Open Secrets Magazine
December 11, 2023
I’m packing up the remains of a journalism career that once consumed and defined me. When I began, my life’s work took up an entire room. Now it’s down to a couple of cardboard boxes. Even those are excess. I am left trying to figure out what, if anything, the physical detritus—the actual paper—of all those published words means.
Just to date myself, when I went to journalism school, your choices for a major were print, radio, or television. Yes, this was the 1980s, pre-Internet days.
Print was my focus. With my slight lisp, there was no way I would pursue anything that involved using my voice. Besides, I’d always had the sense that I better write things down. Starting at age eight, I kept a diary. I’ve filled huge plastic cartons filled with dozens of those journals too, but that’s a different story.
I started as a “copy girl” at the New York Times, and for those too young to understand what that means, “copy” referred to actual paper—in this case a cheap, tan stock.
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