Six ways HBO’s “Succession” hit me hard personally

Logan Roy, bully, entrepreneur, puppeteer

By Caitlin Kelly

If you haven’t watched Succession, this blog’s not for you!

If you have, you’re familiar with this filthy rich dysfunctional family — including three ex-wives and a young assistant who had so hoped to become the fourth Mrs. Roy, but — damn! — the old dude died right in front of her, in his private jet en route to Sweden to close a business deal.

I love this show, but some of its moments hit me hard personally, often echoing my own dysfunctional family.

Here are six:

It’s not a family in any meaningful sense of the word

Logan Roy has three ex-wives; one he dismissed to a psychiatric hospital; one, very English and very cowardly and the last, Marcia, whose venom comes wrapped in a husky French accent. He has four adult children, including one from the first marriage — Con, likely 10 to 15 years older than the rest, who has always felt unloved and excluded by his father. As the oldest of four adult kids of our own father, by two wives, and two affairs, with none of us who ever lived together, I’ve felt this as the only child of my father’s first marriage.

The daughter, Siobhan Roy (aka Shiv), always, always shut out of power

Logan Roy loves to play his needy and insecure children against one another

Painfully familiar. My father, now 94, has always favored his youngest, 23 years my junior and who refuses to have any relationship to me at all. The sister I haven’t met only shows up every few years and the brother closest to me in age has created huge success for himself — but our father never seems able to celebrate us.

Having someone die after you’ve just argued with them is haunting and painful

My last conversation with my late stepmother, who died at 63 on my husband’s birthday, was an argument. It was a truly terrible time, with a lot of long-repressed and ugly emotions finally blasting to the surface. When so much remains unaddressed for decades and any chance of reconciliation is suddenly gone, it is a terrible shock and leaves even deeper family wounds.

Kendall Roy, whose past conceals a terrible secret he fears might one day emerge

Money changes everything

We’re certainly not wealthy in Roy style — private jets, helicopters everywhere, multiple huge houses — but two of my male ancestors were very successful in creating their own business, and the money they made very much affected their offspring and how they view(ed) money. It’s a useful and familiar way to wield power, to bestow or withhold affection. It’s also weird to grow up around opulent spending (my maternal grandmother was a literal heiress) and never earn or acquire such means yourself. It was normal to have Granny’s chauffeur — Raymond — and her jewelers, Jack and Adrian — attend her annual Christmas party. So I get Tom Wambsgans’ admission, coming from a less wealthy family, that he actually does like money.

Tom Wambsgans, Shiv’s hapless husband

When a man as calculating and manipulative as Logan Roy dies, beware

I’ve never met my half-sister (5 years younger) and have no wish to. My two half-brothers have an off-on relationship. With no clear communication between all four of us, it’s quite something to navigate.

There’s so much the Roy “kids” still have to figure out — like what emotional intimacy and trust even look like

While the Roys are spoiled rotten materially, and are putative adults, there’s an awful lot about the real world they just don’t know and will finally and suddenly need to learn without their father’s protection and power. Surrounded from birth by bodyguards and helicopter pilots and maids and chauffeurs, paid people who say yes to almost everything, they also seem to have no friends anywhere. Every conversation is about getting, keeping or getting more money. Forget love or affection or the joy of something basic — like actually enjoying a pampered life in New York City, with every cultural richness literally on their doorstep. As Season Four progresses, its final season, they’re finally, for a while, able to love and support one another.

I finally, gratefully, have a relationship with one of my half-brothers. But that’s it.

As I always joke, there’s no Hallmark card for a “family” like ours.

Simple pleasures, spring edition

By Caitlin Kelly

Lilacs in bloom. SO gorgeous!

Birdsong! We live at treetop level and those birds start tweeting at 4:30 a.m.

Sandals!

Back to enjoying life on our 72 square foot balcony with Hudson River views

Convertibles!

Iris in bloom

Longer warmer days

Shorts!

Changing wool and cashmere for linen and gauzy cotton

New Birkenstocks

Making sun tea

Ditching heavy outerwear and packing it away for months

The pool opens!

