Haneisen: Farewell Daily News, my adventure takes me elsewhere

Friday
Jan 5, 2018 at 6:14 PM Jan 6, 2018 at 1:57 PM

Rob Haneisen Daily News Staff @Rob_HaneisenMW

It was a rare moment of quiet in the newsroom on Monday, Jan. 1, as I was the lone staffer in our new building at 1 Speen St. for several hours. It was as good a time as any to draft my farewell column. Friday, Jan. 5, is my last day at the MetroWest Daily News and as a fulltime journalist. It’s been a 24-year journey, one that I kind of stumbled into and then was pushed into by college professors, editors and the people I wrote about throughout my career in Georgia, Florida and Massachusetts.

Some journalists enter this field full of visions of exposing government corruption, fighting for public access to information and protecting one of the more valuable tenets of our democracy: a free press. Honestly, that wasn’t me. I was in it for the stories.

My first exposure to newspapers was as a 10-year-old delivery boy in Fitchburg, hustling copies of the Sentinel & Enterprise to doorsteps from a cloth bag wrapped around the handlebars of my BMX bike. I don’t think I ever read a page of that paper, I was in it for the tips stuffed into weekly subscription envelopes that I used buy WWII airplane models and later, Dungeons & Dragons books.

I was always a bit of a science geek so it made sense to major in pre-med microbiology when I started college. A year-long break from college to train as a medic in an infantry unit for the Army reserve gave me some practical experience but being out of New England and seeing how rich this country can be with stories gave me pause to consider my options – and one with a shorter period of time spent in a classroom. I switched majors to English with a concentration in professional writing.

I started writing columns for my college newspaper and I think simply because I was a year older and had some military maturity pounded into me I was given an editor post. An internship at the Telegram & Gazette showed me what newspapers were really all about and there were things I immediately loved: it was something different every day, the rapid pace and turn around of the daily grind and access and insight into the lives of strangers.

I was still reading a lot of Ernest Hemingway at the time – probably too much – and harbored delusions of being off in the world as a writer. A college professor, Dr. Tom Murray at Fitchburg State set me straight – you can still be a writer in your own time but this journalism job, you can do that now.

And so I did. I liked that it was difficult work, trying to write something that could always be improved. I liked the rush of pushing a story on deadline. I liked the access journalists get to important people, scenes of tragedy or moments of triumph. We get to be witnesses and I’d be lying if I said the emotion of any event I covered simply washed over me. Journalists absorb those moments, good and bad. It honors your subjects and sources and helps you write a better story.

I went to Georgia to write my own story, marrying a woman I knew in college and fell for instantly but waited more than a year to actually act on it. The timing actually worked out. There was a job at the local paper in a very rural part of the Deep South in Jesup, Georgia, where she was living.

So I drove nonstop to Georgia. I Interviewed and got the job, confessed my feeling and got my girl and uprooted my life for adventure.

I wrote about farming, covered crime and local politics and wrote columns that sometimes got me in trouble with a very understanding publisher. When I moved on to Florida, it was for another rural, though bigger, newspaper that was then part of the New York Times Regional News Group. For a little more than three years I covered crime and city government, again was happy to write about agriculture and the occasional movie review. Nearly all of my colleagues were not from Florida but throughout the Deep South. The camaraderie in that newsroom formed strong and lasting friendships and we still keep in touch.

In Florida, I covered some truly horrific crime: murders and sex abuse. And there was never really a shortage of breaking news (the real kind, not the breaking news that flashes on the scroll of your TV) such as massive car wrecks, forest fires, floods, tornadoes and hurricanes and the occasional wandering alligator. If you want to cut your teeth in journalism, go to Florida. The rumors are all true.

For more than a dozen years I’ve supervised and coached the news interns here at MetroWest and my consistent piece of advice is this: leave New England, at least for a period of time and be the outsider, get out of your comfort zone. It makes you a better writer and better journalist.

