Why I Left the Free Press

I had a great gig at the Detroit Free Press. Excuse me, at the COMMUNITY Free Press. I chose which stories I would write about, and I wrote the stories the way I wanted to. You can’t beat that. My former colleagues on the Metro and Features desks might take note – if you want relative freedom as a writer, go for the CFP.

Why, then, did I choose to leave the Free Press?

The answer is complicated, as most human decisions are, but it’s important to state that I did indeed CHOOSE to leave. Nobody forced me out. I know, there have been rumblings of a purge, and in fact by focusing the retirement offer on older workers, Gannett guaranteed that the most experienced people would take a hike. But a true purge would require management to shove us kicking towards the door. Besides, there is a logic to singling out older workers, since the company could garnish the enhanced pay offer with the carrot of pension. So, I along with 17 other staffers elected to take what Free Press owner Gannett calls a “voluntary severance plan.”

In English, they paid us to go away. Some people call it a “buyout.” I prefer to think of the nearly year’s salary Gannett will pay me as a grant. A fellowship. It’s not exactly a sabbatical, because after my 46 weeks of pay end in late 2008, my connection with the Free Press truly will be gone. There is risk in what I’ve done, then, the chance that in those 46 weeks – two weeks of salary for each of the 23 years I worked at the Free Press – I will not find gainful employment. Because, friends, although I am 62 and a half years old, I am not ready to retire. And I still need to earn money for the time when I truly do retire.

I can truthfully say that my time working on the CFP, a set of 11 Sunday supplements, each dedicated to highlighting neat things going on in 11 different areas, was the best time I had at the Free Press. Now, you will hear lots of grumbling from Free Press people about how bad the bottom-line Gannetoids are, and I agree. I sure didn’t like the way that company behaved during the strike, when I was absent from the Free Press with my picket sign for two years, three months and some days. But it’s still true that I was happier at the Free Press in my last year and a half, when I worked exclusively for the suburban operation, than at any other time in my career. And that happened under Gannett.

Just to give one example: For two and a half years while I worked for the first iteration of the Downriver CFP, I would drive from one police station to another and look over police incident reports. Now, some people complained about this assignment. Writing cops briefs was considered onerous. I looked on it as a way to have some fun while experimenting with my own peculiar style of writing. Believe me, I read some really bizarre accounts. I began writing those cops briefs as if they were fiction. Short stories. Except that everything I wrote was actual fact. Gradually, I realized that more than fiction-writing forms was influencing me. Music also was having an effect. I will be writing about that eventually, so watch for an essay called “Sonata Form and the Art of Writing Cops Briefs.” It will appear under the heading “Joel’s J School.”

Think about the experiences I had: Friends told me I was nuts to do it, but I flew with a 17-year-old newly-minted pilot right after she qualified for her private pilot’s license. By the way, years ago, I flew in the back seat of a Navy Blue Angels FA-18 jet fighter, and down the line I plan to dish that experience out for you. What a blast! What a job!

Was I crazy to leave? Maybe, but I don’t believe so. You see, there were many stories I could not do. For instance, I was the lead reporter on a Nov. 21, 2003 set of stories detailing U.S. Rep. John Conyers’ misuse of congressional resources for personal and political gain. When did you last read a Joel Thurtell byline over a story about John Conyers?

There are limits to the paper newspaper that you don’t find on the Internet. And I know well the potential of the web. When I went on strike in July 1995, I had a plan. I started a business. I’d been dabbling in used ham radio sales for years. While on strike, I had a website, radiofinder.com, and I sold a lot of radios. I shipped radios worldwide. Some day, I will write a book: I SOLD RADIOS TO JAPAN!

My radiofinder.com days were very exciting. This was my own thing, my business, mine to build or destroy. Eventually, by returning to the Free Press and discovering that I could not clone myself, I would neglect my radio business. But what I learned from doing it, and doing it successfully, is that a website can be a powerful engine for making sales and pushing ideas. I think it’s fair to say that in the heyday of radiofinder.com, my ideas, my tastes in classic ham radios, had a significant influence on that niche of the radio market. I learned plenty about the web, came back to the Free Press and noticed right away that the newspaper approach to the web was foundering. Somehow, these highly intelligent business people could not connect to the web. I began to think about what I would do if I were running a newspaper – how would I approach the web?

Then there were the books. My books. I’ve written or am writing well over a dozen of them. I finished my first novel 30 years ago. It’s sitting in boxes in our basement. I’ve written four novels, four kids’ books and two books of nonfiction. At last, I will have a book in print, it seems, next year when Wayne State University Press publishes UP THE ROUGE! It’s my narrative with Free Press photographer Patricia Beck’s marvelous photos of our June 2005 trek 27 miles up the Rouge River by canoe. I’m starting a second book about the Rouge and other troubled rivers. I’m finishing an unorthodox journalism text book, SHOESTRING REPORTER: A MANIFESTO FOR SAVING JOURNALISM, OR HOW I GOT TO BE A BIG CITY REPORTER WITHOUT GOING TO J SCHOOL AND HOW YOU CAN DO IT TOO! Finally I have time to groom my books and find publishers for them. I was too busy and laden with stress at the Free Press to pursue that dream.

The chance to experiment more with writing, pushing the envelope beyond the orthodoxies of daily newspapering, learning how to fuse television and radio and fiction techniques and yes, even music with my writing are things I can do only if I’m on my own.

The same thing I did while on strike I’m doing with my Gannett Grant – making my own job.