Moving On: Life after journalism

“Ooh. Do tell. How did you know that you had moved on?”

It’s a funny thing, an out-of-body experience if you will, to walk away from something that you love dearly and flip a switch. That’s what I did on Friday, May 15, 2020.

It was such a strange day. My bride-to-be (now my wife) and I spent the morning at an attorney and title company’s office downtown closing on the purchase of our first home together. We wore face masks and sat in separate rooms from the sellers as the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing. I remember we had to bring our own pens to closing.

Once it was finalized, my wife and I walked out with freshly minted copies of our mortgage. Our first big investment together. The first step of our future taken. We posed outside of the office for a selfie to commemorate the occasion. Our masks pulled down below our chins, and my hair longer than it had been in years — barbershops were closed as a result of the rapidly spreading virus.

We stopped for Chick-Fil-A sandwiches on our way back to the small home I was renting across town. We laughed as we ate the anointed chicken sandwiches of Providence thinking about what was to come. Not only our future together; a blended family, kids of our own, making a house a home — but also what came next that day.

We finished our lunch and cleaned up the table, then we grew quiet, almost solemn, as I looked her in the eye and said, “Well, I guess it’s time for my next meeting.”

I got in my car and drove down the city’s main artery until I reached a monolithic brick office building that sprawled the entire block. Its tall, skinny windows, seemingly mile-long dock and vast parking lot stood sandwiched between a Pizza Hut and the local technical college.

As I turned into the parking lot of my hometown’s daily newspaper offices and the company’s vast printing facility, I had a lump in my throat and a hole in my heart. In the pocket of my jacket was a two-page note, typed and neatly folded, that began:

“I believe it is in the best of interest of everyone involved if I step away from community newspapering. I write you this note to resign my role as publisher.”

“The honest truth is that my heart is no longer in the business,” I wrote.

That was partially true. My heart for journalism has never changed. It’s a vital pillar of our civil discourse. The civic engagement of an informed citizenry is what makes our democracy work. It’s also on life support.

The craft I love. The business I loathe.

Two months into the coronavirus pandemic, newspapers across the country were treading water. Honestly, my group of two daily newspapers, one biweekly publication, four weekly papers, four quarterly niche magazines and a local radio station was exceeding expectations.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t expected to keep defying balance sheet realities, and I was staring at the second round of layoffs and expense cutting that I had fervently argued against — the leadership’s goal was to achieve what I believed were arbitrary and unrealistic cashflow targets in an unprecedented economic downturn. (Only one name on the masthead above from our ‘heydey’ is still with the company.)

“It’s not fair to you to have to rely on someone who isn’t fully aligned with the company’s mission and priorities,” said the letter in my pocket. “I’ve carried the ball as far as I can, and you need someone else to pick up where I’m leaving off and take this to where you ultimately want it to go.”

Shortly after the extreme high of closing on our first home together with my soon-to-be wife, I delivered this letter to the man I had worked for twice over the course of a decade.

I respect him a great deal. He took a chance on me, more than once. He hired me right out of college. He promoted me to my first management position. He groomed me and mentored me for future roles. He sought me out and recruited me back to the company after I had left to pursue other opportunities across the country.

He’s a good person. He is probably the most intelligent human being that I personally know. I didn’t envy his position. He was in a tough spot. Everybody has a boss, and his was demanding that the company take steps to weather the storm and hopefully come out better on the other side. But I just couldn’t do what I felt I was being asked to do. So, I resigned.

I came down from the mountaintop and into the valley in a hurry.

It was strange because journalism was all I had wanted to do for such a long time. I dreamed of a byline in The New York Times, or maybe one day being a contributing editor to the Washington Post after a long career in news.

I enjoyed some incredible experiences as a newspaperman, as both a journalist and an executive.

In twelve years’ time, I interviewed rock stars and award-winning entertainers. I gave testimony on Capitol Hill and lobbied in cabinet secretary’s offices against tariffs on paper that altered the landscape of our business.

I met one source for a story in the private box above home plate at Minute Maid Park to gather information. I walked the sidelines covering the longest-running rivalry in the history of Texas High School Football and combed the beach along the Gulf Coast in the pitch-black dark of night in search of a missing fisherman.

The Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee once squeezed me in for a meeting at the Capitol but told me to make it quick because the next appointment on his schedule was Bono — you know, from U2.

There’s a framed personal note from the Senate Majority Leader in my home. Another Senator and I traded text messages as he spoke on the floor on behalf of journalists everywhere as to why our profession is vital to local communities.

I moderated a televised congressional debate in Texas and traveled the state of Alabama drumming up support for saving our printing presses.

I’ve sparred with a sitting Kentucky governor and entrenched party leadership on the editorial pages of a group of publications that touched 100,000 circulation.

There were ribbon cuttings and grand openings. I spoke a eulogy at the funeral of a beloved sportswriter that had served a community covering Texas high-school athletes for decades. Another day, I woke up to find a story I had broken about a small-town Alabama mayor banning the media and people who didn’t own property from city meetings in The New York Times.

I was interviewed for a story in The Daily Beast about the changing industry. The lede to Gideon Resnick’s piece reads:

“Brandon Cox, an editor and publisher based in Scottsboro, Alabama is watching, in real time, the destruction of his newsrooms.”

(Gideon is now the host of the What A Day podcast from Crooked Media.)