When I came back to New England it was meant as a homecoming but when I took a job at the MetroWest Daily News in 2000 as a reporter covering Framingham I was again the outsider. Even though I grew up a mere 30 miles away from this region the differences are stark. MetroWest is far more affluent and is the most parochial area I have ever known. There’s a point of pride here to trace back family roots and maybe that’s because of the deep national history of New England in general, but especially MetroWest and the Boston suburbs. It’s an odd intersection of people now – ancestral history mixing with a rich round of recent immigrants.

Right away, I loved the stories. Former editor Rus Lodi sent me out on a Tall Ship to chase down a local kid for a feature in one of my first months here. In 2002, I went to Bosnia to report on local troops serving a peacekeeping mission in a region steeped with insurgents linked to the 9/11 attacks. My military background made me curious enough to write about soldiers returning home from the always-prolonged deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan as those wars dragged on.

You never know who will call the newsroom. I picked up the phone in 2004 and listened to the teen son of a Framingham man tell me about his father’s search for a new kidney. Was this a story? It turned into a whole series of stories for several years I wrote about locals looking for kidneys and the people who came forward, amazing complete strangers who wanted to help, and the crisis surrounding the waitlist and shortage of organs for donation.

A common response from some of the people who volunteered to donate one of their kidney’s to Earl Halstead went something like this, “If my dad or husband needed somebody’s help like this, I would hope somebody would come forward.”

I’ll come back to that in a little bit.

As the News shrunk I persisted in various editing roles, all the while trying to preserve my little corner of adventure. I started a blog for local weather reporting (weather geeks unite!) and wrote a blog about gardening. I started a whole series about local classic car owners that included video and for a while I was doing national video reviews of new cars.

Former copy editor Rich Pedroli once told me that if I’m going to write anything lengthy I better give the reader something compelling and visceral.

So, in honor of Rich, who sadly passed away in 2006, here goes.

My life changed when I stood in a pediatric surgical room in Boston in 2005 staring at seven tubes running out of my son’s newly scarred chest and abdomen, the black thread running the length of his sternum. Underneath, his newly assembled heart pumped away thanks to some plastic, cow parts and a gifted surgeon’s hand. Tape kept more tubes attached to his face and the doctors explained to my wife and I that they were upping his pain meds because he was struggling a bit against his restraints. He was 5 weeks old.

I think mothers grow an attachment to their children before they are even born. They grow inside them and bear them full of love whereas Dads have an "aha" moment where the magnitude of fatherhood and the emotional attachment that comes with it is something that either builds over time or slaps you in the face. One of my closest friends once confided in me that you don’t really love your child at first – you’ve just met this little person – but at some point you really will. He was right.

Isaac was born with Down syndrome and was later diagnosed with autism. He is the most important part of my life and my wife’s life. He’s a healthy 12 and he needs the equal parenting of both his parents now more than ever. Working an hour away from home for long and often odd hours is not the kind of parent or husband I really set out to be so now is the time to change that.

About a year ago my wife wrote an article for Bay State Parent magazine when she was freelancing about shared living. In essence you open your home to have an adult with disabilities live with you as a member of your family. You become a caretaker and your family expands. We know that our son will likely outlive us and we honestly don’t know where he might live when we are gone or no longer able to care for him. Shared living would be the best outcome for him.

Which brings me back to Earl Halstead.

What my wife and I want for our son’s future we have the opportunity to do now for someone else. So if we hope somebody will do this for Isaac why shouldn’t we do the same? Karma, some reciprocal balance of energy in the universe, is a little too cute of a concept for me and I’m not religious. So my motivation is more practical and rational: I believe that people, by nature, are good and that good acts lead to others.

Journalism has taught me much in the past 24 years and there are countless people who have had a guiding hand in my life along the way. It would be impossible to name them all so I’ll just say thank you to all the editors who heard my story pitches and helped me become a better manager; the copy editors who really showed me how to write better and taught me how to be a teacher; the photographers and designers who brightened my words and the work of my staff with images and layouts that shined; and my fellow journalists who chase stories big and small every day.