Entertaining outdoors — grilling, barbecuing

Longer, brighter days

Thickly leafed trees offering shade

All the seasonal celebrations — weddings, commencements, graduations

Planning my birthday party (June 6 ), the first since 2017 in Paris

An hour and 19 minutes of me (podcast)

By Caitlin Kelly

Last summer in L.A. I meet a great guy who was driving an Uber, a freelance photographer, Mallury Patrick Pollard — who has created this really interesting podcast about creativity and how creatives live.

Here’s his work.

He decided on the spot to ask me to do one as well.

Here’s my podcast with him, 1:19. I hope you find it interesting!

An epidemic of American loneliness

My wedding day (first one!) in 1992…still very close pals with Marion, who I met in our freshman English class at

University of Toronto

By Caitlin Kelly

It’s now deemed so large a problem that U.S. Surgeon-General Vivek Murthy says it’s as damaging as smoking for our health:

From his recent essay in The New York Times, (my boldface added):

At any moment, about one out of every two Americans is experiencing measurable levels of loneliness. This includes introverts and extroverts, rich and poor, and younger and older Americans. Sometimes loneliness is set off by the loss of a loved one or a job, a move to a new city, or health or financial difficulties — or a once-in-a-century pandemic.

Other times, it’s hard to know how it arose but it’s simply there. One thing is clear: Nearly everyone experiences it at some point. But its invisibility is part of what makes it so insidious. We need to acknowledge the loneliness and isolation that millions are experiencing and the grave consequences for our mental health, physical health and collective well-being.

This week I am proposing a national framework to rebuild social connection and community in America. Loneliness is more than just a bad feeling. When people are socially disconnected, their risk of anxiety and depression increases. So does their risk of heart disease (29 percent), dementia (50 percent), and stroke (32 percent). The increased risk of premature death associated with social disconnection is comparable to smoking daily — and may be even greater than the risk associated with obesity.

I’ve blogged about this many times, but clearly it’s not just me!

I lived in Canada ages 5 to 30, with a year in Paris at 25 with 27 fellow journalists, ages 25 to 35; I was the youngest, at 25.

I never had a problem elsewhere making or keeping friends.

While I’m only in touch with three people from my Toronto high school and a few from university, I later made friends through my work, neighbors, friends of friends…

The photo above is testament to this…as Marion lives very far away from us in British Columbia but made the long journey to New York to join me then. We still email often and schedule long phone calls. Our lives have been very different (she has three daughters and two grandchildren) but also have some very deep issues in common.

In Paris, we all vaulted between English and French, our fish-out-of-water-ness much tougher for people from North America, India, Africa, South America and Japan than for the multi-lingual Europeans. Having had to leave behind home, friends, family, work, pets — everything! — for eight months, meant we became our own support group. There were some very awkward moments when our cultural differences — especially our haste — caused offense and we needed to apologize and explain. But some of the friendships we forged then remain so deep that decades later we’re still delighted to visit one another and stay in touch.

At 31, I moved from Montreal — where I had very quickly made two close female friends, both single, as I was then, who lived in the same apartment building — to small town New Hampshire. It was a nightmare socially: my then boyfriend (later husband) was a medical resident so he was gone a lot of the time and exhausted when home. There were no jobs and no ways I could detect to meet friendly people. There was no Internet then. The only people in our social circle were all married, pregnant or joggers….none of which applied nor appealed to me. I tried hosting a few people for meals, but only one reciprocated in my miserable 18 months living there.

I had never ever been so lonely and it very much damaged my mental health, which is one reason I insisted we move to New York.

Why does friendship feel so low-value in the U.S. ?

