You can’t get much of anywhere good in life, I don’t think, without a little crazy fueling the engine, and I’ve got places to go.
It’s been a year and a half since I joined the company in Alabama, and I’ve become the senior director of content in charge of digital news—a graduation, of sorts. Now I report to Amy, who promoted me six months ago, leaving Dan with the pub hub. I’m in charge of all 120 digital journalists the company has bet its future on.
She’s encouraging my swagger lately—“It’s contagious,” Amy says, and she’s allowing me room to run and manage, as she stays behind the curtain, like Oz, with guidance here and there, so I can work transformational wizardry.
“You hold,” she says, speaking my motivating language, “one of the most important jobs in journalism. If we can make this happen here, others will want to know what we’ve done and how we’ve done it.”
If only someone had explained learning algebra or science that way.
She’s illuminating what I’m learning is my purpose, what the Dreamer talked about—telling stories that impact others for good. It’s working for me, having something to work for, to think about, other than myself, because joy, I’m learning, comes not from what we want and get but from what we can do for others. It was always about others—it’s just, for the first years of my adulthood, I was too focused on making it happen for myself to see.
Destiny, William says, and I smile. I can see it. I’m energized by it.
He speaks to me periodically these days, coming from the same place where the voices of the Doubter and Dreamer once lived. They’ve not returned in more than a year. Now, it’s William’s voice I hear, and I know that sounds a little crazy, maybe more than a little. Nobody has to say it, I’ll say it for them—the father, so grief-stricken by the death of his firstborn child that he conjures up imaginary conversations, except.
I hear it, William’s voice, as I hear the sound of wind rustling leaves, as I hear Kent tell me from another room dinner is ready. I can’t see it, but it’s there. It’s real, to me.
William has been with me since the blow-up in the pub hub, when he emerged and helped me save the moment, if not my future. He’s not there daily, and not to my whims. It’s more a discussion in moments of needing trusted counsel, or giving thanks—times of prayer, one might say.
I’d never been the praying type, because I didn’t understand. Who was I talking to? And when I was young, I’d peek through half-cracked eyelids during prayers to see if any miracles floated by—and none did, that I can recall. Comfortably sending a message to the invisible seemed the precise definition of lunacy. Hearing voices from the beyond also sounds like lunacy, sure. But what is faith, or God, anyway, without the power of breathing life into the very soul we create, or come from, once they depart physically? When I speak with William, it’s utter sanity, guidance I value and blindly trust as the kind I get in an earthly manner from Kent, Hudson, and Mary Halley. The connection with William has me thinking about our physical existences on this earth, human bodies composed chiefly of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorous—elements that don’t just disappear. I’m thinking about the weather, in relation, how it’s not what we see so much as what we don’t see that impacts our environment, erupting in storms or delightful conditions that can break or make us.
William’s body is gone, but my willingness to connect with what we cannot see allows his spirit to live, with me, which therefore allows my spirit to live, rather than self-medicate, run, and hide. If I pray: Dear Lord, give me strength to lead this newsroom to transformation, I hear William’s voice.
I trust William’s voice, the flesh and blood I’d first met on this earth when he was born on January 16, 1990.
I’m with you, he says, and I know it comes from heaven, a place I’d not understood before at all, a place I don’t much know, but a place I’m learning about, one day at a time, comforted that my William is okay, that my William is with me, that other Williams are with their loved ones, or can be with their loved ones, if they are willing, if they invite, if they listen.
No response comes if I ask questions about his fate or life. But if I need guidance of importance, or my mind betrays, William is there—an ally speaking frankly, helping me when my impulse wants to stray. I’m trusting him, as a ten-year-old trusts a parent, and enjoying the role reversal—the oldest son giving fatherly advice. And he’s better at it than I was, the advice, because when he speaks to me, there’s no push, only shared wisdom, gained from a perch of perspective, that I can take or leave.
I’m taking it. All of it.
Hearing William’s voice helps me miss him less, not more. I’ll get asked by a friend or coworker, “How are you functioning so well in grief?” The tears bring me joy, I’ll say. And I’ll explain that I’m living with my grief, literally, learning that we don’t have to completely lose our dearly departed souls, how if we let them, if we invite them, their spirits can stay with us, speaking in a voice we hear, in a voice we understand, a voice we can trust.
On the job, steadied with William’s presence that eliminates impulse and helps me focus on the larger goal, destiny, I’m energized by the work because it’s like the weather forecasting I dreamed about, nonstop, and needed. Pressure is mounting in my new role, though. I’ve earned my way into the center of this universe, but there’s little gravity and the planets are not yet aligned. “We might not win any awards,” Amy says, “but we can try to turn this mess into sustainable, impactful journalism.”
