Should I or shouldn’t I?

On my personal Facebook wall and on New Bern Post, the Facebook page that I administer, I asked my friends and followers whether I should resume a weekly column.

I would call it the weekly column that I had when I was editor of the Sun Journal, except that I have been writing weekly columns wherever I have been editor all the way back to 1994.

Something I learned when I was in the Marines was rollplaying. During the six years that I served, I went from private to first lieutenant, and from guarding gates to leading a 60-Marine unit overseas. You learn to play roles and, in the process, you can develop split personalities.

I applied that philosophy once I became a journalist. As a reporter, I morphed my personality to be comfortable in many settings and among many different groups of people.

Overhearing a conversation between two county supervisors talking about me, one, a Democrat, told the other he was certain I was a Democrat, too. The other, a Republican, said she was certain I was a Republican.

I took that as a sign I was doing my job.

Once I became an editor, I firmly believed that an editor would write editorials and columns, and to do so you have too reveal your hand. So be it. It was part of the job. My bosses never asked me to do this. They didn’t need to.

I felt more comfortable being a reporter, but that wasn’t the job I had. And I refused to write editorials praising the good weather or write columns that didn’t inspire my readers to think, sometimes out of the box.

I wrote regular columns and editorials everywhere I served as editor from 1994 until early 2017, That’s when I became too busy. Plus, I felt that neither readers nor my employers cared whether I wrote columns and editorials.

It was ironic, because that was the same year that I won statewide awards for column writing and editorial writing.

Even as I held those awards in my hands for the first time, I had grown tired of hearing myself rant.

I particularly hated when I didn’t have anything to write about, but wrote something, anyway.

I continue to write and edit on my hyper-local news site, newbernpost.com, but seldom write the kind of columns and editorials I wrote when I worked in print.

Writing requires exercise, lest it become flabby.

So I will continue writing, hopeful that one day I stumble across something that is really worth writing about.

When the cat gets caught by the mouse trap

There is a buzz in the world of print journalists about Rich Jackson, an editor who was the victim of a layoff who is now blogging about it under the pen name, Homeless Editor.

He’s a clever writer with solid journalism chops who fell into the pit known as GateHouse, lured there to work as the top editor at a GateHouse newspaper in Burlington, N.C., in 2017.

For a brief period, we crossed paths when I edited newspapers owned by GateHouse in Eastern North Carolina.

About 11 months ago, he was transferred and … promoted? … to be the senior executive editor of The Herald-Times in Bloomington, Ind. The job even included an apartment where he could live rent-free.

But on the day of reckoning a couple of weeks ago, he found himself jobless, kicked out of the apartment, and standing in line at a Motel 6 in the middle of a pandemic.

As he stated, he went from somebody to nobody in 30 minutes.

You can read the rest on his blog, which I highly recommend, but there are hidden messages that I have needed to point out since I resigned as executive editor at a handful of small GateHouse newspapers in Eastern North Carolina back in 2017.

Reading about his struggles being newly homeless and newly jobless, I think about all the other newsroom professionals who were laid off at the same time as him.

I also think about those who were laid off during earlier waves — ones that he presided over as senior manager of a GateHouse (later Gannett) newsroom.

Most don’t have contacts with the New York Times, Poynter Institute, and other media leaders like he does.

If they start blogs, their readership might number in the dozens.

His measure at more than 47,000 at this moment, thanks to coverage by the New York Times and other national-level publications.

This is navel-gazing at its finest.

Maybe we should feel sorry for the regional and group publishers who were laid off a month ago, the ones who themselves presided over, even orchestrated, countless layoffs during their careers as senior executives.

But not as sorry as we feel for Homeless Editor.

We should feel sorry for Homeless Editor, but not as sorry as we do for, say, the sports writers, photographers, reporters and line editors across the country who lost their jobs along with Homeless Editor.