The Mentor

Over the past 10 weeks, I have been a part-time interloper at a nearby newspaper. In quarters not much larger than six or eight phone booths pushed together, a cadre of young people, who easily could be my grandchildren, regularly produce a daily broadsheet reaching out to 66,000 north Georgians.

The editor, known familiarly as "JK", suggested that I work as white-haired Writing Coach. He even promised to pay me.

During a career that has stretched across a half century, I've served on three large circulation papers in New York, Miami, and at Tokyo on the Pacific Stars & Stripes. Further, I've written for or been an editor at four national magazines. The presumption being this gypsy-like history had prepared me for the new, and daunting, assignment.

Each Wednesday, I sat across from a reporter. We talked and together reviewed my critiques of three writing samples. These reports, prepared in advance, ran around 2,000 words.

Moreover, I pencil-edited, or rewrote, portions of each article. You learn by doing, yet the greatest growth comes when some veteran soul shines the beam of his intellectual flashlight into the darkness, where you inadvertently have stumbled. (On the Saturday Evening Post, during the 1960's, editors scribbled in the margins of my pieces, "Say better" or "Make clear." I never considered these terse injunctions helpful.)

To my mind, "There may be no good writing. There is good rewriting." At least once a week I am reminded of this wisdom. Now, the youthful legionnaires who came to me, reluctantly I judged, are college-educated, career-directed women and men putting in tough hours. With cause, they complain of having to write three and four stories a day--every working day. All this, mind you, at wages that neither Bill Gates, nor a file clerk in the insurance industry, covets.

Here, in question & answer format, is other relevant intelligence to consider:

Q. How good are these kids?
A. With one or two exceptions, I judged all have potential. Right now, they need to have pieces kicked back to them, for more work. "There isn't time for this," I was told.

Q. Aside from poor pay and a heavy workload, what other problems do they have?
A. They don't read enough. In fact, most openly admit they don't read their own paper. As for books and magazines, they explain they have no money and less time. Some of this is rationalization-what you'd expect of young strivers.

Q. Did you have fun being their Coach?
A. After a half-century, I still find daily newspapers exciting. I plan on continuing to report and write for these people. If anyone asks my help, as Writing Coach, they'll get it, gratis. Retire? Never. I tell my wife, "Just bury me standing up."

Q. What advice did you leave with your charges?
A. I believe these kids (to me, they're kids) need a tad more professional discipline. Some of them grouse, occasionally accusing a brother or sister of poaching on "my beat." I remember the syndrome. City room malcontents are everywhere. At age 73, however, I find this posture wearisome, pointless.

Q. Is the future of print journalism --and newspapering-- safe in the hands of today's Youth Corps?
A. Probably. God bless our business for continuing to produce talents-and human beings--such as Daniel Pearl, Anna Quindlen, Maureen Dowd, Rick Bragg, even the irrepressible, seemingly ageless, Jimmy Breslin.

However, our besieged industry must find a way to better compensate starting reporters. A salary of $25,000 simply isn't enough. Not even at small circulation dailies, and not when stockholders get "theirs" before the kids on the front lines are fairly, and justly, remunerated.

Q. Were you appreciated?
A. An ebullient woman said, "I like having you around", while a male reporter sent this email: "I can never repay you for what you've given me." Others treated the Coach with indifference, or was it just youthful (Did anyone say: "immature"?) ennui? I suggested to a woman that I was viewed as an "adolescent skin eruption.something which, in time, goes away." She smiled, offering no protestation.

Q. Would you do it again?
A. In a New York heartbeat. For, I believe it is the responsibility, the mandate, of the tribe of elders to share experiences, our treasured essence of having lived long and seen much.

Finally, author Gail Godwin has written, "Aging is not the enemy, nor is death. We ought to fear the kind of death that happens in life. Some people stop growing, learning, or changing. They congeal."

You can't congeal --not readily-- when you've got a piece to write, and another deadline to meet.