Yesterday I finished reading Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” a novel about a man and his son searching for food and shelter in a post-apocalyptic America. They survive through sheer will, try to maintain hope despite absolutely no evidence that hope exists. Roving gangs of cannibals rule the landscape.
And, with no intent to cheapen McCarthy’s great work, something about this book reminds me of today’s newspaper industry.
Today, Jim Heffernan writes his last column for the Duluth News-Tribune. Management is moving in a different direction. He and I are, or were, part of a very, very small collection of writers paid specifically to maintain a column in a northern Minnesota daily newspaper. (I am a paid columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune). This is different than a reporter or editor writing a column as part of his or her job duties or from syndicated columnists who sell their work to multiple papers. Independent columnists provide a point of view that can and should be refreshingly different than the views inside the news room. Heffernan’s day of reckoning came today. I know mine will come eventually. But still, we move down the road toward a hope that hope exists somewhere, in some time, in some medium.
Raise your glasses for Jim Heffernan, dean of northern Minnesota letters!
And people always ask why I left the business. It’s dead. Reporters and columnists are just collecting their paychecks until doomsday, which is coming sooner and sooner.