The Station nightclub fire: Ten years after

Click here to go to the complete series.

Journal to launch 12-day Station Fire series Feb. 10

On Sunday, February 10, 2013, The Providence Journal will begin a 12-day series marking the tenth anniversary of the Station Nightclub fire. With daily front-page stories, film, multi-media, social media, still images and a major online presence allowing everyone to participate, we will explore the dimensions of the tragedy that killed 100 and injured more than 200 -- while, first and foremost, honoring the people who were affected in so many ways and still are.

In the works since last year, this commemorative series is being produced by a team of writers, photographers and editors -- most of whom have been on the story since it first broke , and our night-shift reporter on that Feb. 20, 2003, Karen Lee Ziner, was among the first members of the media on the scene. The hundreds of stories and photographs we published in 2003 alone made The Journal a finalist in the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. For ten years, we have taken our duties and responsibilities seriously and with solemn purpose.

Read a story I wrote11 days after the fire that captured the state of our state.

President Obama's Inaugural Address: Jan. 21, 2013

From the White House Press office, the text of the president's speech at the 57th presidential inauguration:

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY
January 21, 2013

Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery

Inaugural Address

Monday, January 21, 2013

Washington, DC

As Prepared for Delivery –

Vice President Biden, Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens: 

Each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution.  We affirm the promise of our democracy.  We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names.  What makes us exceptional – what makes us American – is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time.  For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth.  The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob.  They gave to us a Republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed. 

For more than two hundred years, we have. 

Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free.  We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together. 

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce; schools and colleges to train our workers.

Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play. 

Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.

Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone.  Our celebration of initiative and enterprise; our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, are constants in our character.

But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.  For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias.  No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores.  Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people. 

This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience.  A decade of war is now ending.  An economic recovery has begun.  America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands:  youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention.   My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it – so long as we seize it together. 

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.  We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class.  We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship.  We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own. 

We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time.  We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher.  But while the means will change, our purpose endures:  a nation that rewards the effort and determination of every single American.  That is what this moment requires.  That is what will give real meaning to our creed.  

We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity.  We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit.  But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.  For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn.  We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few.  We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us.  They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great. 

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity.  We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.  Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.  The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult.  But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it.  We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise.  That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks.  That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God.  That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.  Our brave men and women in uniform, tempered by the flames of battle, are unmatched in skill and courage.  Our citizens, seared by the memory of those we have lost, know too well the price that is paid for liberty.  The knowledge of their sacrifice will keep us forever vigilant against those who would do us harm.  But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war, who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends, and we must carry those lessons into this time as well.

We will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law.  We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully – not because we are naïve about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear.  America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe; and we will renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad, for no one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation.  We will support democracy from Asia to Africa; from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom.  And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice – not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes:  tolerance and opportunity; human dignity and justice. 

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth. 

It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began.  For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.  Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.  Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.  Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country.  Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm. 

That is our generation’s task – to make these words, these rights, these values – of Life, and Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – real for every American.  Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness.  Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time – but it does require us to act in our time. 

For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay.  We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.  We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect.  We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial, and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years, and forty years, and four hundred years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.

My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction – and we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service.  But the words I spoke today are not so different from the oath that is taken each time a soldier signs up for duty, or an immigrant realizes her dream.  My oath is not so different from the pledge we all make to the flag that waves above and that fills our hearts with pride. 

They are the words of citizens, and they represent our greatest hope. 

You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course. 

You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals. 

Let each of us now embrace, with solemn duty and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright.  With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom. 

Thank you, God Bless you, and may He forever bless these United States of America.

###

Story in Public Square gets major grant support, launch approaches...

Less than three months until the launch of the Pell Center at Salve Regina University's Story in the Public Square program, with a day-long program -- and we have just received word of a major grant from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities. Thanks to the council for this generous sign of support for our initiative, which is now nearly a year in planning! We will join fellow major grant recipients in accepting the award at a ceremony February 7 at the Providence Art Club. The evening will also serve as the official welcome for new RICH director Elizabeth Francis, who succeeds Mary-Kim Arnold, now with the Rhode Island Foundation.

I am co-director of Story in the Public Square, as a Pell Center Visiting Fellow. The Story initiative -- "Celebrating and studying public story telling in American politics" -- is in partnership with The Providence Journal, where I am a staff writer.

Online Registration for this free event, open to all, will be open soon. Hope to see you there.

And look soon for our website. Meanwhile, please follow us on Twitter: @pubstory.

