But Enough About Me

Sorry, friends, I have to go.

by Bruce Schimmel

Week after week after week. Writing a newspaper column is a devotion you do because you love it. And I have.

For almost 20 years — since 1991, to be exact — I've been writing op-eds for City Paper. First as publisher and editor (Publisher's Clearinghouse) and, since 1996 (after I sold the newspaper to the Rock family), as an outside agitator, under the banner of Loose Canon. Week after week, I never missed a beat.

I've been a very committed correspondent. I filed without fail from Europe, Asia and Israel. I've turned in stories from hospital beds as I recovered from two heart infections and a mild stroke.

But in late June, when City Paper's page count dropped, my column was held for a week. And then, for the first time ever, it was bumped a second week. Two weeks without writing a column, and guess what: I loved what it did for my head.

Not that I hated the column. I think it did some good, and along the way, I've met a lot of goofy, smart, contentious and wonderful people. But I didn't love it anymore. Sorry, friends. I have to go.

Now, it's unusual for an old owner to stick around, much less be welcomed for so long by a place he once ruled. But City Paper is a strange place. Hatched at WXPN in 1981 — when it was a community radio station — City Paper has built a progressive community where staffers stay and readers stick around. It's wonderful.

So, I'm not leaving completely. If writing were gaming, you could say I'm taking on another avatar. No longer a loose canon, the aegis of an angry, young man. At 57, I am neither.

Still, tough things need to be said, and I'm grateful that my colleagues — especially Brian Howard, Jeffrey Billman and Isaiah Thompson — have the chops to say them. And a publisher — my friend and former partner, Paul Curci — with the stones to let them. I'm honored to pass them my torch.

For of late, my rage is giving me moral heartburn. So I'm taking another tack; I'm following a belief that the world must be good. I've become an optimist by necessity, because I don't see how the world — or I — can otherwise survive.

Instead of an orator, I am becoming an enabler. And for that opportunity, I thank my friends at the University of the Arts. While the Canon was on vacation, I taught another weeklong intensive on audio slideshows and again I loved it. (See my students' work and grab a syllabus at schimmel.com.)

I need to produce audio slideshows, a sort of journalism as simple and direct as a filmstrip (if you remember them). In audio slideshows — unlike movies — the sound, not the image, drives the story. In slideshows, what people say matters.

I have good stories cued up: Tree House Books, Harvey Finkle, Mike Hardy, Woodford Orchard, the Airport Gardens. A series with photog Michele Frentrop on famous vacant stores on South Street, such as the former Cohen's Hardware. (Got any ideas? E-mail me.)

Over beers last week, Howard and talked about my future with CP. I'm thinking about an interview column to accompany my slideshows. Where people speak in a quieter key about what they love, fear, and what they're doing about it.

With so much journalism overheated and shortsighted today, I want to create a place that's cooler and more thoughtful: a vantage point, an overlook from which to talk about the long view.

Thank you so much for listening. See you soon.

I remain at bruce@schimmel.com.