The fork in the road

It's been a while since I've posted with any regularity here at Creative Ink. Humble apologies to any regular readers I might have. My creative and productive energies have been diverted elsewhere for the past few months into some very important and meaningful personal projects that required my full attention.

As a result, I've had little brain activity leftover to share meaningful thoughts here. I'll try to do better as life starts to settle into the normal workday/school day routine. Part of what I've done this summer is explore where I want to take my career moving forward. I have possible paths, but certainly nothing definitive. I am at the proverbial fork in the road.

I've spent four and a half years working full-time as an independent journalist from home. It's been great in so many ways. Here are some professional highlights:

• Started Creative Ink in March 2004 and through that writing began reconnecting with the dreams of my younger self.

• Traveled to New York City for the first time twice in 2004 and thoroughly enjoyed exploring the Big Apple on my own.

• Got my passport and my first passport stamps when I traveled to Seoul, South Korea in 2004. I was one of the only female speakers at East Asia Journalists Forum, which obligated me to perform many toasts during our meals.

• Had my first PD feature published in May 2004; lead to weekly book reviews in PD for 18 months before burnout set in and freelance budgets were slashed.

• Traveled to New York City and Las Vegas in 2005, both times with awesome traveling companion Jill Zimon. 

• While in Las Vegas in 2005, had exclusive interview with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller upon her release from prison.

• Discovered the beauty and soulfulness of Thomas Merton; wrote article in 2005 on his influence on modern-day Catholics that started a three-year working relationship with Catholic Universe Bulletin. Oh, and that story also won first place in religion coverage in 2006 Ohio SPJ Awards.

• Traveled to Chicago in August 2006, but I'm disappointed to say that I saw little of the city other than the conference hotel and the Billy Goat Tavern. I hope to return soon.

• Had first article published in Continental Magazine in October 2006.

• Applied for and was accepted as a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors in February 2007

• Traveled to Anniston, Alabama, in April 2007 where I met Gay Talese and Rick Bragg among a host of other wonderful southern storytellers who continue to inspire me.

• Risked much professionally, personally and financially by calling out national SPJ leadership on a bad decision that ultimately was reversed in August 2007. Still a painful memory, but something I would do again in a heartbeat because it was the right thing to do.

• Started my third year of writing about small schools transformation at Cleveland Heights High School in August 2007 and discovered a passion for urban education that may dictate my future professional plans.

• Began consulting editor relationship with Catalyst Ohio magazine in November 2007 that continues to this day.

• Applied for Peter Jennings Fellowship for Journalism and the Constitution, was accepted and traveled to Philadelphia, Penn., in March 2008. Among my colleagues there was Atlantic national correspondent and author Mark Bowden, who has been very kind and generous in providing direction and assistance when asked.

• Had my first feature published in the Christian Science Monitor in April 2008, with subsequent stories in May and July.

• Was shocked, confused and then honored to be named Cleveland SPJ Distinguished Service Award winner in May 2008.

• Won first place in feature writing for article about group of St. Ignatius High School pallbearers from the Catholic Press Association in June 2008.

Over the summer I reached a few conclusions that will alter my writing future. First, is the financial reality that with my oldest son heading to college in three years, I need a more stable and consistent form of income. Second, is that I'm exhausted—I mean could sleep for a week straight exhausted—by the nonstop hustle of getting work and trying to get paid in something resembling a timely manner. Third, is that I realize my writing has reached a point of stagnation. Stagnation is akin to death for a writer. I need new creative challenges to push me forward. Fourth is that I'm tired of working in isolation. I'd like to be a part of a more collaborative working environment that allows me to brainstorm, share and learn from others.

So where do I see myself in the next few months? I honestly don't know. I'd like to continue being a journalist, though frankly the opportunities to do so and remain in Cleveland are extraordinarily limited. I check the job boards daily and there's little in Ohio, let alone in Cleveland. I've reached out to some colleagues, but the news is always dire about cutbacks rather than hiring. I'm not about to close off any path. I do have some potential opportunities in the works that could fall into any of the following categories:

1) Find a great job at an existing media outlet that allows me to explore narrative and new media journalism either as a writer and/or editor.

2) Get some funding and start my own new media venture that allows me to lead a team of professional, citizen and student journalists toward development and launch of a dynamic multimedia site.

3) Go to graduate school to study history and begin work on becoming a history professor.

4) Find another avenue for using my writing and editing skills outside of journalism. 

5) What every writer aspires to do: write a book. 

My path is not clear, but I hope it will be illuminated soon.  

Journalism's self-inflicted woes

From Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard earlier this summer. Rosenberg is a co-founder of Salon.