The full release can be found on the Salve site. Here are some highlights:

Story in the Public Square will launch with a public conference on Friday, April 12. The day-long event will feature accomplished story-tellers, whether they are journalists, novelists, or filmmakers, a screening of the Providence Journal’s acclaimed documentary “Coming Home” about veterans returning to southeastern New England after tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, keynote remarks by former Senator Gary Hart, and the presentation of the first Pell Center Prize for Story in the Public Square. A detailed description of the event follows below.

The winner of the inaugural Pell Center prize will be announced in the coming months.

“This is great news for the Pell Center and Salve Regina University,” said Jim Ludes, executive director of the Pell Center. “We’ve worked for nearly a year with our partners to organize a public program that begins with a day-long event this April and then continues with on-going research and programming that will both celebrate ethical storytelling and expose abuses. We’re very grateful to RICH for their generous support.”

G. Wayne Miller, a Providence Journal journalist, filmmaker and author, is co-directing Story in the Public Square as a visiting fellow at the Pell Center. “RICH’s support is a difference-maker for us,” he said. “Their long record of support for great projects in the humanities is a real validation of our work. We’re looking forward to the event on April 12th with real excitement and expectation.”

Additional details about the program, the Pell Center Prize, and a contest for college students will be released in the coming weeks. 

For up to the minute news on Story in the Public Square, follow @pubstory on Twitter.

The use of storytelling in the public square is as old as politics. On April 12, a panel assembling at the Pell Center will examine contemporary story-telling in the public square from many perspectives. Each panelist will be asked to share their experiences in story-telling: the impact, the reach, the perils, and the promise of this time-honored element of public dialogue. Each will be asked to explore the importance of veracity in their work. Finally, each will be asked to discuss, briefly, the best example, from their perspective, of storytelling in modern American political discourse.

Moderator for the event will be Karen Bordeleau, acting executive editor at the Providence Journal. Panelists will include: James Vincent, NAACP Providence; Christopher B. Daily, Boston University; Karen Thompson Walker, best-selling author of The Age of Miracles; Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz, University of Rhode Island; and David Boeri, WBUR.

Also planned on April 12 will be a screening of “Coming Home,” followed by a panel discussion: “War Stories.” War has been a central narrative of the human experience since before Homer’s Iliad. For Americans, the latest chapters have come since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In the 11 years since those attacks, nearly 50 southeastern New Englanders have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands of veterans have returned forever changed.

In the hour-long documentary, “Coming Home,” the Providence Journal tells the deeply intimate stories of several who served, and the after-effects of combat on them and their loved ones. “Coming Home” was broadcast on PBS, and shown at the 2012 Roving Eye and Rhode Island International Film Festivals and other venues. “Coming Home” was nominated in 2012 for a New England Emmy and won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award.

Moderator for the panel discussion will be Donna Harrington-Lueker, Salve Regina University. Panelists will include John DiRaimo, Rhode Island National Guard; Iraq War veteran Lt. Col Denis J. Riel, Rhode Island Air National Guard, Director of Air Staff, Deputy Chief of Joint Staff, Rhode Island National Guard, and a war veteran of Iraq; Bob Kerr, Providence Journal columnist, narrator of “Coming Home;” Marine Corps combat veteran of Vietnam; The Hon. Elizabeth Roberts, lieutenant governor of Rhode Island; and G. Wayne Miller, Providence Journal.

'Asad' gets Oscar Nod for Best Live Action Short

The extraordinary short film, 'Asad,' winner of the Grand Prize at the 2012 Rhode Island International Film Festival, has been nominated for an Academy Award. Congrats to the filmmakers and may they win. I can attest to the power, creativity and originality of this beautiful film: I was on the jury for this past summer's Rhode Island festival, and I gave it my highest marks.

The Station in winter

Since the fire that killed 100 people ten years ago this February, I have visited the scene of the Station Nightclub fire in West Warwick, R.I., dozens of times, in every season. I have walked this sacred ground where these lives ended, and been transfixed every time. The site adjoins a busy road, but it always seems appropriately solemn, quiet, save for the wind that always seems to blow.

But with its clear if pale light, and the contrast of white snow against crosses and mementos, winter has always been most moving. With the settlement last year of a land dispute, the way has been cleared for a long-sought formal memorial, which one day will rise where these remembrances are now. Here are some recent photographs of the site: in January, 2013.

