Her dad always managed to find her essays in The Bee, to her delight

Some of my best fans are dead. This is an unsettling statement, but true — especially when you consider there have been a limited number of people familiar with my writing in the first place. Calling these readers fans may be too bold an assertion. That doesn’t change the facts: many who have enjoyed my words are gone. Or invisible.

I remember one gentleman named Don. He was a retired radio and print journalist who came from the same hometown that I did. Even though he was half a generation older than me, he was proud that we were both products of Selma schools, which taught us the way around a sentence. Don would send me the most supportive emails. He died three years ago. I am sorry that I never met him and his wife in person.

I suspect many readers who once enjoyed my essays don’t see them anymore. Subscriptions to The Bee — and to local newspapers across the nation — have fallen. This is particularly true among consumers I know, folks who had papers delivered to their door for years but couldn’t reconcile the growing cost of the tradition. They learned to read their news online, with a quick eye and lesser passion.

I am forever grateful to former editorial page editor Bill McEwen. Six years ago he encouraged me to submit my work to this newspaper on a regular basis. Yet, the writing started long before, when I decided to throw my words into the world and see how they’d land. The Bee gave me that chance.

On a gray January morning in 1997, I was running a slow loop around Woodward Park when I had an idea: maybe I could use my writing to contemplate the high teenage pregnancy rates in the valley. My essay considered how parents and community mentors might better learn how to talk to kids about sex.

I had bought my first computer the year prior, but drafted my essay using paper and pen. I finished it on a typewriter. This method was easier for me as I hadn’t yet learned how to think on a keyboard. I placed my words and a cover letter into a large manila envelope and mailed it off, hoping for the best.

This was a time before you could attach a file to an email. I felt like I had sent my essay into a mysterious black hole. Back then, Gail Marshall was the shepherd of voices like mine. I was thrilled a few weeks later when I received her phone call informing me that my piece would run.

The first time I was published — and numerous times thereafter — I wouldn’t tell anyone my good news. Everyone in my circle had newspaper subscriptions. They would find out soon enough.

Surprising my father was the most fun. I knew his daily routine. He would walk to the end of his long driveway before dawn, chasing the newspaper that was delivered to our farm. On the days one of my essays would turn up, I imagined him back at the house, methodically going through one page after another until he came across my thoughts. He would wait until 7 a.m. to report his discovery, laughing proudly over the phone. My dad was my biggest fan. He is dead now, too.

The Saturday edition of The Bee will soon be gone, including the generous space where essays like mine have run. Print journalism isn’t dead, but some forms have met their expiration date. If I’m honest, many of the newspapers that fall onto my own driveway each morning end up untouched in the recycle bin. I have already read much of their content on my phone.

To keep our institutions and ourselves accountable, the need for journalistic endeavor remains. This holds true even as we learn to discern between real and fake stories — and the squishy facsimiles that rest in opinion.

Remember: Journalists subscribe to a code of ethics that aims to keep their work clean. Journalists are also human. If bias sneaks into reportage, we must learn to navigate its genesis. The reader brings their own bias to the exchange.

Whether my stories run again in this publication — or whether I even write them — is not important. But an essential question should concern us: How might we create and sustain effective vehicles through which local journalism can thrive? It’s crucial we find the answers. For our collective well-being, we must keep the process alive.

This story was originally published December 4, 2019 at 6:06 PM with the headline "Her dad always managed to find her essays in The Bee, to her delight."