Veteran Tampa print journalist Joe Brown had his epiphany moment two years ago. He was on holiday and riding the commuter elevated train in Chicago, his home town. As per custom, he was settling in with the Chicago Tribune.
At some point, he took a token glance around. Then he did a double take. The car was fairly crowded, but he was the only one reading a newspaper. Seemingly everybody else was on a cell phone or an iPod. Brown acknowledged the uncomfortable metaphor. The Chicago El was a fast-tracking extension of the wired global village, and he was an anachronistic, inky elder.
“I really saw the handwriting on the wall that day,” underscores Brown, 59. Indeed, by last October he was another casualty of the Tampa Tribune’s Web-first strategy and out of a job – the one he had held for 15 years on the Trib’s editorial board.
Brown was the only African-American on that board and its highest-profile editorialist. He had been hired – from the Iowa City Press Citizen – in 1993 by Ed Roberts, the Trib’s former editorial page editor, who had been looking for that most challenging of journalistic hires: a conservative minority. That’s what he got in the hulking, six-foot, 1-inch, 250-pound, former defensive back for the University of Iowa. An African-American who once changed barbers because of his antipathy toward gangsta rap – and has been known to refer to BET as “Booty Every Time.”
The good-natured, generally right-of-center Brown would prove to be outspoken – especially on matters of public policy – as well as well-spoken. He became a go-to panelist on local television, notably WEDU’s “Florida This Week.” He could be called an “Uncle Tom” – and worse – by the NAACP because of his opposition to forced busing for integration. And he could be called a “grievance black racist” – and a lot worse – by those taking offense at his linkage of slavery and the Confederate flag. He became a fixture in the community, one that was 50 per cent black and Hispanic. He was a coup.
“Joe was very versatile,” recalls the now-retired Roberts, who won a Pulitzer Prize with the National Observer in the 1970s. “Always accurate in his facts and logical in his arguments. He’s one of my favorite people. A gentle giant. When he was let go, I was devastated.”
Former editorial board colleague Diane Egner remembers an invaluable point of view, one grounded in a black, working class, Chicago-neighborhood upbringing, that Brown brought to the Trib table.
“Joe Brown brought a perspective – and community contacts – that the rest of us just didn’t have,” says Egner, now the publisher of the Tampa Bay weekly online magazine 83 Degrees. “He was also a deep thinker and a professional man to the T.
“His (Sunday) column was excellent,” adds Egner. “He probably got more feedback on that than anyone else on the board.”
But respect, perspective and feedback were guarantees of nothing — in an industry being buffeted by tectonic shifts in communications and news delivery. Brown was hardly insulated from the rippling effect of the brave, new digital world wreaking havoc on newspapers. You didn’t have to be an industry insider to know that “browser” wasn’t a synonym for “reader” and that Craigslist was an ad-revenue siphon.
Or to see that downsizing meant more than a literally smaller product. In the case of the Trib, Brown saw his Media General employer jettison — among many others — colorful columnist Dan Ruth, its most recognizable voice; Kurt Loft, its Renaissance-man writer; and Op/Ed Editor Nancy Gordon, his close, personal friend.
He also winced when he thought of the implications for American democracy. “It’s very scary,” he warns. “You now have government with fewer people looking over their shoulder. And I have major concerns about an electorate used to getting things in sound bites.”
But even amid the grim-reaper visitations and attendant paranoia at the Trib, Brown was still taken aback when his number was up in the fall.
He remembers the foreboding chronology. Working under a cloud of rumor-mongering was taking a toll. It was no secret that Roberts had been Brown’s mentor and friend. Nor was it a secret that Roberts’ successor, Rosemary Goudreau, was neither. Morale was in free fall. Moreover, nothing had been assigned to him for the 2008 primaries, a sure signal that he was now odd-man out on the board. Then one day he noticed a human resources person slip into Goudreau’s office. Then he got called in.
“I felt sucker-punched,” he says. “Then my reaction was relief. The job had stopped being fun. So, now on to the next phase of my life.”
Easier said than lived. Belying a low-key, affable demeanor was a gut feeling more akin to “bitter and resentful,” Brown concedes.
He took a buyout. Filed for unemployment compensation. Rolled his 401K into an IRA. Then began tapping into it. Then tried dipping into the freelance writers’ pool.
His future, he knows, is not in journalism as he knew it. More like some combination of freelance and — even more likely — public relations.
But then politics could come calling. Maybe.
Imagine in today’s polarized political environment, what it could be worth to the right -but not far right — conservative to have Joe Brown on staff — and out front? An African-American who will quote Bill Cosby and Thomas Sowell and call out racial hucksters, even if they have “Rev.” in front of their name. An African-American who can talk civil rights without sounding like a one-man grievance committee. An African-American who can make the case for vouchers as easily as he can vouch for fiscal conservatism. And, lest he be too typecast, an African-American who thinks blacks are “too conservative” on gay rights.
Brown’s take? “It makes sense,” he agrees. Then adds a caveat you knew was coming. “I could do that,” he emphasizes, “but only if I sensed I wasn’t merely being a tool.”
Joe Brown lost his job, not his integrity.
The Brown Soapbox
* “If you’re born poor, it means you have to work harder.”
* “People that impressed me from (editorial board) interviews? Right off the top, I’d say Bill Nelson, Connie Mack, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. Not so much: Bob Graham. Maybe he had done too many. And Mel Martinez. Seemed robotic and formulaic. Locally, I’ve been impressed with Les Miller and (city council candidate) Randy Barron.”
* “We (newspapers) still have a critical role with elections. We do a lot of the dirty work the average voter doesn’t do. We take time to analyze the Amendments.”
* “There’s no mass movement for a city-county mayor. But it should be debated. It’ll probably get on the ballot, and it might pass. If it does, I know who I would endorse. Pam Iorio.”
* “I think it’s good to have the light-rail option, but I think it’s being oversold. You need to know all the costs, how many people will ride it and what does the train connect to when you get off?”
* “I’d give President Obama “A” for effort. Maybe it’s too much too soon. He’s definitely trying to bring about change.”
* “The Supreme Court made the right call in the New Haven firefighters case. You can’t throw out a test because you don’t like the results. Diversity is a worthy goal, but that’s no way to achieve it.”
* “Right-wing Christians and black preachers gang up on gays. That’s very discouraging.”
* “One of the most dangerous places to be is between Jesse Jackson and a camera.”
* “I feel free as a black conservative – actually, ‘pragmatist.’ My ‘conservatism,’ if you will, is based on experience. I know what works. If I’m wrong, prove I’m wrong. I can take it. I provide an alternative voice. Like questioning the whole school-busing thing. A lot of black folks agree when it’s their kids being bused.”
* “Busing doesn’t work. And enough about ‘re-segregation.’ That would mean a dual system. Lutz Elementary is 97 per cent white. Is it segregated? Are FAMU and Bethune-Cookman examples of segregated education?”
* “All blacks don’t think the same, but they vote the same in most cases. It’s called being ‘progressive.’”
* “Is this post-racial America? That’s ridiculous. Sure, we have a black president. That’s another step. This is the post-civil rights era. This is something that black advocacy groups have never adjusted to. Never got to Phase II. You’re not advancing if your whole agenda is to find fault.”
Where is Joe Brown today? I’m an old old acquaintance and would love to track him down!