— precarious jobs force many people to prioritize work and income over everything else

— low-paid, non union jobs do the same

— a culture where so many people feel guilty if they’re not constantly being “productive”. Sitting for an afternoon with a friend, or several, over a glass of wine — as I’ve done joyfully in Paris, Croatia, Toronto and Montreal (and once in Manhattan!) — is seen as weirdly slothful

— a culture that fetishizes individual needs over everything else; few friendships seem to have the ability to weather/resolve conflict and move on

— people move around and lose touch

— the social triage of wanting to avoid COVID

— having Long COVID

— being exhausted by caregiving

— especially in a time of high inflation, few places exist that don’t cost money (like cafes, bars, clubs, restaurants) where people can just relax for a few hours in a quiet, attractive and welcoming environment and maybe strike up a friendly conversation with someone new

— if you didn’t attend any sort of schooling with someone, you seem not to exist. I find this so weird, especially since I arrived in New York at 31

— family takes precedence over everything after work, from feeding newborns to moving far away from old friends to live closer to grandchildren. Friends? An afterthought once all the usual ceremonies (weddings, christenings, graduations, etc) are done

— wealth is a huge dividing line. People with a lot of money seem to think the rest of us aren’t worth knowing. Whatevs

— racism

— politics, especially since 2016

— transactional “friendships” where, once they’ve gotten what they need from you, you’re dropped

— lack of curiosity. Without fail, my closest friends have lived outside their home countries and have traveled widely, whether for work or pleasure, people who, like me, have had a range of life experiences and faced the challenges of adapting to (and enjoying!) other cultures.

I am very aware these are generalizations and maybe too personal to me as someone who has never had one job here for more than a few years and made work-pals. Nor do we have kids, the way most people seem to make friends. My closest friends here I made through freelancing, two from church and one from spin class.

Canadians don’t fling themselves across the country the way Americans do, for work or education, and our social and professional circles are smaller, so maybe we just retain closer relationships for other reasons.

This has also been an issue for me because, as I’ve written here many times, I don’t come from a close or loving family, quite the opposite. We don’t do birthdays or holidays together or get together for special occasions. My late stepmother was clear she didn’t want me around much and my uncle and aunt, both long dead, lived in London and were busy with highly successful entertainment careers. My friends are my family.

Many of you might have very deep ongoing American friendships.

If so, I envy you!

I am really looking forward, in late June, to seeing old and dear friends in Toronto, my hometown I left in 1986, that I have known since my late teens — at university, through my work, friends of friends. I haven’t been back in a year. I even reconnected with one woman from Grade Five (!) a few years ago as she became a neighbor and friend of one of my good friends.

I’ll have lunch with four pals from high school there as well.

Can’t wait!

Do you ever find loneliness an issue?

How do you manage it?

What newsroom life is really like

Two weeks trailing HRH was…an adventure!

By Caitlin Kelly

The NYT’s columnist Maureen Dowd recently posted this lament for the good old days of newsrooms:

As Mayer recalled, when a big story broke at The Star: “You could see history happening. People would cluster over a reporter’s desk, pile into the boss’s office, and sometimes break into incredibly loud fights. There were weirdos in newsrooms, and fabulous role models occasionally, and the spirit of being part of a motley entourage. Now, it’s just you and the little cursor on your screen.”

If you have watched TV shows like Alaska Daily, about a small paper in Anchorage, or Borgen, or (a million years ago) Lou Grant or the Mary Tyler Moore Show or The Newsroom, or films like Spotlight (2015 Best Picture), All the President’s Men, Broadcast News, The Paper or The Verdict or….You might think you know what working in a newsroom is like.

Having survived three of them, The Toronto Globe and Mail for 2.5 years at age 26, the Montreal Gazette at 30 for 1.5 years and one brutal year decades later at the New York Daily News, lemme tell ya! My husband worked 31 years at The New York Times, in the main newsroom in New York City and, earlier, in its Washington bureau.

We know. Oh, we know. Jose worked many assignments with Dowd, including some huge front page stories.

I agree there are few places — maybe as an ER physician or nurse, or a firefighter — where adrenaline surges are a normal part of every working day. Whenever I walked up the rear ramp of the Globe’s parking lot, past the enormous satellite dish that would (!!) transmit all our words to printing plants across Canada later that day, my blood pressure always always rose.

It was exciting but terrifying.

What if the Toronto Star or CBC beat us? What if we got something wrong? Working in daily news always means the fear of someone else getting the “scoop” first.

