MASTRULL’S DEPARTURE: What we know
First, I want to make something clear: I swear I did not select Jan. 6 as my last day at The Inquirer for anything having to do with the U.S. Capitol. It is merely the date I was hired here 29 years ago and now also the date my journalism career of 44 years comes to an end.
For me, this incomparable means of making a living began at a time of manual typewriters and telephone booths and concludes amid an ongoing debate over whether a technological marvel known as AI will be good for our industry or yet another challenge.
More on that in a bit.
Because more important than bots and slop is the human element of this job, and where it brings us.
It brought me, an alum of Walt Disney Elementary School as Tony Wood is quick to note, to an esteemed newspaper that to this day triggers a bit of imposter syndrome. Me? At The Philadelphia Inquirer? Fifteen years after graduating from Penn State and four newspapers later, I got the unimaginable offer to join a paper I had spent so many years reading and admiring.
Most of my time here has been as a reporter, experiencing things good and bad that remain vivid today: two hours alone with Donald Trump in his Trump Tower office (as part of my coverage of Atlantic City … I’ll say no more); being dispatched to Colorado to help our national reporters cover the Columbine High School shooting – at the time an almost-unheard-of incident that now is so utterly distressingly common; writing about the impact of a downed plane commandeered by 9-11 terrorists on the tiny Pennsylvania town of Shanksville (with feeds of pure gold from the total talent you all know as the foul-mouthed social media star now doubling as our transportation reporter, Tom “WTF” Fitzgerald; birthing (with up-and-coming journalists Wood and Kerkstra) An Acre An Hour, an ambitious project under the direction of the unrelenting perfectionist Kathy Hacker to measure in numbers and lifestyle changes the impact of suburban sprawl on this region; having a hand in transforming obscure entrepreneurs into very wealthy business owners (just ask the creator of Scrub Daddy); and even rappelling down 29 stories of a Center City office building in order to understand the mindset of a small-business owner (here’s proof).
And yet, what moves me most of all is a story about a young boy named Qaadir Williams, or rather what happened 17 years after I first wrote about Qaadir and his uncharacteristic (for a seventh grader from Pleasantville, N.J.) passion for chess.
He wrote to me in 2014, and said he was 30 and a financial adviser for Edward Jones Investments in Texas and wasn’t even sure I remembered him. His message was so affirming of our craft that I framed it and now keep it on display in my home.
In part Qaadir wrote: “ … you telling my story to the broader masses was the stone whose ripples have changed my life in a way that I will forever be grateful for … Whenever someone asks me what happened that made my life turn out so different, I start the story off with a journalist.”
Which brings me back to AI.
It will never rival Wendy Ruderman going door to door in a Bristol neighborhood Christmas Day looking for family members of nursing home explosion victims; it will never see, truly see, what Stephanie Farr does in the people of this region that renders her columns so uniquely must-reads and consistently able to make me laugh out loud; it cannot outdo the visual mastery of our photographers and videographers, or the energy of Liz Robertson racing from crime scene to crime scene at all hours of the night and then thanking ME for “coming to work today”; it cannot get ICE-fearing immigrants to trust it as the indefatigable Michelle Myers and the persistent and precise Jeff Gammage can; it is nowhere near as versatile, resourceful, reliable and unflappable as Bob Moran, no less than a night editor’s dream; nor can it honor our region’s deceased the way Gary Miles does, who leaves us feeling like we truly know those who passed because he takes the time to get to know them through those who loved them; and forget AI matching, let alone outdoing, our daily safety net – the multiplatform desk, with their eagle eyes for errors, their creativity and their mastery of every new system that’s been thrown at them.
Quite simply, each and every one of you – flesh and blood you – are The Inquirer.
My regret is that the industry has become obsessed with numbers: number of people who read a story; number of people who became subscribers after reading a story; number of minutes (if we’re lucky) readers spent with a story, etc. We couldn’t measure such things when I became a journalist and it has put an unfair pressure on all of you that I wish didn’t exist.
Rather, I wish this business could be like it was, sort of like what Mary Oliver laid out in her poem “Sometimes” as the instructions for living a life: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
I urge you all to first and foremost let that be your guide. And I’ll keep reading you, starting each day with a newsletter, then reading every section of my print paper until one of your many enticing alerts or social media posts gets me jumping online.
As Art Garfunkel sings in “All I Know,” endings come too fast. So cherish your time here. I know I did.
With love, solidarity, and admiration for you all …
And Go Birds! (even though Now Team treasures Molly and Emily don’t want another parade … or do they?)
Diane
dimastrull@gmail.com