"There’s no question in my mind that the woes of the journalism profession today have been at least partially self-inflicted. At the very historical moment that the news pros faced relentless new scrutiny from a vast army of dedicated amateur watchdogs and expert critics, they offered up a relentless sequence of missteps and disasters. Some were failures of professionalism, from the Jayson Blair meltdown to the Dan Rather screwup. But the biggest — the absence of a stiff media challenge to the Bush administration’s Iraq war misinformation campaign — was a failure of civic responsibility. With that failure, the professionals forfeited their claim to special privilege or unique public role as challengers of official wrongdoing and ferreters of truth. The democracy still needs these roles filled, of course. But after the Iraq bungle, the professional journalists’ claim to own them exclusively became much harder to accept."

Operation Halyard story is a must-see

My good friend and Toledo television reporter, Jennifer Boresz reported a wonderful feature-length piece that aired on July 4 on WTOL, the CBS affiliate in Toledo. It's hard for local broadcasters to get meaty assignments, but Jen put a great deal of work into this piece that aired on the station's 5 o'clock show. Hope you'll take a minute (or five) to watch.

I've been a friend and mentor of Jen's since she was a student at Cleveland State University five years ago so I'm very proud of her work. Keep pushing to do the stories that feed your soul, Jen!

Sleuthing through an ancient text

In some small way I suppose I fancy myself a bit of a detective, only I use my sleuthing in uncovering what's not been written about others. This story in today's Christian Science Monitor about the restoration of the Archimedes Codex is exactly the kind of work I'd like to do were I not a writer.

The Archimedes texts were copied in the 10th century by an unknown scribe in Constantinople, then a major center of the Christian world eventually to become a center of the Islamic world. Three centuries later, another scribe washed, scraped, and otherwise tried to remove the text from the book's parchment. This person undid the book, rebound it in the opposite direction, then, on the imperfectly cleared pages, wrote his Christian prayers in Greek over the original text, which was also in Greek, and still discernible in a faint rust-colored thread running beneath. This procedure was common in medieval times: Parchment was scarce. Thus, the Archimedes Codex became a palimpsest, a twice-used book.

The findings gleaned from it have raised Archimedes's status as a thinker higher than anyone might have expected. Noel describes him as "the most important scientist who ever lived."

Most significant among the discoveries was the knowledge that "Archimedes was the first to calculate with actual infinity in the mathematics of the West." That is to say, he was operating at an intellectual level that didn't become common in the mathematical world until the 17th century, nearly 2,000 years after his time. The Archimedean texts, Noel writes, make the mathematics of Leonardo da Vinci "look like child's play."

Will Noel, one of the curators at the Walters Museum in Baltimore who worked on the restoration, admitted he originally harbored a "simmering animosity" toward the person who defaced Archimedes original work. But as he later came to realize, this person protected the valuable information contained so that it would remain, albeit buried, some 2,000 years later.

Word of the day
equivocal: of uncertain nature or classification

Did you know?

The Pony Express only lasted 19 months. Pony Express Mail Service was started on this day in 1860, with the first run—from its home base in St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California— taking 10 days to cover 2,000 miles. It quickly became obsolete when Western Union Telegraph lines were completed in 1861.

Word of the day
obstinate: perversely adhering to an opinion, purpose, or course in spite of reason, arguments, or persuasion

No shortcuts, please

"Sometimes the path to knowledge and insight has no shortcuts. You have to make the time to walk the distance and take the weight." — Jeffrey Shaffer, Portland, Ore. writer in today's Christian Science Monitor

America's founding more "patched and piebald" than planned

"[Historian/author Joseph] Ellis rescues his enterprise by going beyond the familiar critique of the founding to explore a point that remains underappreciated: that America was constructed to foster arguments, not to settle them." — Jon Meacham reviewing "American Creation: Triumph and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic," by Joseph J. Ellis in New York Times Sunday Book Review.

Eleanor the ornery campaigner

From "Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families," by Noemie Emery:

"As if trying to show where his heart really was, Ted [Roosevelt Jr.] tried to campaign on his impressive war record and held flag-waving rallies surrounded by veterans. But he was fighting not only one, but two major enemies: [Alfred E.] Smith, a veteran campaigner and genuine success story from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and his own father, whose galvanic memory made all around him seem dim by comparison, including, alas, his own sons. He was also damaged by an implied connection to one of the many scandals of the Harding administration, the transfer of oil leases at Teapot Dome in Wyoming that briefly had been under his control in the Navy Department but in which he had played no real part. It was at this point that Eleanor [Roosevelt] moved in for the kill, dressing a car in a papier-mache "teapot" in which she trailed Ted as he made campaign speeches, interrupting him with blasts of steam from its improvised "spout." On Election Day, Ted lost the state [New York] by a hundred thousand votes out of a three-million-vote total, and his dream of succeeding his father was shattered. Eleanor, for her part had emerged as a vengeful, and powerful, player. And Franklin's own rise had begun."