Toward the end, an industry trade publication awarded me a 25 Under 35 recognition for my approach to the business.

The highlight may have been the time I, the publisher of a rural Texas biweekly, scored credentials to cover a Presidential Debate. That night I stood between the likes of Jake Tapper and Major Garrett to ask questions of the candidates, holding a five-minute conversation with the man that would become the 45th President of the United States.

My dad, watching CNN, texted me a photo of the television in his Kentucky living room. There I stood on the screen, sandwiched between the faces of Anderson Cooper and Donald J. Trump.

To say that I loved journalism would be an understatement. I hadn’t quit at 40 hours any week for a number of years. When I traveled to Hawaii for a wedding, I brought my laptop along and rose early many times to answer emails and correspond with my staff five time zones away.

Workaholism, maybe. Misplaced priorities, sure. Passion and love for the craft, without a doubt.

I gave it all up that day I handed my friend, my mentor and my boss that letter. It was the second time that I would leave this company, and certainly the last.

Burn the ships, as it were.

While I had leads on a few opportunities, there was still quite a bit of the unknown as I walked out of that office for the last time. After all, a pandemic had stalled economies the world over. Unemployment was at 20 percent and climbing. Companies were contracting, not growing. And I had, quite literally, just bought a home.

Not to mention I had mouths to feed, student loans, a car payment and had just given up my company-sponsored health insurance as a deadly virus spread across the country and globe.

Nothing was a sure thing, and I didn’t know where my next paycheck was coming from.

A good friend of mine from way back in Texas had an opening for a marketing position in his company. In recent years, I had somewhat consulted, even traveling to Texas to host a full-day seminar and training for his team. We knew each other well. We had always talked about working together someday, I just don’t think either of us expected someday to come so soon.

In the midst of travel restrictions, a migration en masse to working from home, trading conference rooms for ZOOM and a steep learning curve about the business, my friend took a risk and made me his Marketing Director.

That’s the story about how I joined “The Dark Side” as it’s known in journalism. I’d like to say I am kidding, but I have saved a few text messages and emails that rather emphatically refer to me as a sellout and accuse me of taking the easy way out. It hurt then, but it’s a reminder now that even the rats want off of a sinking ship.

So, when a friend of mine this week announced their own departure from the business it led to a conversation about turning the page. About moving on. About knowing it’s okay to no longer carry a press pass. (Though I should note this friend has a Pulitzer Prize on their resume, and I certainly do not.)

“If you’re anything like me, you’ll grieve for about two months and try too hard to still “be” a journalist for about six months while keeping up with the news and sending tips to your former colleagues,” I said.

It’s true. I spent June and July in this weird state. I was depressed, walking away from something I was so passionate about, but at the same time elated. I married my best friend that same month, and in July I ignored my second-guessing and focused solely on the new job, burying myself into my work.

Truth be told, I fell in love with my new line of work. I’m learning so much and being challenged in new ways I’ve never before experienced.

“That’s okay,” I said. “It’s part of the process. But when you actually ‘move on,’ you’ll know it. For me, it happened about two weeks ago.” (I wrote this in January.)

“Ooh. Do tell,” they said. “How did you know that you had moved on?”

“I went about a week without reading any news,” I answered. “Instead, now I think, ‘meh, I’m gonna read a book.’

“It’s not that I don’t care anymore, I do. And I realize this is my privilege showing through, but my course of action is to no longer tweet and share links to articles that support my position or to circulate an op-ed all around the state of Kentucky — I simply sent my state rep an email that said, ‘I’m a constituent, this is how I feel, and I expect you to do better.’”

I talked about how I logged off of social media for a while, after once thinking it was my job to know tweets before they were tweeted. I told them how I’ve read five books in two weeks on the new Kindle my wife got me for Christmas (she’s literally, the best).

Then, in true former journalist fashion, I got to the lede that I had so appropriately buried.

“The indicator for me has really been productivity,” I said. “Lately, I’ve gotten more done than normal. I’ve started running again, I make the bed every day. I’m getting all my to-do list done by 3 pm each day and making time for proactive projects with work. I’m just energized. I think that’s how you’ll know.”

The part I left out, was that I want to write again.

I’ve missed writing. All I’ve ever wanted to do is be a writer. But burnout is real, my friends. It’s harder when, in order to work in an industry that is writing-adjacent, sometimes you have to give up the jobs where you get paid to write and embrace spreadsheets and boardrooms. Especially as your family grows and you have mouths to feed.

Journalism has never paid the journalist a fair wage. There isn’t a local reporter in the country who is paid their value, plain and simple. And that breaks my heart.

But now I not only get to write again — as much as I want, when I want, about whatever I want — I actually want to do it.

That’s how my friend will know when they’ve moved on. They’ll write an essay like this, not because they have to, but because they want to.

–30–

Too many people are misinformed, uninformed and unengaged in the world around them. My goal is to connect people with information, ideas and each other so that they can make a difference in their communities.

When not writing marketing copy for work I play guitar, cycle, dabble in photography and still plan on writing the next great American novel. I enjoy fishing and know much more than I should about Kentucky bourbon and tacos. I am unapologetically anti-Oxford comma.

I am a father of two (third on the way!) and husband to a beautiful bride that’s way out of my league. We have two dogs — one that sheds and one that barks. They’re the reason I get up in the morning, literally.

Email me at [email protected] and follow me on Twitter at @BrandonJCox.