Crisis points determine our fate the way wind determines the weather. It’s where and how we go at these vital crossroads that dictate our path. And that’s where I am now. A point of crisis, and I’m about to blow one way or another, each direction holding far-reaching impact.
I’m still breathing, but I’ve had enough in this pub hub, and I’m thinking of blowing it up, this rebuilding career, this job. This making of David Magee. Maybe I don’t need to matter.
The problem began, I suppose, when I took this position as director of curation in the pub hub, otherwise known as crew chief of chaos at ground zero of insanity in the changing media landscape—enter a combustion zone, as an unknown agent, and expect fire to break out eventually.
The first months on the job went well. Too well, perhaps. I earned the trust of the curators, including Rick and James, putting structure in place to make the news budget earlier, allowing more time to better develop and flesh out available digital content. I talk with the curators, not at them, asking open-ended questions about the work, listening to concerns and involving them in the solutions. I’ve also rolled up my sleeves, curating alongside them, outpacing their output but only enough to show support, not outshine them. I demanded shortened hours from them, no questions asked, assuring that allowing for more rest and restoration would yield better performance on the job, and it did.
I’ve encouraged them to rewrite leads and the bodies of stories with additional curated information. Lagniappe, we call it. Tell a curator to make a newspaper from available stories on the digital feed, and they’ll swear there’s not enough there, blaming the source. Empower and encourage them to add something extra to make a stale online story better, and just like that, they become content innovators, getting ample rest and starting to enjoy pub hub camaraderie and success.
That’s why I’m walking with a swagger, soaking in adoration from the five curators I manage plus the additional staff, including graphic designers and copy editors, numbering twenty-five. The curators report to me, and the rest of the team and I report to the pub hub director. That’s Dan. He arrived, just before I did, from Gannett, the newspaper chain that’s eating its live cattle one leg at a time.
I like Dan because he’s open-minded, understanding that media can survive if we evolve it, and easygoing, like, “Hey, how was your lunch?” delivered with a smile. And if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here, since Dan ultimately pushed Amy to hire me. She’s a new arrival, too, Amy, serving as our vice president of content, overseeing both digital news and the pub hub. Amy is in her mid-forties, recently divorced, and arrived from a one-year foundation fellowship in California, where they daydreamed about how to change journalism over late-afternoon sushi lunches and extended happy hours. The Newhouse family hopes she can inspire innovation in Alabama, though at the moment she’s stoking Dan to stoke me because my swagger has gotten out of hand.
She needed me to fix the pub hub but doesn’t need me drawing too much attention since she’s new, Dan is new, and the print operation is supposed to have more invisibility in the company—more behind the scenes—allowing digital to shine and find its foundation.
Dan has badgered me for several days with prodding language that’s unusual for him. It’s a strategy he’s utilizing, likely at Amy’s urging.
He’s before me now, prodding.
“You know, when you hurry, mistakes are sure to pop up, eventually,” Dan says, close to my face.
“I understand,” I say, “but we’re not making mistakes, and we’re not hurrying. The team is working forty-five and fifty-hour weeks instead of eighty-hour workweeks. We’re just doing it better.”
He notes that I’m curating more than my share, which isn’t necessarily a solution. “You can’t do all the work for them and claim that as a victory,” he says with a slight smirk.
“My job description says I’m a curator, too,” I say. “We’re a team.”
“We need to select the news for print that’s most appropriate for the audience we serve,” Dan says. In other words, curate more news that paying subscribers want.
The prod punches into my gut, and instinct says move away.
Up from my desk with no response, I walk down through the digital newsroom and out the front door to a nearby coffee shop. I ponder my next move, considering which way to go, aware of the implications. I sit, sipping coffee, wondering if I should (a) drop it, (b) quit, or (c) let Dan have it, which will likely get me fired, earning the same result as (b).
I like Dan; I respect Dan. Considerably. He’s only attempting to manage the trickle-down of instructions thrust upon him, and also, the instructions aren’t wrong. Changes are mandatory or the news will evaporate, for good. It’s a business, which must be viable or else it’s worthless to anyone. The easiest move for me is to drop it, but neither my inflamed ego nor desire for making things right likes that solution. I’m getting picked on already for strutting around in success, and if I let the bullying stand without pushback, I’ll set myself up as a pushover when strong leadership is what the newsroom in transition and doubt needs.
Quitting isn’t a good option, either, not for me, not for the pub hub. If I quit, curators will be back to heads resting on their desks from long hours, and my résumé will be ruined once and for all beyond repair—two jobs for ten months plus a most-recent one for three months for walking off in haste means no other reputable media company will hire me. Kent’s confidence in me will shake, too, and I can’t afford that. I’d told her I had changed that day in the park. She doesn’t expect perfection, but she’s not up for more impulsive foolishness, either. A hasty move will make her question.