I’m listening.
Our website, al.com, is emerging as the most significant local news site in America by digital readership tallies. I’m counting time in dog years, it’s moving so fast. Still, it’s not fast enough, not considering all the ground I have to make up, getting first back into respectability, into self-respectability, then making a push toward the dreamy destiny of making an impact, of making a difference—writing a book about family, as I’ve vowed, doing work that changes lives.
The transformation from print to digital taking place in our newsroom has a significant business correlation. As print revenue rapidly declines from the papers, now delivering only three times a week and to fewer subscribers, money to pay digital reporters declines in accord. Amy calls me to a meeting.
More layoffs are required to make the budget, she says.
“How bad is it?” I ask.
“Two dozen in total, from across the state,” she replies. “There’s more, though. We need to reduce management.”
“Whoa.”
The move is drastic, but it’s not wrong. To break down the old print newspaper environment to thrive in a digital world, we have to remove middle persons who can’t help but block innovation because they feel like protectors of the old system. We need more direct access to all reporters in the state for creative combustion, requiring the removal of a long-held news-organization bureaucratic layer: the metro editor and associated reporters who’ve struggled in the transition to digital.
“There’s one more thing,” Amy says, “and I need you to do it, if you are up for it.”
I know what she means. It makes my stomach flip, from a personal standpoint as much as from the community news impact, but I’m up for it because I’d rather it be me than someone else, as I’ve come to love this staff.
Delivery matters in these situations, looking employees eye to eye with compassion, stating facts swiftly, without small talk, and planting a seed that can allow them to start a new chapter in life, beginning with the conversations they’ll likely have with family and close friends as soon I’m finished. I’ll start in Mobile in the morning, get to Birmingham by noon, and to Huntsville by afternoon.
“I’m sorry,” I say, early in Mobile, to the first on my list, cup of coffee nearby to keep me pushing, “but today’s changing needs require constant assessment. Today, we are letting staff go throughout the state. I’m here to let you go. We’re thankful for the work you’ve done, and I believe you will see in time this is the start of the next great chapter of the work you will do.”
I return to the office late in the day, meeting Amy to download today’s events. The space is empty, except for us.
“It went smoothly,” she says. “You did good work. But now comes the hard part.”
“The hard part?” I ask, wondering if she recalls I just axed twenty-five jobs across 355 miles of Alabama terrain between breakfast and dinner.
“Unfortunately, yes,” she says. “The budget calls for a cut twice as big as we did today. I couldn’t do it all at once. I’m hoping we can save some of the others. We’ve got six months to get it done, or we’ll have to make more cuts.”
I lock eyes with Amy. I don’t have to say it.
“I know,” she says, shaking her head, “I know.”
The list wasn’t subjective. It couldn’t be. The company is large, with human resources involved in our assessment to assure no favorites. Liking one reporter personally wasn’t a factor. We’d assessed digital results to date, scored by criteria including unique views, the number of stories written and posted each month, page views generated, and newsroom engagement.
“If John is on the list in six months, it’s not our choice,” she says.
“Not sure I could do it,” I say.
“I’m not sure I could, either,” she says. “So, we’ll have to avoid that, right?”
I sigh.
I’m sickened at what six months might bring, the thought of firing John Archibald, a signature Birmingham News personality when the paper was Alabama’s most read daily, with multiple print editions seven days a week. An award-winning metro columnist, he’d swing a hammer with his 582 words, a number he reached for obsessively, bashing metro politicians and writing about city politics like a hard-nosed, grumpy sports columnist. The meetings were the games, the elected politicians the coaches. In the print news heyday, the strategy worked. Readers anticipated Archibald’s reported opinion, and he flavored the steel city’s grind-against-the-machine culture, giving the people a voice in community politics and power base. Now, as a digital-first columnist, he works the same, writing three scheduled days a week, mixing social media, two short posts, and local appearances. It isn’t working, though, from an online audience perspective, not well enough to keep him as one of the highest-paid reporters in the newsroom.
John is easily the most beloved among the newsroom staff, and one of the hardest-working members of the team, always contributing ideas and providing tips to others even if it might cost him an original tidbit or newsbreak in a column. Late afternoons, when others are long gone, he’ll be at a workstation, bent over a laptop, eyes squinting at the screen through half-shell glasses.
John is also my friend. My close friend, something I haven’t said much since these new AAA days. I had more friends than I could keep up with when cocktail hour was my gig. There was always an invitation, some place to go, people to go with, amid laughter and glow until the next morning, when my brain would feel like it was pushed against my skull, and maybe it was, and I’d feel regret for what I’d said, thinking it was funny, when it was not.
