether that was part of his job description or not. He was the best friend a young kid could have at The Prep. Between the clashes in background and the inevitably wide disparity in emotional maturity that comes with a diverse group of kids, The Prep could be an extremely difficult and lonely place if you found yourself on the low end of the food chain in one respect or another.

Brother Linus was always there to help you sort it out, even if he often did it with tough love. He wasn’t afraid to tell you if he thought your difficulties were of your own doing, but he could do it in a way that reinforced your confidence instead of destroying it. That is a special gift.

As a religion teacher, all I can say is that Brother Linus turned the Baltimore Catechism on its head daily, whether he was describing Moses and his refugees -- as they wandered through the desert -- as “a bunch of rag-tag Jews,” or calling all the women in the Old Testament “Jezebels.”

He also used religion class as a time to bond with his students – many of them budding athletes (The Prep being an athletic, as well as academic, Mecca) – in other ways.

His universal greeting to all was, “Hey, ace.” One of the first things he told us was that he was a close personal friend of Vince Lombardi, the late, great coach of the Green Bay Packers. His lectures were always peppered with “Vince-isms,” and he’d often begin a class by saying, “I was on the phone with Vince last night …”

This seemed like it could be true. He was the freshman football coach. And there may have been a time, albeit briefly, when, naïve as I was, I actually believed him.

He loved his football … and disdained basketball (which he derisively called “bouncy-bounce”). He’d have us in the aisles with his impressions of a basketball player, running around in his short-shorts, screaming, “owww … he touched me.”

He didn’t seem to have much use for tennis, either. Once, during a particularly uninspired freshman football practice, he gathered us all together and pointed to where the tennis courts were (you couldn’t see them from the field, so it was an approximation) and said, “if want to go over there and hit that little rubber ball back and forth across that net, be my guest.”

But if he was entertaining as a coach and a teacher, he was also tough. He ran hard and physical practices, both in football and hockey … and never let up (not even when the Red Sox were fighting to win the 1967 pennant and – much to his annoyance -- we’d all be on the lookout for game updates if they were being played in the afternoon).

He was one of the few teachers I had at The Prep who actually gave out a syllabus (he didn’t call it that; but that’s what it was). On it was the term “SQ,” which stood for “surprise quiz.”

The only surprise about these quizzes is that they were brutal.

Brother Linus also demanded that we maintain a thorough (and legible) notebook that chronicled all his bon mots (over which he pored – at the end of every quarter -- as if he were an auditor for the IRS).

This, of course, was part of the shepherding process. I came to The Prep grossly unprepared for young adulthood, of course, and my first encounter with the tough side of Brother Linus the Teacher came when I got that notebook back at the end of the first quarter … with just a string of question marks all in a neat, tidy row … and a great, big “F.” I got a 75 for that quarter, pulled down considerably because of the sloppy notebook.

He told me he was being “generous,” because it was the first quarter of my freshman year, but that he was also pretty steamed at my total lack of care and organization. My mother was mortified. How could such a good Catholic boy – “and an altar boy, no less -- do so horribly in religion?

This led to the discovery of Krause’s Law No. 1: Religion teachers are eternally vigilant when it comes to ferreting out students who would tend to blow their courses off as irrelevant in comparison to English, Algebra, History and/or just about anything else … and they mark accordingly. I learned, after that disaster, never again to slight the religion teacher at St. John’s Prep.

Brother Linus died, quite unexpectedly, in 1977 … six years after I left The Prep and only a decade after I had the privilege of being one of his students. I always thought of him as indestructible, much like Red Auerbach. And it was hard to fathom that he had died.

Thanks to teachers like Brother Linus (and Paul Smith, Tom Ford, Bob McKenna, John Westfield, and many others) I sailed through college. I developed decent and disciplined study habits thanks to the expectations placed on me by the Xaverian Brothers education model.

Above all, I always kept an organized, legible notebook for every course in my five years at Northeastern University. Thank you, Brother Linus.

Shortly after the new Brother Linus athletic complex was dedicated, I went up to The Prep on a whim and decided to give myself a private tour. I walked all around the complex (which is massive, and impressive, and has neither a basketball nor a tennis court on hits grounds!) and, well, the ghosts just spoke to me.

I was immediately transported back to 1967, on that very field, hitting a tackling sled, listening to his lectures about guts, determination and Vince Lombardi, and how much it killed me to face him, in late October of that year, and tell him that due to poor grades my parents told me I had to quit the freshman team.

As I walked around the campus on that beautiful April day, I made my way up to the cafeteria and saw a gaggle of 14-year-old freshmen emerge from the building and spill out onto the campus. Which one of them was me? Which one of them had been ejected from the cocoon of a protective Catholic elementary/middle school and thrust, totally unprepared, into the social maelstrom of The Prep?

And who, in 2009, is The Prep’s Brother Linus?

Whoever he is, may God bless him.