EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK: What Brian Clarey means to me

Featured photo: Brian eating Dim Sum in Chicago (photo by Sayaka Matsuoka)

Yesterday I was interviewed by a local TV station to talk about Brian and what he means to me, the local journalism community and to the Triad as a whole. The conversation lasted about 10 minutes, and I haven’t watched the segment, but I’m sure it was whittled down to much less than that.

But 10 minutes isn’t really enough to talk about the impact that Brian has had on me. Five hundred words isn’t enough either.

I first met Brian about 10 years ago after I graduated from UNCG with a degree in art history. I had applied to go to grad school for a masters in the subject but ended up getting waitlisted at UNC. I had never written anything for journalism before, but when I saw the ad for interns at TCB, I applied on a whim.

Walking into the cluttered old City Beat office at the Nussbaum Center a decade ago, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I met Brian, Eric and Jordan there and was asked about why I wanted the internship, my experience in journalism (I had none) and some more stuff about growing up in Greensboro. I don’t really remember the details, but I must have made a good enough impression that I was hired as one of two interns then (Hey Anthony!).

In the ensuing months, I worked closely with all three of them, but none more than Brian who worked tirelessly with me on the craft of writing. Everything from the lede ( the first sentence of a piece) to the nutgraf (the main paragraph explaining what the piece is about) to the kicker (or the final sentence). All of my copy back then came back with red edits on almost every single line.

Since then, TCB has undergone multiple changes. Eric, and then Jordan, moved on, staffers have changed, we downgraded offices and we’ve now mostly moved to working remotely. But the one constant pillar has been Brian.

To say that Triad City Beat is Brian’s fourth child is kind of an understatement. He works day in and day out to keep this paper going, and I think he may even bleed black and red ink. He loves this paper.

And we love him for it.

To see the amount of support that Brian and his family has gotten these last few days has been overwhelming. Everyone from local artists to politicians to other journalists have all rallied together to donate to his family’s fundraiser and several people have reached out to me to make sure the paper was going to be okay.

And we will be okay. Because Brian survived and so did his family. Of course, their recoveries will be long and likely difficult. But, like he told me a few days ago, Brian is “a tough son of a bitch…made from leather and steel.” And we — the paper, the Triad, local journalism — are all so much better for it.