I knew dozens of people who lived in the Birmingham area when I moved to town, but those relationships dated to my life before, and I was afraid they’d invite me out for drinks. Besides, they were college friends, friends of the family, friends of friends, old neighbor friends relocated. I haven’t seen any of them since our recent family disasters—divorce, remarriage, Hudson’s accident, William’s death. And I’m not ready to rehash.
I’m not running from them. If I bump into an old friend randomly, we’ll embrace, and the reunion tastes like ham at Christmas—fresh out of the oven and a little salty, yes, but it brings comfort. Everything, and everyone, has a time and a place. But it’s harder to get somewhere new lingering in the old.
John’s friendship is new, yet it feels familiar. We connected over basketball, but more importantly, I think he understands hard. His father was a Methodist minister, and so was his grandfather. John has a crooked jump shot, and he’s reckless under the basket, all knees and arms, and I’m sure he’s working out more in the lane than just the game we’re playing.
Our unofficial league, which we call Old Man Hoops, is a standing pickup game in a self-described old-man group that plays Saturday-morning basketball at the YMCA. John is one of the unofficial organizers. He invited me to join after I arrived in the pub hub, and I’ve barely missed a game since. The name is misleading, since a couple of guys in their twenties play, like John’s son, Ramsey. Most of us, though, are slow and creaky, yet determined despite emerging gray hairs and beltlines, running the full court for hours like broken-legged G.I. Joes who once had fresh-from-the-package grace and fluidity until forgotten in the toy box for too many years, stepped on and crushed until pulled back out for last-gasp playdates. John and I stand roughly six foot one, so we frequently match up to cover one another. On offense, he prefers hanging in and around the basket, finding open space with an elbow shove to the defender’s gut that’s hard enough to hurt, yet soft enough to qualify as appropriate under old-man etiquette and rules. On defense, it’s more of the same, except he follows me out to the three-point line and smothers with a pesky, swarming buzz like an August horsefly.
After games, we talk in the parking lot, sweat dripping to the pavement, wounds throbbing, and I ask John about writing. “Did you always know?” I asked him one day.
“Not always,” he said. “I had seven different majors in college. But when I walked into the Crimson White, the student newspaper at Alabama, I knew I had to write. Writing was the only way I could figure out what I thought. I could say things I could never make come out of my mouth. And crazily, people listened.”
John married a sorority girl at Alabama, but he self-described as a GDI, a “goddamned independent” with no social club affiliation. At some schools, that wouldn’t mean much, but the student politics of the “machine” held power among the undergraduates, and that engine started and ran through organized influential Greek organizations. As a student journalist on the fringe, he pushed back against the machine, a voice for those with less voice.
But he’s not pushing me. Not so much as a soft thump, even. John has not once asked about William, rumors of divorce and marriage, or anything that occurred before my arrival. However, I can tell from how he extends a hand to pick me up from the floor after a hard fall that if I wanted to talk, he would listen.
I do need to talk, but not about William, or my failures.
It’s Monday morning, nine days after I traversed the state making layoffs. I took a week to regroup but woke up understanding that I’ve now got just six months minus one week to help John find his digital place. I’m convinced that John, with his lyrical prose and dogged chase, is one of the best journalist storytellers in America. I’m also convinced that saving journalists like him is emerging as the first stages of that destiny the Dreamer talked to me about. To this point, it’s been an apprenticeship, but as the age of fifty nears, I’m doing work that isn’t about me, on the top line, that Amy has convinced me of as having importance, that I know can help others, and that engages me with others.
I don’t know how I missed it for so long—others. The secret to fulfillment, the key to joy.
I’m not sure how we’ll get it done, with John. But we can’t lose him. Alabama can’t lose him. That’s why I know it’s got to be a full-throttle big bet.
I learned that a decade ago, helping a researcher shape a book about how small businesses become successful companies. Why do most fail while others blow up big? The researcher explained that placing a big bet is one common characteristic of breakthrough companies. Small businesses typically start up on one trajectory, but it’s not until they take a calculated risk in another direction that significant traction takes hold.
That’s what we need with John, with our company. A big bet. But what?
“Can you talk?” I ask John after the morning newsroom meeting.
“Sure,” he says softly, sensing we’re not about to talk basketball.
We find an open office to talk in and take a seat. The digital transformation means editors don’t get to hole up in designated spaces filled with piles of yellowing papers and coffee cups. All I have is a laptop, mobile phone, and a flexible attitude willing to step into any open cubicle when a personal conversation is required. The open office is healthy for our work since it leaves the past’s clutter behind, and since boundaries we let hold us back are the only limit to our possibility, and that’s the conversation I’ll start with John.