 

Soon: Story in the Public Square

With the New Year comes intensified planning for the Story in the Public Square initiative, at Salve Regina University's Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy in Newport, Rhode Island. The Story website will go live shortly, and we will soon have announcements on the program for Story's first all-day conference, April 12, at Salve -- the student contest, our distinguished panelists, the keynote speaker and more. Story Day will be free and open to all -- the general public, students, journalists, writers, filmmakers, etc. -- but advance registration will be required, details soon....

While our website is not yet live, we do have our Twitter account and you are welcome to add it to your list: @pubstory

Some background on the Story initiative --  celebrating and studying public story telling in American politics, as we call it -- came in a lecture I gave last fall at the Pell Center. The lecture was covered in The Mosaic, Salve Regina University's Independent Student Voice.

'HUMAN HANDS' now an audiobook

January 4, 2013 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BOSTON –– Crossroad Press is pleased to announce release of the audiobook of the critically acclaimed THE WORK OF HUMAN HANDS, by G. Wayne Miller, a timeless medical journey through pioneering surgeon Dr. Hardy Hendren’s legendary operating room that the Los Angeles Times called “impossible to forget.”

Set at Boston Children’s Hospital, which U.S. News & World Report consistently rates as America’s best children’s hospital, THE WORK OF HUMAN HANDS is also available for the first time in digital format. These editions include a new introduction and expanded epilogue updating readers on Hendren and patient Lucy Moore today.

The central narrative remains an epic story of struggle against seemingly impossible odds as Hendren faces one of his biggest challenges: Lucy Moore, a fourteen-month-old girl born with life-threatening defects of the heart, central nervous system and genitourinary system. Before Hendren, surgeons regarded Lucy's condition as fatal.

But at the hands of master surgeon Hendren, she will go on to lead a normal life. And Hendren is aided in that quest by Aldo R. Castaneda, the pioneering cardiac surgeon, and R. Michael Scott, the internationally renowned neurosurgeon. Hendren, Castaneda and Scott are all affiliated with the Harvard Medical School.

The Work of Human Hands is also the story of a revered hospital, its lore, its people and their remarkable accomplishments – an example of the best of health care in America. Poignant and dramatic, lively and engrossing, with breathtaking insight into the craft of surgery, The Work of Human Hands is medical and literary journalism at its best.

“At a time when TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy and ER win huge followings for their stories, The Work of Human Hands stands out as a real-life medical drama with a cast of uniquely colorful characters,” said Crossroad publisher David N. Wilson. “We are thrilled to publish these new editions of the classic Work of Human Hands.”

Today, Lucy Moore, the 14-month-old baby who spent nearly 24 hours on Hendren’s operating table is a college graduate, fully healed and living a normal life.

Hendren performed his last surgery in 2004, when he was 78 years old, but he continues to work full-time on his non-profit W. Hardy Hendren Education Foundation for Pediatric Surgery and Urology. He still receives some of the world’s most prestigious medical honors, most recently the Jacobson Innovation Award of the American College of Surgeons, in June 2012.

The publisher and author are donating a portion of the proceeds from this edition of The Work of Human Hands to the Hendren Foundation.

The audiobook is available at audible.com. The digital edition is available at Kindle/Amazon, at the Crossroad Press Digital store, on Barnes &Noble.com's Nook, iTunes, Sony, Kobo and at Overdrive.com and EBSCO for libraries.

Praise for The Work of Human Hands:

“A song of suffering and redemption that is harrowing to read and impossible to forget... Only rarely does a work of nonfiction equal or surpass the novel in the art of story-telling, the play of emotion and the sheer grandeur of human spirit... To this short list, I must add The Work of Human Hands.”

–– Los Angeles Times

“Mr. Miller reminds us that in the hands of visionary and dedicated doctors, miracles still happen.”

––  New York Times Book Review

“At a time when so many books are telling us what is wrong with American medicine, it’s nice to see one that tells us what’s good about those who provide our care.”

–– Library Journal

“The sheer drama of it all is gripping throughout.”