My sanity feels more, well, sane than ever before, but the mood of someone who’s been through a crisis can shift, and you don’t always see it coming, like how the wind we cannot see shifts, changing conditions, sometimes drastically, invisibly to us. The storm is brewing, though, and then here comes the leading edge of the turbulence, bashing through in haste with straight-line wind swiping shingles from sturdy homes and falling limbs from trees well intact only moments before.
But I’m better learning to recognize my conditions, and I’m thinking clearly enough to debate my next move. Besides, if I quit, I’ll feel like I did in Mrs. Chambliss’s class years ago, like I have felt with so many mistakes in my adulthood: Why didn’t I see it through? But I’ve learned a lot the last four years, about myself and how I react in stressful situations, and with my past as an example, I can envision how quitting might go today. I’d give Dan my resignation, and he’d kindly accept but let me know he’s not surprised. He and Amy expected as much but wanted to give me a chance, he’d tell me. I’d feel low enough to stop for drinks that I shouldn’t have on the way home, and I’d mean to have two or three at the most. Still, the bartender would offer a fourth, and I’d draw that one down as someone, a woman who’s alone, sits by me at the bar, and I’d get talkative and order another and another because I’d need the affirmation. I’d wake up with a parched throat, throbbing head, reaching for my wallet to ensure it’s all still there. Then I’d look over in the bed and remember what it’s like to wake up with someone who’s not your spouse, your mouth already too dry from the drink growing drier with fear, and to wonder how you got there—but, also, you know.
How you got there.
It’s getting out of there that’s the problem.
I take the last swig of my coffee, toss it in the trash, and walk to the office, back to option one.
I’ll drop it.
At my desk, I open emails to catch up, with the deadline for tomorrow’s papers five hours away, and see Dan approaching from his office. I look up and see he’s leaning in close to whisper near my ear.
“Make sure not to rush tonight’s paper,” he says. A fair and reasonable statement. Still, something growls in my chest.
Uh-oh.
I’ve been waiting on the thunder. Here it comes.
Here it comes.
“What the fuck did you say, Dan?”
I’m at a three-quarter yell, loud enough for the digital team down the hall to wonder, loud enough for everyone here in the pub hub to hear.
I repeat myself: “What the fuck did you say?”
He stands up straight, doesn’t speak, and stares at me eye to eye.
“This is my pub hub, Dan. Do you hear me? They put you in charge, but I lead this team, Dan. I lead this team. We’re gonna make the fucking newspaper tonight with the best news available. We’re just gonna make a good newspaper, on time, with the best news available.”
The building is silent except for my footsteps as I pace down the stairs, trying not to trip on clown shoes, exiting through the lobby to my car. I get in, shut the door, start the engine, and lean my head into the steering wheel. I take a deep breath. I begin to cry.
“Ahhhh,” I shout, pounding the wheel with my right fist.
I’d meant to walk back in, sit down, and finish the paper with the curation team. But he pushed me, and I lost it, and now I’ll lose my job. Now, I might lose my way. Now, I might lose my wife.
My stomach churns. I inhale deeply, leaning my head back against the seat. I close my eyes.
“Dear God,” I say, “help me. Help me help myself.”
I don’t want a seat at the bar. I don’t want another woman. I don’t want to leave my job. Again.
I haven’t lost my temper since William died. I haven’t yelled once, certainly not at another person. That’s been new for me.
In my youth, I swallowed my negative feelings. That was my assigned role in the family and Mom and Dad praised me for that, how I’d not cause disturbance and conflict like an erupting volcano, spewing at unexpected and uncomfortable moments. Years later, though, as an adult, a self-medicating adult, I developed a quick trigger. Something about how drink makes you relaxed going down, but agitated going away, and in the hours after, when used in higher quantities. I became easy to set off, a coiled spring. But after William died, and after all the turbulence I’d put my family through, I’d decided they needed a rock, and I’d become a study in patience, quietly moving through the seasons of our life change, until.
Dan.
I was a volcano, with pent-up tension beneath the surface, and now, here was Dan, inviting my eruption.
Dan, whom I like. Dan, who’s good at his job. Dan, who asks me and others, “How was lunch?”
My eyes are closed. I can’t open them. I’m afraid to open them, see the mess I’ve made, the mess I swore I’d never make again.
I hear something.
A voice.
I’ve heard voices since hair sprouted in new places as a teen. Sometimes, audible—a whisper. Sometimes, I hear the words in my mind and wonder if there’s a sound, but I’m not sure. The Doubter was the worst of this, telling me I was worthless, the bastard child nobody wanted. Poor David. Whenever I’d have something good, a girlfriend, consecutive decent grades in a class, or later Kent, professional success, and my children, he’d remind me I was no good, that I was not worthy, and I’d get to work on proving the Doubter was right.