“Hey, man,” I say, “we’ve got to do something different.”
“It looks like we already are,” he says, glancing toward the newsroom.
“Right. I mean you. You have to do something different.”
“Okay,” he says. “Like what?”
“Like, honestly, I have no idea, but you and I are going to figure it out. Somehow, some way.”
John looks deep into my eyes. He sees where this is going.
“So, you’re saying I need to post more stories to keep my job?”
“No. I’m saying the opposite, actually. You should completely forget about the metrics for now.”
“Forget about posting requirements?”
“Exactly. I think you should forget about everything but great storytelling. Forget about the Birmingham News, digital metrics, the Birmingham city council, the responsibility you feel toward local politics reporting, all of it. Remove the Birmingham city limits from how you look at your job. We are al.com now, not the Birmingham News. It is your city, yes, but it’s also your state.”
“I’ve always believed that everybody has a story,” John says, “and it’s a gift when you can get them to tell it to you. I’d like to test that, and go find thirty people in thirty days across Alabama with worthy stories to tell.”
“I’m listening.”
“It never made sense before, trekking across Alabama,” he says. “I wrote for the local paper. My column appeared on the front of the Metro section. But my wife works and my kids are out of the house now, and the paper is all but gone . . .”
“I think we’re onto something,” I say, raising my hands in enthusiasm.
“Yeah, me too. I could take a trip a few times a year, write from a different part of the state.”
“Halt,” I say. “Stop right there. You just shot a brick. We don’t have a year. We may not have half a year.”
John looks me eye to eye and doesn’t speak.
“What if you took a month, a slow month when nothing much is going on, like next month, July, and visited a different spot across the state every day, telling stories, making videos, doing social posts?”
John smiles, giving a half nod.
“We could call it Archibald Does Alabama,” he says, laughing.
I cock an eyebrow.
“Archibald Does Alabama? Shit, man. Bingo. That’s a half-court shot you just made.”
“Thirty days of Archibald Does Alabama, huh? It’s a big state. I’m always up for a challenge, and you know that. But this would be a lot. Plus, it would cost a lot.”
“You know we don’t have much extra money in the budget,” I say. “I suspect we could get you $750, maybe $1,000, for hotels and food.”
“For the month?”
I shrug. “Yep.”
“Maybe I could camp some nights. We’ve got great parks in Alabama. Or sleep in my car. I’ve done that before.”
I smile. Of course John is willing to sleep in his car—the seasoned lead columnist for what was once one of the South’s largest daily newspapers.
I want to tell him that I slept in my car not too many years ago, and I don’t doubt that he’d take the news in with grace, but my ego isn’t yet ready to give that up.
“Maybe that’s part of the story,” he says, referring to him sleeping in the car.
I’m nodding in the affirmative.
“This will be hard, this will be unusual,” I say, “but if anyone can pull it off, you can, brother.”
I’ve just called an employee under my management “brother” in the midst of work negotiation, and I suspect that’s a minor no-no, but also. It feels good, because I’m learning to love John as a brother, thanks to the battles we’re sharing in the paint, under the basket, and in the newsroom.
“It’s worth trying, I think,” I say. “What have we got to lose?”
“My job?” he offers.
I stand up, leaving on a nervous smile.
I take the concept, our big bet, to Amy for approval, sure the coach’s daughter will like the full-court press action.
“This is why you’re here,” she says. “This is why we’re here. To take these chances. I love it.”
I’m thinking Amy is the best boss I’ve had, pushing me, but also giving room to run.
John talks to his wife. “You’ve got to get home for dinner some nights,” she says, but gives him a green light.
July arrives.
With John on the road, from the hills to the Black Belt to the Gulf Coast, the newsroom watches for his whereabouts and reports like it’s The Truman Show, but in reverse—we’re captive, and he’s running free, starring in the program. There’s John, visiting a Christian summer camp in the mountaintop community of Mentone and dining at lunch with the founder; John addressing burgeoning traffic near Fairhope; there’s John, in the lead among digital reporters in readership; there’s John, ignoring his old hammer-and-nail Birmingham story routine in exchange for lament, occasional hope, and rich detail that lets the story sell itself. The can’tmiss daily programming makes slow July come and go as quickly as a late summer pop-up hailstorm.
The newsroom has forgotten its woes. I’ve forgotten mine.
Great forecasting, Dad, William says.
I grin, because he’s right.
