PUBLISHER’S NOTEBOOK: One last time

So this is it.

This week marks my last issue with Triad City Beat. And I don’t quite know what to do about it. So I’m writing. It’s how I deal.

I’m leaving because I must. My family and I were in a traumatic car accident with a truck this summer that broke my collarbone, caused my brain to bleed and shattered my life into pieces. I’m still picking through the wreckage to see what made it through.

My marriage did not. My wife, who nearly died after being crushed by the truck, decided she wanted a divorce shortly after regaining consciousness in the Charlottesville hospital. My commitment to TCB also did not survive the impact. I need to make more money than I’ve ever been able to pay myself here — enough to live on my own, and to handle the medical bills that are just starting to settle. And if I’m being honest, which is the entire point of all the writing I’ve ever done, I should add that I have lost the fire necessary for this kind of work. I just can’t seem to muster the outrage, the enthusiasm or the diligence that got me through all these years at my desk.

I just can’t do it anymore.

So I start a new job next week, something “normal” — or, at least, more normal than the journalistic whirlwind I’ve been riding for 20 years or so. Everybody goes home at 5 p.m., or so I understand. I’m moving into an apartment to live by myself for the first time since the late 1990s. It’s a whole new life. And though tragedy was the instigator, I’m grateful for the path that brought me to these things. TCB is a big part of it all.

Does anyone out there remember the beginning? I sure do. I had just been unceremoniously fired from YES Weekly. On Election Day! In short order, my key staff tendered their resignations, we pooled our money, recruited a couple more small investors and started TCB about 10 weeks later with $47,000. It wasn’t enough, but we did it anyway, fueled by resentment, ambition and confidence in our abilities to make something the Triad needed, that it wasn’t getting and that no one else was going to deliver.

“If we don’t do this,” we used to say, “no one else will.”

Next month marks 11 years since that bold beginning. All the other founders have peeled off and, truth be told, I probably should have too a while back. I could have done it the first time we ran out of money in the first year, but it was too soon, so I learned to sell ads and began my journey towards being a proper publisher. I was wiser the next few times we ran out of money, cutting expenses and cobbling together plans so we could make it through to the next windfall, which I always believed was right around the corner.

Like so many other businesses, we could have closed at the front end of the pandemic. But I’m so glad we didn’t. The reporting we did though the COVID days and the Racial Reckoning of that summer remain as some of the most important work I have ever been a part of. I will never forget live-streaming the Greensboro protest, or the march from Burlington to Graham, or the hundreds of other moments we captured on video and in print. These were some of the finest days of my career. And we could have shut down any of a dozen or so times when things got tough, when they looked bleak, when I felt like I couldn’t go on, but I did anyway.

I stayed because what we said in the beginning still rings true: If we weren’t doing this — covering local government, providing a counter-narrative to the official version of events, illuminating those stories that otherwise would not get told — I am still fairly certain that no one else would.

I’m going to miss this place. I’m going to miss this job. I’m going to miss all the people who have passed through our pages, both as writers and as subjects. I’m going to miss my devotion to the news cycle, my deadlines and notebooks. I’ll miss it all.

TCB has taken much from me. But it paid dividends, with interest.

Now it’s time to hand it off, or shut it down, or whatever it is that comes next. Honestly, I still don’t know what fate has in store for this little paper that could. I do know that there’s no chance for TCB or papers like it without community support, support that goes beyond just reading and sharing our stories. These are dark times for local news, just when we need it most. I truly wish I could be there to help. But as I’ve said, I just can’t do it anymore.

Deep and sincere thanks to everyone who ever worked here, or read our work, or even the ones who hated us but couldn’t quite articulate why. I love you all, and I will never forget the privilege of sitting in this chair. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep going. But I’m thankful that I had the chance.