Journalists don’t just reflect life, we interpret, deduce, diagnose and offer options by finding different viewpoints and opinions. Newsprint may be in black and white but life has a whole lot more color to it. That’s a mantra I’ll take with me in my next adventure.

Rob Haneisen is the former Deputy Director of Multimedia for GateHouse Media and can be reached at haneisenwrites@gmail.com and on Twitter @Rob_Haneisen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday
Jan 5, 2018 at 6:14 PM Jan 6, 2018 at 1:57 PM

Rob Haneisen Daily News Staff @Rob_HaneisenMW

It was a rare moment of quiet in the newsroom on Monday, Jan. 1, as I was the lone staffer in our new building at 1 Speen St. for several hours. It was as good a time as any to draft my farewell column. Friday, Jan. 5, is my last day at the MetroWest Daily News and as a fulltime journalist. It’s been a 24-year journey, one that I kind of stumbled into and then was pushed into by college professors, editors and the people I wrote about throughout my career in Georgia, Florida and Massachusetts.

Some journalists enter this field full of visions of exposing government corruption, fighting for public access to information and protecting one of the more valuable tenets of our democracy: a free press. Honestly, that wasn’t me. I was in it for the stories.

My first exposure to newspapers was as a 10-year-old delivery boy in Fitchburg, hustling copies of the Sentinel & Enterprise to doorsteps from a cloth bag wrapped around the handlebars of my BMX bike. I don’t think I ever read a page of that paper, I was in it for the tips stuffed into weekly subscription envelopes that I used buy WWII airplane models and later, Dungeons & Dragons books.

I was always a bit of a science geek so it made sense to major in pre-med microbiology when I started college. A year-long break from college to train as a medic in an infantry unit for the Army reserve gave me some practical experience but being out of New England and seeing how rich this country can be with stories gave me pause to consider my options – and one with a shorter period of time spent in a classroom. I switched majors to English with a concentration in professional writing.

I started writing columns for my college newspaper and I think simply because I was a year older and had some military maturity pounded into me I was given an editor post. An internship at the Telegram & Gazette showed me what newspapers were really all about and there were things I immediately loved: it was something different every day, the rapid pace and turn around of the daily grind and access and insight into the lives of strangers.

I was still reading a lot of Ernest Hemingway at the time – probably too much – and harbored delusions of being off in the world as a writer. A college professor, Dr. Tom Murray at Fitchburg State set me straight – you can still be a writer in your own time but this journalism job, you can do that now.

And so I did. I liked that it was difficult work, trying to write something that could always be improved. I liked the rush of pushing a story on deadline. I liked the access journalists get to important people, scenes of tragedy or moments of triumph. We get to be witnesses and I’d be lying if I said the emotion of any event I covered simply washed over me. Journalists absorb those moments, good and bad. It honors your subjects and sources and helps you write a better story.

I went to Georgia to write my own story, marrying a woman I knew in college and fell for instantly but waited more than a year to actually act on it. The timing actually worked out. There was a job at the local paper in a very rural part of the Deep South in Jesup, Georgia, where she was living.

So I drove nonstop to Georgia. I Interviewed and got the job, confessed my feeling and got my girl and uprooted my life for adventure.

I wrote about farming, covered crime and local politics and wrote columns that sometimes got me in trouble with a very understanding publisher. When I moved on to Florida, it was for another rural, though bigger, newspaper that was then part of the New York Times Regional News Group. For a little more than three years I covered crime and city government, again was happy to write about agriculture and the occasional movie review. Nearly all of my colleagues were not from Florida but throughout the Deep South. The camaraderie in that newsroom formed strong and lasting friendships and we still keep in touch.

In Florida, I covered some truly horrific crime: murders and sex abuse. And there was never really a shortage of breaking news (the real kind, not the breaking news that flashes on the scroll of your TV) such as massive car wrecks, forest fires, floods, tornadoes and hurricanes and the occasional wandering alligator. If you want to cut your teeth in journalism, go to Florida. The rumors are all true.

