Only Forward

by Duane Swierczynski

This past Monday, I was invited out to St. Joseph's University to speak to a journalism class. Specifically, Tenaya Darlington's column writing class, which read our "Wanderlust" issue [July 27, 2006] and was inspired to take on something similar.

"Wanderlust," if you remember, involved staff members taking long walks through the city, then writing about the surprising things they found. Ashlea Halpern found snow. Brian Hickey found a bar. Trey Popp found that he could walk 27 miles in a single day and not die.

I could see how college kids might dig that.

CP photographer Mike Regan came along for the ride — his photo contributions to the cover story, I thought, would make for a nice counterpoint to the word-nerd stuff. We made our way up Lancaster Avenue and into Overbrook, and we were both a little stunned at how good this city can look when the air is cool and people aren't hot and aggravated and trying to shoot one another.

We took in the stone twin houses, the expansive urban lawns. "Why did the Fresh Prince leave all this?" I asked.

College classrooms can go any number of ways. You could be faced with a gang of sophomores trying to snooze their way through a prerequisite. You could have a bunch of hungover seniors who are too busy prying loose the wool socks from each of their teeth to pay you any mind. Or you could luck out — like we did — and find yourself faced with a classroom full of bright-eyed students armed with good questions.

"How many of you read newspapers?" I asked.

Almost every hand shot up.

"I see," I said, smiling. "You're forced to read papers for this class, aren't you?"

But there were a few looks of confusion. No, they weren't.

They read them because they want to. And they were genuinely curious about how they worked.

"How did you get your job?" one student asked.

I thought to myself: Here we go. Here's how we lose 'em.

I started out as an unpaid intern, I said, scrabbling around to earn my first clips. That's how almost everybody here at CP started, too. And even if you're lucky enough to be offered a staff position at some point, you need to brace yourself when you hear the salary. I recently read SPY: The Funny Years, a history of one of my favorite magazines, and was surprised to learn that some writers were only pulling down $10,500 a year. Yes, in 1989. But even that was punk broke back then, too.

But nobody seemed fazed by the no/low pay thing.

Another student asked: "How do you break in?"

I explained that courting a newspaper or magazine is like going on a date: You've gotta bring flowers or condoms. That is to say: ideas. I receive countless e-mails that say, "Hey, I want to write for you." (To which I'm always tempted to respond, "That's great. I want to be a brain surgeon.") But not as many pitch ideas, and even rarer still are the idea pitches that target a specific section of the paper, my first clue that the writer has actually read us. At least once.

Someone else threw out a question that caught me off-guard. "What's your goal for the paper over the next five years?"

My goal, I told them, is the same as when I took this job — two years ago this week, in fact. I want this paper to become indispensable. Each page is a battle for the reader's attention; an unread page is a bloody defeat. Don't think I don't notice. I ride the Frankford El and routinely watch people with their copies of CP. My heart leaps whenever I see someone linger on a page that doesn't feature lingerie; my stomach sinks down to the sticky floor of the El whenever I see someone whip through the pages too quickly.

The students seemed to think that was OK.

What thrilled me is that there are still students who eagerly want to work in this business — even at a time when newspapers are hemorrhaging nationwide, and locally, Darth Tierney is threatening cutbacks while the Inquirer/Daily News union mulls a strike. (Vote's tonight.)

It's funny how good this profession can look when the air is cool and you meet young people who think newspapers still matter. I wish we could set them loose on the city right now.

(duane@citypaper.net)