Most newsrooms — whatever the medium — look the same. Rows of desks, some piled very very high with papers and magazines and documents. Few windows. Open plan so everyone can see if you’re there and working and an editor can (and does) yell at/for you from far away. Your co-workers work barely a few feet away from you, so forget any sort of personal or professional privacy. No smelly food! No loud conversations!

Managers get offices with glass walls so they can see what we’re up to.

Ideally, this fosters camaraderie and collaboration, and sometimes it does.

Despite the chaos of the industry — so many layoffs! — it retains a military hierarchy and chain of command, from interns to publisher. Mess with it at your peril.

The irony, of course, is that it’s called a newsroom when the news is never there.

It’s in Kyiv or Islamabad or Edmonton or Des Moines, and that’s the true strength and beauty of them — the immediate transfer of information, words and images that flow into and out of the editors’ desks in the newsroom. There’s often someone who does rewrite (I have!) which is wild…a reporter calls in with their story and reads it to you over the phone so you have to type really fast and accurately! I’ve also dictated my own stories by phone as well. Very 1940s!

A crucial — and unseen/unheralded — part of every functional newsroom are its editors, for copy, graphics, maps, illustrations and photos. There are also, depending on the size of the media outlet, lawyers who may review a story for accuracy and defense against a charge of libel.

I first worked in a time when our laptops were very slow, TRS-80s, with tiny screens and we had to transmit our stories to the newsroom using alligator clips you attached to the handset of a telephone. That’s if you could even find a phone on deadline! Research meant actually reading and speaking to sources as our only font of information — no Google!

Competing with a better-funded paper like the Toronto Star could be a nightmare, like the night there was a prison riot in a city 2.5 hours east of Toronto. The Star, of course, got reporters to the scene while I, sitting in the newsroom, had to update five editions with very very little material. We even had to ask a senior manager whenever we needed a new notebook.

But I really miss its wit and repartee….like the night I was banging away on deadline and an editor shouted down the room…”Where is it?!”

“Hey, you can’t rush perfection,” I replied. The Venus de Milo wasn’t made in a day!”

“Do you type like her?”

The Montreal Gazette was another world, with one key editor who was deeply Catholic so I was cautioned never to suggest a story about abortion. It was one-paper town (in English) — compared to three in Toronto. The metabolism was slower. It wasn’t a great fit for me.

The NY Daily News hired me without previous NYC paper experience nor work for a tabloid. At prior papers, 1,000 words was a warm-up; at the News, deemed a long feature. Its halls held enormous copies of legendary moments in history, their front pages, framed. No pressure!

It was a very male place, with a few star reporters who were women. The photo editor shouted at me, again in an open newsroom where everyone was his unwilling audience, when I dared to ask for some basic instructions. I explained to my boss — who told me the man had once thrown a radio at him.

Like that.

I broke several national stories and learned how to write tighter. I reported on a very different — much less affluent, much more diverse — New York than I’d ever known. Our stories were in Harlem and Queens and the Bronx, not the Upper East Side.

But the manager who hired me soon left, and my time there became extremely difficult. I won’t say more, but I’ve never worked in a newsroom since.

I miss them.

I do.

There is there, at its best, a tremendous sense of teamwork and accomplishment. For some.

There is, at its best, ready access to some of the smartest and most fun and boldest people you’re ever likely to meet — colleagues who’ve worked in places like Kabul and Kandahar, not just Kalamazoo.

I’ve signed up to be a mentor with Report For America.

I look forward to helping the next generation survive their newsrooms.

Three sweet recent films worth watching

By Caitlin Kelly

Life can feel so grim these days — an endless war in Ukraine. grocery and housing costs so high they leave you gasping in dismay, climate change…

We all need respite and comfort!

Three films I recently watched — two of them Oscar nominated for 2023 and one that won in its category — were such balm for the soul.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

sounds impossibly twee and saccharine and I studiously avoided it when it was in our local theater. I saw it on TV and was blown away with its low-key charm and humor and — how unlikely! — the presence of broadcaster Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes as one of its characters.

The plot is simple enough — a very small shell with (!?) one eye and shoes (!) and a very big heart finds his family suddenly all gone after the owners of the house they live in turn it into an Air B and B. The new resident, who is a real person and who is the maker of the film but also a main character in the film, gets to know Marcel and his grandmother Connie, whose bed (of course) is a powder compact and (voiced by Isabella Rossellini) speaks with a husky French accent. I won’t give it away but here’s a six minute clip.