–– Vermont Sunday Magazine

 G. Wayne Miller is a staff writer at The Providence Journal, a documentary filmmaker, and the author of three novels, three short story collections and seven books of non-fiction, including THE XENO CHRONICLES: Two Years on the Frontier of Medicine Inside Harvard’s Transplant Research Lab and KING OF HEARTS: The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery. He has been honored for his writing more than 40 times and was a member of the Providence Journal team that was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service. Three documentaries he wrote and co-produced have been broadcast on PBS, including The Providence Journal’s COMING HOME, about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nominated in 2012 for a New England Emmy and winner of a regional Edward R. Murrow Award. Miller is Visiting Fellow at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center, in Newport, R.I., and a co-founder of the Pell Center’s Story in the Public Square program, @pubstory Visit him at www.gwaynemiller.com

For more information and author interviews, please contact David Niall Wilson, publisher@crossroadpress.com or tel. 252-340-3952. Visit www.crossroadpress.com

For interviews with Dr. Hendren, please send an email to eaglepeakmedia@yahoo.com

Crossroad Press / 141 Brayden Dr. / Hertford, NC 27944

An Open Letter to Media-bashers

I have been a journalist nearly all my adult life: since 1978, when, having just turned 24, I took my first job as a reporter at a small newspaper in Massachusetts. So I am not new to criticism of the media. I have mostly welcomed it, particularly the constructive criticisms, which motivate me and my colleagues to strive to improve what we do. Critics help us be accountable.

But in recent years, a particularly strident criticism of a so-called monolithic “mainstream media” has flourished on certain blogs, talk shows and social media sites -- and even on the reader comment sections of many of these same “mainstream media” outlets, including my own. People are exercising their First Amendment rights, which is a good thing.

What is not a good thing is commentary that holds the “mainstream media” to be comprised of lying scoundrels pushing a traitorous agenda, to put it bluntly. Not nearly as bluntly as some of the rants I’ve witnessed, but, yes, bluntly.

My educated guess is that I have known many more members of the media -- personally and professionally -- than any of these critics, some of whom embrace the cowardly approach of anonymous commentary. I have worked for almost 35 years with journalists, hundreds in total, and thus have been intimately exposed to their methods, their personalities and their beliefs. Some are now at large outlets, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. Some remain at regional or local companies. Many sit alongside me today at 75 Fountain St., Providence, R.I. A few have left the profession.

I do not know of a single one who has lied in his or her journalism or pushed an unsavory agenda. More on agenda in a moment.

Do we in the media make mistakes? Yes, just as mechanics, lawyers, clerks and pretty much everybody makes mistakes. People are fallible.

Should we be called on these mistakes? Of course. And we are, regularly.

Every newspaper with which I am familiar not only accepts corrections but solicits them. My own, The Providence Journal, runs a notice every day on page 2 stating that we willingly correct all errors (and we do), with instructions on how to report them; daily, we publish letters to the editor and allow readers to post online. Still dissatisfied? You can submit an op-ed piece or demand a meeting with an editor or reporter. Does your local bank or grocer go this far to give you a say?

And when confronted with an error, every reporter I have ever known not only has set the record straight, in print or on air -- in public, and, in the internet era, in perpetuity -- he or she has been embarrassed and troubled at the failure. Then learned from it and moved on, vowing to do better. These are people of honor who would do this.

There is, of course, that handful of actual lying journalists, although, to the best of my knowledge, I am not personally acquainted with any. Nearly all are eventually caught and exiled from the business by –– well, by fellow journalists, the editors who employed them. The most recent example is ex-Cape Cod Times reporter Karen Jeffrey, who was fired by the newspaper late this year when an internal review confirmed that she had fabricated characters and events in several of her stories. What I find most revealing about this episode is that the editor and publisher of The Cape Cod Times not only fired Jeffery, but published a front-page story explaining what had happened and apologizing to their readers. (Disclosure: I worked at The Cape Cod Times from 1979 - 1981, leaving before Jeffrey was hired.) 

This shameful story of one lying reporter at one small newspaper became national news. It did precisely because such instances are so rare.

                                                      **********

Now, about this monolithic “mainstream media.”

There is no such thing. There never was. As long as the First Amendment holds, there never will be.

True, there are outlets that generally favor certain stories and political philosophies over others. Fox v. MSNBC is a well-known example. But is this monolithic when America has thousands of publications and broadcast outlets -- and now, in the Internet era, so many blogs and web sites -- each with its own raison d'être, and each managed by different local owners, parent companies, or regional and national chains? Hardly. If you want monolithic “mainstream media,” look to North Korea, Iran or the old Soviet Union, not here. Different blood runs through American veins, and has since before our independence was declared.

The American press took root at a time, the late 1700s and early 1800s, when the primary goal of many editors and writers -- perhaps most -- was to advance specific politics, not offer balance, opposing points of view, or even what we now call news. Thomas Paine’s pamphlets and other publications relentlessly pushed independence from England; in New York, the Gazeteer espoused loyalty to the crown. The Founding Fathers adopted the Bill of Rights with the realization that a free press meant that those who managed and owned the presses (they were literally that: printing presses) would continue with their overtly partisan writing. And they did, as Hamiltonian readers of Federalist publications and Jeffersonian readers of Republican papers, two groups frequently at odds, could have attested.