I’m not the boss. I’m a meteorologist, just as I dreamed of as a child, studying the factors and conditions, peering into the future with a forecast, a strategy, to help the team know when to plant and when to hunker down or take a long run in the sun.
As for July, it was the right call—all clear, allowing John to sow seeds up and down the great but complicated state of Alabama. They say thirty days is enough to form a new habit or shake a bad one. John’s done both—for himself, for our newsroom, for me.
“It reminded me that when life seems bleak and politics is overwhelming,” John says, “I need to go talk to real people about real things. They will surprise you and restore your soul. The journey changed me.”
It changed me, as well.
I’ve got the only job I ever wanted, for what I know, the job I didn’t know existed—that has me deeply embedded in storytelling, managing people and content. Kent recognizes my focus, my enthusiasm—my purpose. We buy a home together in Birmingham, our first since we were forced to sell ours four years ago, when I’d imploded. I’m working seven days a week, but we’re walking the neighborhood evenings together, meeting for lunch after basketball on Saturdays, and talking again, about dreams, about the weather. “You’re my girl,” I say, giving her a kiss. “You always were. Sorry, I got lost.”
It’s the last Saturday of July, and John has returned for the old-man game after several absences from his travels. We chatted several times as he worked around the state, but I haven’t seen him since June. He’s walking into the gym with a smile, collecting fist bumps and high-fives from the players who can’t and won’t hide their love for the feistiest man on the court.
“Did you sleep in your car, bro?” one says, pounding a basketball to the court with a hard dribble.
I’ve walked to a corner of the gym, tightening my shoelaces. John arrives with a half-smile and his head half-cocked to the side. No high five, no fist bump.
“Well,” he says. “I guess that worked.”
I smile.
“Crazy, isn’t it?”
———
The phone is ringing. Time has passed in seasons, but only a few. It’s Talty, who worked for me first in New York, then in Mississippi, and then in Alabama. I’ve moved on from Alabama to another job, back home in Oxford, now the publisher of the local newspaper, but I keep close contact with the old team.
“Have you seen the news?”
“I don’t know. What news?”
“John.”
“What?”
“John Archibald won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.”
“You must be joking. I mean, of course he should win the prize. But they gave it to a writer for a website and newspapers publishing three days a week in Alabama?”
“There’s a party going on here already,” Talty says. “It’s unbelievable, man. John Archibald, Pulitzer Prize winner.”
“That sentence has a beautiful sound.”
Archibald Does Alabama.
Check that.
Archibald Does America. He won the Pulitzer Prize.
Three years after his name was whispered in layoff discussion, three years after we launched him across the state. Three years ago, he signed on for taking the risk to focus more on real storytelling rather than worrying about metrics. In the momentous Alabama Senate race between judge Roy Moore, known for using the Ten Commandments as a hatchet against those who dared difference, and long-shot Doug Jones, Archibald was arguably the swing-the-vote difference, ending Moore’s controversial political career. For much of the race, Moore had been the polling front-runner, and it was as if he was a tick, crawling up the legs of unsuspecting Alabama, and America, until John sounded the alarm. And he’d done it in his style. The Pulitzer committee noted his “lyrical and courageous commentary rooted in Alabama” while containing “national resonance.”
I celebrate the award as if I share it, because John said I did. He gave credit to all who aided in passionate support of his work—Amy, fellow reporters and editors, his wife, his children. It reminded me that those of us who live and work on the fringe can have an impact nationally—those of us who are not the status quo, those without the fanciest educations or degrees, and those of us from different talent sets that many want to reject, and judge; those of us from broken homes, or adoption homes, and those of us who’ve worn clown shoes or lofted crooked jump shots. That’s why John’s prize belongs to all of us who battle as a little bit different, we so-called round pegs, who may be a little crazy, even, who are constantly trying to figure out how we fit into a world of squares.
Once the celebration in Alabama slows, I get to Birmingham and visit John, and we talk about basketball, how the other guys are doing, wondering if he’s fouling less or shooting more.
“No,” he says. “Neither.
“But listen. You had a part in this, man—you saved my career, I suspect,” John says, and I don’t know what to say. I’m thinking it’s my proudest professional moment. I’m thinking about who I was when I arrived in Birmingham, where I was—my son had just died. I was trying to reset my career, my marriage, and my family.
I’d longed for a friend. I’d prayed for relief from aloneness, getting William’s voice. Getting John, the basketball guys, and others in the newsroom.
“You saved my life, I suspect,” I tell John. “Not sure I would have made it without you.”
“That’s how it is supposed to work, right?” John says, and I know he’s talking about more than newsroom work. “We help each other. I don’t think we can do it alone.”
“That’s what I’m learning,” I say.