The Elephant Whisperers

is a documentary about a married Indian couple and the two elephants they care for. It won the 2023 Oscar for Best Documentary Short Film and became the first Indian film to win an Oscar in that category. It is beautiful to watch. In Thailand I rode on an elephant’s neck , as the mahouts do, and it was one of my life’s happiest moments. Here’s the 2:40 trailer.

The Quiet Girl

is an Irish film mostly in Gaelic with subtitles, about a nine-year-old girl shipped off for the summer to live with a middle-aged distant cousin. It’s set in 1981, but feels like the 1960s, as Cait settles into her new life on a dairy farm, a quiet and lovely break from her abusive family and the latest screaming baby. Anyone who’s ever felt ignored by their family, or worse, and longed for an escape — and some true love — will recognize what a gift this long visit offers the girl.

In their own way, each film also addresses grief and the loss of a loved one.

Have you seen any of them?

What did you think?

From pitch to publication — producing a NYT story

By Caitlin Kelly

I’ve been writing for The New York Times since the 1990s, when I started out writing 300-word book reviews on arcane topics like a history of the Kurds.

As a generalist, I’ve since written for almost every section of the paper: real estate, culture, business, Metropolitan, health, styles, essays, sports.

The one place you never ever want to be published in is their corrections box! Luckily it’s happened to me only three times, with more than 100 bylines there.

I know that being published there is a dream for some writers, so here’s a peek inside how I produced my latest for them, about prenuptial agreements.

I pitched two ideas to the editor (you need to know who exactly to pitch! I learned this by reading Twitter, where he announced his new position and shared his email address.)

He immediately wanted one of them.

We had a phone conversation Feb. 16 to discuss what he wanted from the story, angle and length. I was off!

Then…gulp…it was time to find sources, not so easy when getting people to discuss their finances in a global newspaper with millions of readers.

I found a lawyer in Iowa to get started, to get a general idea of the story’s parameters. Once grounded, I found a New York lawyer — through their PR gatekeeper — who led me to a local woman who became a key source, albeit a fearful one I tried to reassure. I have a lot of respect for anyone who agrees to speak on the record, especially to the Times, and how anxiety-provoking it can be. I explained carefully the goal of my story — to help others — and we negotiated what felt OK to print, and what did not.

The Times does not allow freelancers to use fake names or unnamed sources, nor for sources to read copy pre-publication.

One of the many moving parts — the hidden bit — of reporting any story is finding and persuading sources to even speak to a reporter. People can be really jumpy and sometimes I explain in detail how the process will go to alleviate their concerns.

I get it! I’ve been interviewed enough times I know how scary it is to lose control of your own story.

But the gatekeeper to the NYC lawyer was also initially quite resistant to a Times story, arguing that the paper only caters to the wealthy. Well, fair comment, but I told them my story was designed more to protect people, especially women, from getting screwed in a divorce, which I’ve seen plenty of, and it’s not pretty.

We went back and forth a bit, and she agreed to put me in touch with the lawyer she works with.

I interviewed the lawyer and her client (3 sources now) and through a pal in Los Angeles, found a lawyer there to add more insights and who connected me to a young gay Asian couple who were terrific to speak to; we did an hour Zoom.

Now we’re up to six sources…more to come!

The final one (in addition to me) was a financial writer, a woman.

Then it was time, finally, to write.

The actual writing, typically, is not difficult for me as, by then, I always have a clear idea what I want to say and in what order; my assigned word count was 1,500 to 2,000, enough real estate to tell this complicated story properly.

But I also know an editor will have, always, their own ideas and lots of questions.

I was a little nervous, as this was my first story for a new-to-me editor and I always hope to start off on the right foot.

For my first revision, I changed my lede (the first line, key to hooking the reader) and it stayed unchanged to publication; I choose them really carefully, and am fiercely protective of my ledes, relieved when the Times (and the FT) have liked them enough to keep them and praise them.

