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For three decades, I wrote mostly for newspapers — initially for The Roanoke Times but more recently pieces for The New York Times, from occasional book reviews to op-eds about everything from refugees to globalization to the tragic shootings of two Roanoke television journalists. At fifty, I turned to writing books, mostly about outsiders and underdogs. My next one, my fifth, is about how much my hometown has changed since I left it forty years ago. Backward mobility, economists call it. It’s also about the fracturing of America, and how distrust in fact-based local journalism has put a hurt on democracy.
I love writing journalism about journalism. I’ve written several articles for Nieman Reports, Nieman Storyboard, Poynter Online and for American Journalism Review, but my favorite story about journalism by far is a September 2008 piece called “Notice What You Notice,” about finding inventive story ideas. It begins with an anecdote by New York Times urban affairs reporter Sam Roberts about one of his favorite stories — on the lowly semicolon. Not only had he witnessed one (used correctly) on a New York subway sign, but he noticed that he noticed it — and then thought to write a very charming story about it. For me, the best ideas usually come when I’m least expecting them, and they usually have an element of the underdog in them, of the outsider looking in.
The first in my family to go to college, I grew up poor. No matter how much money I make or how many awards I win, my worldview will always be colored by those facts. Once I figured that out and saw my past as something to embrace, not a source of shame, my job became easier.
When my kids were little, I taught nights and did freelance writing while they napped. I wrote a series of articles on the erosion of need-based aid — all of it inspired by a fellow teacher’s off-hand slam against Pell grant students. (I had been a very grateful beneficiary of the grants myself, and plenty of my best students were, also.) These stories appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Salon and the Christian Science Monitor, which called me “Pell’s Poster Child.”
I have circled back to this theme again and again in my work, including in my upcoming memoir, “Paper Girl.” What education offers the dispossessed, more than anything, is hope.