Other times, the Dreamer, ambitious David, who believed he could solve complex problems that troubled others, soared beyond the bastard-child beginning, speaking with equal clarity, and I’d fall under his spell, chasing the ambitious direction, often before fleshing out the details, ultimately getting stuck in progress—with the Doubter waiting to remind me that I wasn’t up to it, and I’d run from the promise toward self-destruction, a victim of the bifurcated voices that left me, my work, and, therefore, my family in the wake of extremes.
I’ve since dimmed those voices, learning to better manage myself in the days AAA, without self-medication, with more honesty and less shame that comes with all that. But now, I’m hearing a voice, and it’s neither the Doubter nor the Dreamer.
It’s not too late, the voice says.
It sounds familiar, and comfortable, like tenor funneled through velvet. It sounds like Hudson. It sounds a little like me. But no.
You can fix this, the voice says.
“William?”
Yes, Dad, it’s me, he says.
I open my eyes wide.
“William!”
The sun is still shining. The car is still running. I’m crying a flash flood, tears dampening my shirt.
“William,” I say amid the river running down my face. “Dear God. William. I miss you so much. I was so afraid that voice, your voice, would slip away from me, that I’d lose it, forever.”
Silence.
“William?”
I remember my prayer on that dark, frozen, lonely night. When I cried out from the couch that he died on to keep his memory, and our connection, near me. But I can’t help but wonder if perhaps my sanity is and has been compromised since I saw the man’s translucent skin that night in the bar in California, if perhaps my dear William isn’t talking to me but I’m talking with my delusion.
You can fix this, Dad, he says. It’s not too late.
I exhale. It’s him. I’m having a conversation with my son.
“William. Right. I can fix this.”
Don’t quit, he says.
“I’m not quitting,” I say out loud, shouting into the windshield. “I just lost my temper. I’m about to get fired.”
Apologize. Tell Dan you’re sorry. Blame it on me.
“Blame it on you?”
The grief. Losing your temper. Blame it on me. Blame it on my death.
My eyes open wider. I look straight ahead, into the light.
“Right. Grief. It’s the first time I’ve yelled at anyone since you died.”
You can fix this, William says. You must fix this. You belong here.
It feels like an answered prayer. Thank God for this voice I trust, this voice who knows me, who wants to help me help myself, so I can help others.
I think about how many so-called media experts label the newspaper transition the Newhouse family is attempting as crazy. I think about how I have been labeled as crazy in the past. I think I’m making a difference with this work because I see a path through the lunacy—calming the chaos to deliver needed information to many. After all, I have experience in the realm of insanity. I’m thinking about how vital the survival of news is to our society. I’m thinking I’m foolish enough to try to fix this.
You can do it, William says.
“Okay, okay, I hear you,” I say, composure regained. “William, I have a question. What happened that night? Why didn’t you call me? You know I would have come immediately.”
Silence.
“William?”
Silence.
He’s gone.
I gather myself, turn off the engine, open the car door, and walk back to the building.
William is right.
I arrive at the pub hub door, and chatter transforms into whispers upon my return. I gaze toward Dan’s office. I can see through the glass he’s there. He looks up, sees me, and waves me over.
“Come on in,” he says. “Have a seat.”
I look at Dan eye to eye.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I’m listening.”
“I’ve never done anything like that in the workplace before, and, unfortunately, I did it to you.”
He smiles.
“I want this job and to work with you and this company,” I say. “I’ve been through a lot in recent months. We lost our oldest child, William.”
“David,” Dan says, “I’m so sorry.”
His eyes speak truth.
I’ve never acknowledged losing William to Dan or anyone in the pub hub. I’ve been too busy trying to prove myself, too busy trying to hide my truth.
“That’s not an excuse for taking you down in front of everyone,” I say. “It’s not. But it’s the reason. I had all this emotion built up. I haven’t let it out in that way since William died. I’m sorry I dealt it on you. But I’m glad you got it, in a way, because I hope and trust you will accept my apology, and we can put this behind us and move forward.”
He smiles.
“Also,” I add, “it will never happen again. Ever.”
He smiles again.
“Let’s hope not,” Dan says. “Listen, David. I understand, and I forgive you. Let’s move on.”
We stand, and he moves in step with me to the office door. Hands extend simultaneously and we shake, firmly.
“All good, now get back to work—and hey, make sure the Birmingham paper is curated to meet the audience,” he says with a smile and a pat on the back.
“I’m on it,” I say, walking to my desk.
I take a seat, wake up my computer, and put my hands on the keyboard.
Told you so, William says, and I can hear his wide grin.
I laugh, audibly, and the laughter turns to tears streaming down my cheeks.
Yes, I think with a smile, you did. You absolutely did tell me so.