The editor immediately trimmed it a bit (no biggie) and had some smart questions I needed to answer to clarify and better explain some things. One real challenge of including your own story is that it’s obviously so familiar to you, but not to your editors and certainly not to your readers. It was also, to be honest, emotionally difficult for me to revisit a painful period of my life and a brief marriage.

The editor warned me the story would be read by several additional editors, (best to know this ahead of time) but each edit at the Times means you, the writer, get a “playback” which is our chance to make sure it still reads well, hasn’t been changed in a way that (unlikely!) is now inaccurate.

It’s very helpful to see, in every playback, what changes they make (with strikethroughs, etc) whether in sentence structure or wording; I don’t find it intrusive but see my copy getting tighter and stronger. The guts of the story, and my voice, remain, and that’s important to me as well.

Every new editor who reads the story can also make their own cuts or changes and adds their questions, then sends their version, so one can easily receive two or three or more different playbacks, each of which you need to read — and once a story is skedded for iminent publication, hang on!

My adrenaline is up.

You’re on a speeding train now, with the Times editorial machinery moving at its own internal pace, your copy moving from one editor to the next — so you need to be ready to give them whatever they need, asap. No pressure!

I always ask — what time do you need this back from me?

And why I always warn sources when I first interview them to be ready to reply very quickly to more questions once this process is in motion.

So by 4:30 Thursday afternoon I was reading the third playback — with 14 more questions; none overwhelming, with two needing my quick calls to sources for clarification.

I also had to make sure a few times the story’s photo caption was correct because one of the sources had changed her surname since I began work on the story, so I alerted a few editors to that. The photos also matter!

Accuracy in every syllable matters.

By 7:30 p.m. my story was in the hands of the final editor — who helped me finesse an attribution; if the source got back to me after 10:30 pm ET, I should (!) alert a Times editor in Seoul.

Talk about a global newsroom!

The piece went live yesterday at 5 a.m. Eastern and got nice “above the fold” placement on the Times’ homepage.

It will also appear in print tomorrow.

So, almost two months from pitch to publication, it also got a great illustration and photo, and some very nice feedback from editors and readers.

WHEW!

On to the next…

The realities of the writing life

By Caitlin Kelly

So many people want to be known as a writer, preferably one with multiple best-selling books, maybe a movie or TV deal on top of that.

Hope is charming.

But the reality of writing for income is simply not that, for the vast majority.

If you want to produce freelance journalism, you need a steady supply of sale-able ideas, smart editors ready to reply to you quickly, pay you well, edit you intelligently and promote the work. That’s a lot to hope for in one person!

Despite the lone-wolf perception of freelancers like me, having a wide and supportive network of smart, generous peers is essential — we steer one another away from lousy clients, share pay rates, send work to others when it’s not one of our specialties (and vice versa.) We meet at conferences, join online communities like ASJA and Study Hall.

Journalism pay rates have dropped enormously to a “competitive” $1/word — banal in the 80s when $2/word was standard at every glossy magazine. Today that’s a wildly elusive rate and we’re all struggling with inflation.

I still write occasionally for The New York Times, at a pay rate unchanged since the 90s. But if I can do the story efficiently and have an impact, there’s value in that for me.

This is a powerful and candid piece from Esquire by memoirist Nicole Chung about the precarity of the writing life, especially fiction:

I became an editor by volunteering for an Asian American magazine, a nonprofit mission-driven labor of love where no one drew a salary. Ten to fifteen hours of unpaid labor a week in exchange for the editorial experience I wanted was, to me, an acceptable trade—nearly all my labor then was unpaid. I cared for my infant and toddler during the day, then went to writing class at night. I spent every spare moment I had and some that I didn’t pitching freelance pieces and working on my first book proposal.

