Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 19/Jan 04:00

Reflections of a life in journalism

DEBBIE JACOB ASK ANY journalist and they will tell you that journalism is a life, not a job. I am one of the lucky ones who lived this exciting and meaningful life. As Trinidad & Tobago Newsday announces its closure, I take the time to reflect on that amazing journey. For 42 years, I worked full or part-time as a feature writer and columnist, first at the Trinidad Express, then at the Trinidad Guardian, and finally at the TT Newsday. Journalism gave me a platform to stand up for the voiceless in this country, particularly inmates who languish up to 15 years in our nation’s prisons waiting for their cases to snake their way through the courts. It inspired a series about teaching CXC English language to the forgotten boys of Trinidad incarcerated for violent armed robbery. My column editor at the Guardian, Arthur Dash, who is now my editor at Newsday, encouraged me to write those stories about juvenile delinquency. The columns turned into a book, Wishing for Wings, that brought tremendous emotional and financial support from individuals, book clubs, businesses, the US Embassy and the Fernandez Foundation; then led to the formation of the Wishing for Wings Foundation. This would not have happened had I not been a journalist. It feels like yesterday when writer Earl Lovelace suggested I pay the incomparable Express editor-in-chief, Owen Baptiste, a visit. In 1983, a career in journalism had never crossed my mind. Anthropology was my calling, but I put on my black cotton dress and high-heeled shoes that sank into the steaming asphalt in Port of Spain, headed for the Express in that old cocoa house on Independence Square and stated my case to OB. Where would I have been if OB had not taken a chance on me? Always the tough taskmaster, OB shaped me into a journalist. I covered Carnival and calypso, writing about Shadow, David Rudder, SuperBlue, Cro Cro and the characters that gave Carnival its voice. In a crowded newsroom where there were never enough desks and chairs, I chanced sitting at the sports desk, left abandoned by most journalists for fear of being buffed by territorial sports writers. The late, great Mervyn Wells and David Brewster redefined me as a sports feature writer at a time when women sports writers were few and far between. I covered boxing, explained how a cutman stops a boxer’s head from bleeding, and interviewed opposing boxers Leslie Stewart and Marvin “Pops” Johnson in a feature called A Boxer Is Like a Baby. When I relayed my horror about chasing boxer David Noel into the men’s locker room to get a story, Brewster turned to the keyboard and typed out the headline Help! Men Are Taking Their Clothes Off In Front of Me. My feature on Phardance, a washed-up racehorse who rallied for an important win, feels prescient now that I’ve written so many features on police dogs and the book Police Dogs of Trinidad and Tobago: a 70-Year History. I had great editors who challenged me and made my writing better: Kim Johnson, Anu Lakhan, Suzanne Lopez, Angela Martin, Judy Raymond and Darren Bahaw. I could fill this column with nothing but the names of all the great journalists I have worked with across all three newspapers during the Golden Age of Caribbean journalism, when people trusted print journalists and relied on them for the news. Sadly, social media eroded the landscape of journalism by emphasising speed and slapdash stories rather than carefully researched ones. The idea that a story could be corrected later would never fly in traditional journalism, where reporters had to prove their stories’ worth before they were printed. Attention spans got shorter, sensationalism gained momentum and journalists paid the price for all of that. But I don’t regret a single day I spent in journalism. I wrote positive, uplifting stories during the covid19 pandemic, like the one about how people found creativity and reinvented themselves during those dark days and features about how inmates I taught succeeded in the “free world” after coming out of prison. I wrote columns about my prison debate teams and another history book, Making Waves: How the West Indies Shaped the US. I am proud to call myself a journalist, and sad that Newsday, an important voice in journalism, will fade into history. But I believe every situation is an opportunity for reinvention. At 72, I can’t wait to experience the next chapter of my writing life. I know I won’t be silent. The post Reflections of a life in journalism appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.