The advent of the telegraph changed journalism, as did the establishment of the Associated Press in 1846, both helping to create the concept of news as we more or less understand it today -- and diluting, if not removing, the agenda-driven philosophy of the late colonial and early republic periods. Later technologies -- radio, TV and digital -- had their profound effects. So did the rising wealth of the industrializing nation, which supported increased advertising revenues, which in turn supported larger and more diverse staffs -- and many more publications, stations, networks, wire services and more. Not exactly a monolith, then or now. (For an exhaustive history of the American press, I recommend Christopher B. Daly’s COVERING AMERICA: A Narrative History of a Nation’s Journalism). 

But, yes, some outlets today do have an agenda, broadly speaking -- an echo, if you will, of the opinionated press that Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington and Madison knew well. Fox offers a conservative view, MSNBC a liberal one; The Wall Street Journal generally speaks for the business community, The New York Times for the intelligentsia, the New York Post for the working man. Is there anyone who follows the news who doesn’t know this? But many more newspapers, magazines and broadcast outlets fall into more neutral territory, with diverse and sometimes conflicting points of view expressed throughout their content –– and pure dogma relegated, for the most part, to columns and the editorial and op-ed sections, clearly identified as such.   

What media-bashers really mean by agenda is: something they read or hear that challenges or refutes their own views. I suspect what they really would like is their own monolith, where opposition did not exist.

This holds true for people on both sides of the political divide, but in my experience, it’s more commonly an assertion by some on the far right. They see a broad conspiracy by large numbers of individual journalists who, they believe, are determined to undermine the nation by promulgating “socialist” policies. They assert that “mainstream media” reporters, editors, publishers and broadcasters want to destroy marriage, swell the welfare rolls, ruin health care, take all the guns away, flood the country with illegal immigrants, over-regulate business, punish the rich, demonize the Republicans, ridicule the conservatives, spread myths about the environment, remove God from everywhere, and the list goes on.

And to that end, they believe that “mainstream” journalists twist, distort and lie. What they really mean is that only members of any medium who are lock-step with their own opinions are truthful.

I have yet to hear a credible explanation of how so many journalists, spread across this sprawling country of 315 million, could conspire on such a scale. Perhaps by their oaths at the annual Skull and Bones gathering? Seriously, if there is one thing I have learned about my colleagues, it’s that virtually without exception, they are stubborn (and sometimes ornery) individualists. If you have ever attended a meeting of a news staff, you know what I mean. Individualism seems to be written into our genes.

Providence Journal newsroom meeting

                                                       **********
With individualism comes conviction. And while there are certainly aimless journalists, most of the many I’ve known hold strong beliefs about important things. They did not get into journalism to achieve celebrity or become rich, Lord knows.

These people I know believe in a well-informed citizenry. They believe in righting wrongs, and in giving voice to the voiceless, and in advancing social justice. They believe in exposing corruption, in explaining new or difficult subjects, in writing what has sometimes been called the first draft of history. They believe in the value of sports, entertainment, the arts, fashion, and good health, fun and food. They believe in the power of storytelling and a journalist's vital role in sustaining the public discourse, our birthright as Americans. They believe in taking readers and viewers (and themselves) to places they ordinarily don’t go. Some put their lives at risk: war correspondents, notably, who believe that only independent reporting gets to the truth.

These are the women and men of the mainstream media I know. They are people of professional integrity engaged in commendable enterprise. In their chosen field, they are disciplined, hard-working, energetic, intellectually curious, skeptical, sometimes cantankerous or tempestuous, and deeply committed to a bedrock principle of our democracy: free speech.

I thank and salute them.

                                                       **********

Some other recent posts of interest:

My Dad and Airplanes.
Some Time in Maine...
The Growing Season: The Story of Frank Beazley.

My Dad and Airplanes

Roger L. Miller as a boy, in the 1920s

My Dad and Airplanes

by G. Wayne Miller

 

I live near an airport. Depending on wind direction and other variables, planes sometimes pass directly over my house as they climb into the sky. If I’m outside, I always look up, marveling at the wonder of flight. I’ve witnessed many amazing developments -- the end of the Cold War, the advent of the digital world, for example -- but except perhaps for space travel, which of course is rooted at Kitty Hawk, none can compare.

I also always think of my father, Roger L. Miller, who died ten years ago today.

