Origins of The Independent

“It is always a bad business to try and explain yourself on paper – at least all at once – but when you work as a journalist and sign your name in black ink on white paper above everything you write, that is the business you are in, good or bad… You will be flogged for being right and flogged for being wrong, and it hurts both ways – but it doesn’t hurt as much as when you’re right.”

Hunter S. Thompson

Generation of Swine

            Hunter Thompson once called journalism “a low trade and a habit worse than heroin,” and after more than four years as a reporter I finally realized how deeply my trade had sunk its claws into my hide and wrapped itself around my bones; to the point where it would take a team of surgeons armed with chainsaws and razor-sharp scalpels to free me from this vile habit.

             Like most junkies, I didn’t realize how deep my addiction to seeing my name in print had immersed itself in my life until about a week after I left the Times & Courier, and I was no longer getting my daily fix. It’s like Tom Waits once said, “I don’t have a drinking problem until I can’t get a drink.” The only difference was my addiction wasn’t to drugs, pornography, gambling or booze, it was to ink and newsprint.

            There comes a point in every junkie’s life when “rock bottom” is no longer just a catch phrase and suddenly becomes your new reality. Maybe it’s selling your body outside of the local pharmacy for a bottle of NyQuil, or maybe it’s something worse. It didn’t take long after I cleaned out my desk and started living my life off deadline that I careened into the rock bottom.

            It was as I was lying in the waning pool of light at the bottom of the abyss that the idea to start an independently owned and operated source for local news took hold.

            When I first started at the Times & Courier I loved the idea of working for an independently owned newspaper that was founded by people that love the news business. I thrived on the feeling that I was swimming against the tide of the corprotocracy’s slow devouring of the nation’s independent media. In my mind every story I wrote was another victory for the little guy, another nail pounded into the corporate media’s coffin.

When the Times & Courier sold I wrestled with the decision to leave with Paul Della Valle and Karen Sharpe and start my own paper, but friends and family convinced me that new ownership would provide me with a great steppingstone in my career as a journalist. After a while the better benefits and the siren-song possibility of working for a large daily, also owned by the corporate beast I was now indebted to, were too strong to ignore. So I said, ‘Fuck it,’ and took a big gulp of the Kool-Aid.

            (One of life’s little lessons: Never drink the beast’s Kool-Aid, it’s always poisoned. The flavor might change, the hand pouring it might look different and someone will always be there to tell you how sweet it is, but every glass is tainted with choking amounts of pride.)

            On my way out the door of the Times & Courier I offered to write a column and do some stringer work to feed the giant monkey on my back, but I was told I’d have to choose. Either write a column or cover the news; I wouldn’t be allowed to do both.

            After four years of being whipped like a rented mule, I was still being told what I could and couldn’t write and finally I just decided enough was enough, and decided to start The Local Independent, something that had been festering in my head for years.

            A place where people could get news where there are no chat-room allegiances between the writer and the crooked politicians he claims to cover, hiding behind the guise of fair and balanced reporting; a place where local political junkies can go for their latest fix of local politics to see the breathtaking displays of nepotism behind certain appointments. In short, a place that is run the way an independent community newspaper should be run, where every story is a headfirst plunge into the breach.

            For those of us that spend our time swimming out in the Clinton Political Shark Tank, I’ve set up Swimming with Sharks as an editorial portion of the site. But be careful for God’s sake, it’s deep out here, the waters are treacherous and there are monsters lingering just outside the prying fingers of light, just waiting to tear people limb from limb with rows of razor-sharp teeth and staring cold black eyes.  

            I wrestled with writing this for a long time; friends told me I was a fool to burn a bridge, but like most junkies when the opportunity to torch a friend or relationship to feed an addiction comes along the first instinct is to grab a can of gasoline and a road flare. If I do this right, and I offer no guarantees that I will or can, the flames from the bridges I may have to burn will brighten the nighttime sky and the charred wreckage will stretch for miles. I won’t pretend to offer any plastic apologies for my actions and I won’t beg forgiveness, you see, I’m an addict and we’re a dangerous and unpredictable bunch…