By Laurie Roberts, Reposted from the Arizona Republic
I’m not good at goodbyes. Never have been.
Goodbye means things are changing.
Goodbye means yet another shift in a world that seems transformed with every set of the sun.
Nothing is constant. Not even, as it turns out, me.
I grew up loving newspapers. As a kid, I would tag along when my dad, an Associated Press reporter-turned-bureau chief, visited newspapers across the state.
In those days, newsrooms were alive with the blare of police radios and the clack of typewriters and the bark of city editors. They were messy, chaotic, wonderful places, filled with passionate people dedicated to the call of writing, as a newsman once put it, “the first rough draft of history.”
How we get our news has changed markedly
In those days, there was a newspaper on every driveway. It was a time when people had this radical idea that being informed by facts and being exposed to varying points of view made for better citizens.
A better community.
Today, people get their news from TikTok and if a fact is inconvenient, it’s deemed “fake.”
Once upon a time, not so very long ago or so it now seems, the floor rumbled and shook when the printing press in the basement of the old Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette building started rolling for the mid-morning run of the afternoon paper. (Remember those?)
Everything changes.
Some things, however, don’t change. Or they shouldn’t — not if we want to heed Ben Franklin’s warning and hold onto this beloved republic of ours.
Newsrooms aren’t as loud, but good work remains
Newsrooms aren’t quite as loud or chaotic anymore, but they still are filled with passionate people dedicated to the call.
To my talented colleagues: Though it may seem like local journalism is dying, it’s needed now more than ever to expose the crooks and the kooks and the cronies. Continue speaking truth to power. Just make sure to duck as the inevitable bricks come hurtling at your head.
If you’re universally loved, it probably means you aren’t doing your job.
Regrets? I have a few.
I wish I’d been able to drive truly lasting change all those years ago to better protect abused children. As I leave, kids are once again dying under the not-so-watchful eye of the agency that is too often their only hope.
I wish I’d had more success with Operation DeKookification, my doomed campaign to rid the state Capitol of kooks. (Still have my prized Dekook the Capitol button.)
I wish I’d written one more Kari Lake column.
Just kidding.
There are people I’ll miss after I leave
Speaking of the always-affable Lake, she was among the many to take to social media to send me and my fellow scribes a shoutout after learning of our coming retirements.
“Rot in hell,” she wrote.
OK, so I’m guessing a job at the Voice of America is out.
As I leave the newspaper, there are people I will miss.
My colleagues, of course, including E.J. Montini, who is a great writer and an even better human being.
Then there are the readers, the ones who took the time to let me know they read something I wrote and liked it. And the ones who hated what I wrote yet somehow managed to respond without the usual disparaging comments about my anatomy or my parentage.
They often gave me something to think about.
And I’ll miss the people I’ve met along the way. Some will stay with me always.
I learned a lot about life from a kid fighting cancer
Zac McConnell was 6 when he told me he wanted to be “a builder, a helicopter flier, a doctor, an artist, maybe a jazz player, probably a basketball player and maybe a guy that works in a junkyard.”
Zac had big dreams.
His parents graciously allowed me to follow their son’s journey as he fought and fought and fought the cancer that invaded his brain.
He was 9 when he died during the final minutes of 1998, bathed in the light of a Christmas tree, comforted by his trusty bear, enfolded in his parents’ love.
Zac and his parents taught me a lot about life.
So did Jeannette Maré, a woman devastated by the sudden death of her 2-year-old son, yet she managed to find a powerful way to honor him. It was the kindness of strangers, she once told me, that pulled her through her darkest moments.
And so came Ben’s Bells, little hand-made wind chimes randomly hung on trees, first in her hometown of Tucson and eventually in cities across America. The little bells pack a simple but profound message: “You have found a Ben’s Bell,” the tag says. “Take it home. Hang it and remember to spread kindness.”
To some who find them, they’re more than a wind chime. They’re a lifeline.
Ben’s Bells gave people like Kim hope
I recall one person in particular, a woman named Kim who had lost everything when the economy collapsed. She was walking to work one day to the only job she could find, at Paradise Valley Mall.
“When I walk to work is when I talk to God,” she told me. “I was kind of having an argument with him, wondering why this is happening. I was telling him, ‘You never give me signs anymore. I don’t feel you around me. What’s the deal? Come on.’ I just looked up and the bells were hanging there, and it was like, ‘Are you kidding?’ ”
These are some of the things I’m thinking during my final few hours as a journalist.
Forty-seven years, passed in a flash, and I’m grateful for every one of them.
Thank you to those who value other points of view
Now, well, there are places to go and grandchildren to rock and whole days to experience without dipping so much as a toe into the cesspool that has become social media.
Before I go, there is just one final thing to say.
Thank you, Arizona.
Whether you loved or loathed me, thanks for taking the time to read what I had to say.
There was a time when people had this radical idea that being informed by facts and being exposed to varying points of view made for better citizens.
A better community.
Thanks, to those of you who still do.