Dad was a boy on May 20, 1927, when Charles Lindbergh took off in a single-engine plane from a field near New York City. Thirty-three-and-a-half hours later, he landed in Paris. That boy from a small Massachusetts town who became my father was astounded, like people all over the world. Lindbergh’s pioneering Atlantic crossing inspired him to get into aviation, and he wanted to do big things, maybe captain a plane or even head an airline. But the Great Depression, which forced him from college, diminished that dream. He drove a school bus to pay for trade school, where he became an airplane mechanic, which was his job as a wartime Navy enlisted man and during his entire civilian career. On this modest salary, he and my mother raised a family, sacrificing material things they surely desired.

My father was a smart and gentle man, not prone to harsh judgment, fond of a joke, a lover of newspapers and gardening and birds, chickadees especially. He was robust until a stroke in his 80s sent him to a nursing home, but I never heard him complain during those final, decrepit years. The last time I saw him conscious, he was reading his beloved Boston Globe, his old reading glasses uneven on his nose, from a hospital bed. The morning sun was shining through the window and for a moment, I held the unrealistic hope that he would make it through this latest distress. He died four days later, quietly, I am told. I was not there.

Like others who have lost loved ones, there are conversations I never had with my Dad that I probably should have. But near the end, we did say we loved each other, which was rare (he was, after all, a Yankee). I smoothed his brow and kissed him goodbye.

So on this 10th anniversary, I have no deep regrets. But I do have two impossible wishes.

My first is that Dad could have heard my eulogy, which I began writing that morning by his hospital bed. It spoke of quiet wisdom he imparted to his children, and of the respect and affection family and others held for him. In his modest way, he would have liked to hear it, I bet, for such praise was scarce when he was alive. But that is not how the story goes. We die and leave only memories, a strictly one-way experience. 

My second wish would be to tell Dad how his only son has fared in the last decade. I know he would have empathy for some bad times I went through and be proud that I made it. He would be happy that I found a woman I love: someone, like him, who loves gardening and birds. He would be pleased that my three children are making their way in the world, and that he now has two great-granddaughters, wonderful little girls both. In his humble way, he would be honored to know how frequently I, my sisters and my children remember and miss him. But that is not how the story goes, either. We send thoughts to the dead, but the experience is one-way. We treasure photographs, but they do not speak.

Lately, I have been poring through boxes of black-and-white prints handed down from Dad’s side of my family. I am lucky to have them, more so that they were taken in the pre-digital age -- for I can touch them, as the people captured in them surely themselves did so long ago. I can imagine what they might say, if in fact they could speak.

Some of the scenes are unfamiliar to me: sailboats on a bay, a stream in winter, a couple posing on a hill, the woman dressed in fur-trimmed coat. But I recognize the house, which my grandfather, for whom I am named, built with his farmer’s hands; the coal stove that still heated the kitchen when I visited as a child; the birdhouses and flower gardens, which my sweet grandmother lovingly tended. I recognize my father, my uncle and my aunts, just children then in the 1920s. I peer at Dad in these portraits (he seems always to be smiling!), and the resemblance to photos of me at that age is startling, though I suppose it should not be.

A plane will fly over my house today, I am certain. When it does, I will go outside and think of young Dad, amazed that someone had taken the controls of an airplane in America and stepped out in France. A boy with a smile, his life all ahead of him.

A version of this essay appeared on the op-ed page of The Providence Journal on Dec.12, 2012.

Some time in Maine as winter approaches...

Spent a few days on Deer Isle, one of my favorite places, and the setting for much of the novel I have been writing for years. Literally, for years. So I wrote some more, and I explored, and I kept a pictorial travelogue, in five parts, links below.

The sun sets on Dunham Point.

For more scenes from Dunham, click here.

Mink, the off-season Isle Au Haut mailboat, only link to mainland.

For a visit to the truly remote town of Isle Au Haut (year-round pop. 45 ), click here.

Graves at Greenwood Cemetery, in Oceanville.

For more scenes from this most unusual cemetery, click here.

On the road from the village of  Deer Isle.

 For more scenes around the island and Stonington, click here.

Unloading lobster gear at the end of the day.

 For more scenes on the commercial wharf at Stonington, click here.

End of the day, commercial wharf, Stonington, Maine.

Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2012, as the sun heads down. For more scenes from my Deer Isle travelogue, click here.

Almost everyone wears orange.

And many lobstermen have beards.

 

One of many boats.

A lobsterlady.

A dangerous profession.

On shore, The Opera House, primarily a cinema these days.

Buckets of bait.