Then one of my favorite indie websites hired me to edit on a part-time basis. The job started at thirteen dollars an hour, twenty hours a week, and after a couple of months I was brought on full-time and granted a salary in the mid-30s. I loved that role, the tiny team I worked with, our community of readers. I was responsible for editing and publishing two to three freelance pieces a day, reading and responding to hundreds of pitches a week, and handling social media. I found my confidence as an editor, as the volume of work meant I had no time for imposter syndrome. By the time that website shuttered two years later, my salary had risen to the mid-40s. My agent and I had finally managed to sell my first book for a small advance. The independent publisher that acquired it later offered me a job as managing editor of its digital publications, starting at a few thousand more than I’d made in my previous role. Again, I felt lucky, working and collaborating with fellow writers every day—it felt like a dream job.

People who want to sell their books — certainly fiction — face multiple challenges, from finding an agent to represent their work (or self-publishing) to finding a reputable publisher. There are scammers out there preying on the naive.

Even those of us who have been multiply published may have to find a new agent — a slog — and a publisher, another slog. Obstacles appear you could only dream of, like a friend whose new book has not gotten the publicity boost she very much needs due to a strike by workers at that publishing company — this, after a decade of her hard work on the book.

Then you face another serious challenge — getting the word out as far and fast and wide as humanly possible — to boost your book sales. This is where a wide network with some serious social capital can offer a real help; I called the host of a TV show I appeared on many years before to tell them about a friend’s new book. It may now get a second look.

As I wrote here earlier, my husband and I co-authored a book proposal and found an agent, but 30 publishers rejected it. We offer tremendous credentials and a huge potential audience…but no luck. I may try again, but have been too discouraged since January by this failure.

An interesting recent story finds that later-life journalists in their 60s, 70s and beyond, are now working as mentors and editors, still passionate about the essential value of journalism.

From Neiman Reports:

These retirees include everyone from a onetime local sportswriter in Washington state to former top editors at The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Reuters, a retired senior editorial director at CNN, familiar names from NPR, the ex-editors of the San Diego Union-Tribune and Miami Herald, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalists, a retired AP bureau chief and a former top executive at Hearst. Many are in their 70s or 80s.

Many also share a collective frustration with the decline of the profession in which they spent careers that date back to a time when media organizations were flush with resources and influence.

“If you can do something to help reverse that tide, you do it,” says Walter Robinson, the former editor of The Boston Globe Spotlight Team, who has taken on a second career helping set up nonprofit community news sites, mentoring younger journalists, and serving on the board of a government accountability and First Amendment coalition. 

“I had a great run and a lot of good fortune, and I just feel I have an obligation to give something back,” says Robinson, who is 77, of his continued involvement in the cause of journalism. “A lot of people I know who are my age have the same impulse.”

I recently signed up to become a mentor with Report for America and am very much heartened that others want to keep our industry thriving in whatever way we can.

Two lovely signs of ongoing life for my two books…524 libraries hold a copy of Blown Away, according to Worldcat., arguably the coolest website in the world for authors — as it lists every library in the world with a copy of your book, beginning with those physically closest.

I am so honored to see it in the libraries, and law libraries, of major American universities like Harvard, Yale, Brown, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins, and many smaller colleges, including community colleges. This, not making a best-seller list, was always my goal. I wanted my intensive national research to help inform and guide possible policy decisions.

It’s held by libraries in New Zealand, Germany, Viet Nam, the Philippines and the Netherlands, to name only a few.

The other joy, annually, is a small check I get thanks to Canada’s Public Lending Rights program — which pays authors for the public use of their books in libraries.

It means a great deal to me to know my hard work has had some lasting value.

The surprising allure of generosity

By Caitlin Kelly

I’ve been hanging out on Twitter for a few years, but have never had a tweet go viral — more than 11,000 likes!!

This one did:

I recently got a NYT call for pitches, none of which worked for me at all — but was perfect for a friend, and one with a new book on that topic, now both soon to appear. This is what we all should be doing. It is rarely as zero-sum as everyone assumes. #freelance

I didn’t think much of posting this, as it’s nothing I haven’t said there many times before.

Maybe it was the “ooooooh!” allure of an elusive New York Times byline that caught people’s attention?

Maybe it’s just the luck of that fickle algorithm?

But it’s been really gratifying and satisfying to see it retweeted and liked and bookmarked.

At its best, Twitter can offer a bully pulpit.

It was nice when that specific writer outed herself in reply and thanked me but I was just happy to make that introduction; I know her and I know her work and I trust her to do work of NYT quality. I don’t just do it for anyone; referrals can wildly backfire if the person you refer is less than completely professional.

I recently signed up to be a mentor with Report for America, a program designed to encourage younger/newer journalists as they start their careers, some in small towns, others in larger markets. It’s a joy to be helpful.

I’ve also been really busy this week emailing fellow alumni of our Toronto high school to create a new annual award for a graduating senior for creativity, named in honor of a fellow student who was funny as hell and much beloved and whose later life was very much marked by severe mental illness, a terrible loss.

Three fellow alumni from our year, so far, have agreed to share the cost with me.

Thanks to the school’s guidance counselor, we’re figuring it out quickly and I hope to be up in Toronto June 28th to present the award with a fellow student, a dear friend of that student.

Without kids of my own or nieces or nephews to encourage, I feel it’s really important to encourage the latest generation…already so plagued with so many challenges like COVID and climate change as it is.

Our high school is still pretty upper middle class, but now more diverse racially and ethnically, and has some lower-income students — the $1,000 we will offer is still a nice amount.

Learning to say no

The Nova Scotia house I fell in love with — and had to say NO to for my financial health

By Caitlin Kelly

It’s sometimes very difficult for me.

I’ve been freelance for much of my life and career — which often means saying an immediate and hearty yes to work even if you’re ill or exhausted or grieving or might not even need the income right then, because there are always fallow periods when you need to have acquired some savings.

So saying No, or No thanks, or I’ll pass or It’t not a great fit for me can feel awkward and risky.

But — and pardon the cliche — I now see saying “no” (without offering endless explanations or reasons or justifications) as a primal sort of self-care.

Resentment and anger for reluctantly saying yes just corrode the soul.

So you have to get good at saying no, even when it feels like a dangerous choice.

Especially when something apparently alluring is offered and your gut tells you….don’t do it.

Women are often trained from early childhood to keep everyone happy, to avoid conflict, to keep the peace — which can mean saying yes to all sorts of things we really don’t want to do! That could be hosting or attending a family event, agreeing to do something that makes us seethe inside or accepting a lowball offer of work or salary.

Our eagerness to please and not offend or annoy or anger — especially if you were raised in a family that always made quite clear what they wanted — continues for decades, in our loves and marriage and friendships and work and medical settings.

When we know someone holds power over us — even if it’s our choice — it can feel very difficult to risk losing their affection or support or kindness.

I had a friend here in New York for many years, someone I thought would be friends for life. We laughed a lot, traveled together, were often mistaken for sisters. Then she married someone I really didn’t like, nor did he care for me. Invited to her destination wedding, I said no. The friendship ended soon thereafter.

I sometimes still miss her, but with hindsight I also saw more clearly that I was the more submissive one. I don’t miss that role.

With work, it’s tough to turn down any chance to earn income; freelancers only “eat what we kill”, with no guarantees. But sometimes we can tell it’s just not a good fit.

With offers of pro bono work, as one recently made to me, it’s even more of a calculation; I was told I could address a small group of professionals who might hire me for my coaching skills.

The offer was very flattering.

Might.

If the group had been 50 or more people, the odds of that happening would have been better.

If the person asking me wasn’t getting paid — but not paying me — maybe.

If the demands for more and more of my time before even doing the presentation had stopped, perhaps.

It became easy to say no.

It ended civilly and professionally…which doesn’t mean I feared some sort of verbal fistfight.

When you emerge from a verbally abusive family, saying no always feels like an unwise choice.

I’ve been asked many times, mostly by my father and late mother, to do things I really didn’t want to do — from signing a document to sell real estate I had no financial interest in to cooking and cleaning house when visiting.

I grew up ages eight to 13 in boarding school and camp so a conventionally intimate family life wasn’t really in the cards…so I don’t feel much obligation in return. I left home for good at 19 when my father sold the family home and moved to Europe with his girlfriend.

No one paid for my university education but some income from my maternal grandmother and what I earned from my own freelance writing and photography work.

Saying no when others have said it to me many times?

Easier.

Do you find saying “no” difficult?