For more than a dozen years I’ve supervised and coached the news interns here at MetroWest and my consistent piece of advice is this: leave New England, at least for a period of time and be the outsider, get out of your comfort zone. It makes you a better writer and better journalist.

When I came back to New England it was meant as a homecoming but when I took a job at the MetroWest Daily News in 2000 as a reporter covering Framingham I was again the outsider. Even though I grew up a mere 30 miles away from this region the differences are stark. MetroWest is far more affluent and is the most parochial area I have ever known. There’s a point of pride here to trace back family roots and maybe that’s because of the deep national history of New England in general, but especially MetroWest and the Boston suburbs. It’s an odd intersection of people now – ancestral history mixing with a rich round of recent immigrants.

Right away, I loved the stories. Former editor Rus Lodi sent me out on a Tall Ship to chase down a local kid for a feature in one of my first months here. In 2002, I went to Bosnia to report on local troops serving a peacekeeping mission in a region steeped with insurgents linked to the 9/11 attacks. My military background made me curious enough to write about soldiers returning home from the always-prolonged deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan as those wars dragged on.

You never know who will call the newsroom. I picked up the phone in 2004 and listened to the teen son of a Framingham man tell me about his father’s search for a new kidney. Was this a story? It turned into a whole series of stories for several years I wrote about locals looking for kidneys and the people who came forward, amazing complete strangers who wanted to help, and the crisis surrounding the waitlist and shortage of organs for donation.

A common response from some of the people who volunteered to donate one of their kidney’s to Earl Halstead went something like this, “If my dad or husband needed somebody’s help like this, I would hope somebody would come forward.”

I’ll come back to that in a little bit.

As the News shrunk I persisted in various editing roles, all the while trying to preserve my little corner of adventure. I started a blog for local weather reporting (weather geeks unite!) and wrote a blog about gardening. I started a whole series about local classic car owners that included video and for a while I was doing national video reviews of new cars.

Former copy editor Rich Pedroli once told me that if I’m going to write anything lengthy I better give the reader something compelling and visceral.

So, in honor of Rich, who sadly passed away in 2006, here goes.

My life changed when I stood in a pediatric surgical room in Boston in 2005 staring at seven tubes running out of my son’s newly scarred chest and abdomen, the black thread running the length of his sternum. Underneath, his newly assembled heart pumped away thanks to some plastic, cow parts and a gifted surgeon’s hand. Tape kept more tubes attached to his face and the doctors explained to my wife and I that they were upping his pain meds because he was struggling a bit against his restraints. He was 5 weeks old.

I think mothers grow an attachment to their children before they are even born. They grow inside them and bear them full of love whereas Dads have an "aha" moment where the magnitude of fatherhood and the emotional attachment that comes with it is something that either builds over time or slaps you in the face. One of my closest friends once confided in me that you don’t really love your child at first – you’ve just met this little person – but at some point you really will. He was right.

Isaac was born with Down syndrome and was later diagnosed with autism. He is the most important part of my life and my wife’s life. He’s a healthy 12 and he needs the equal parenting of both his parents now more than ever. Working an hour away from home for long and often odd hours is not the kind of parent or husband I really set out to be so now is the time to change that.

About a year ago my wife wrote an article for Bay State Parent magazine when she was freelancing about shared living. In essence you open your home to have an adult with disabilities live with you as a member of your family. You become a caretaker and your family expands. We know that our son will likely outlive us and we honestly don’t know where he might live when we are gone or no longer able to care for him. Shared living would be the best outcome for him.

Which brings me back to Earl Halstead.

What my wife and I want for our son’s future we have the opportunity to do now for someone else. So if we hope somebody will do this for Isaac why shouldn’t we do the same? Karma, some reciprocal balance of energy in the universe, is a little too cute of a concept for me and I’m not religious. So my motivation is more practical and rational: I believe that people, by nature, are good and that good acts lead to others.

Journalism has taught me much in the past 24 years and there are countless people who have had a guiding hand in my life along the way. It would be impossible to name them all so I’ll just say thank you to all the editors who heard my story pitches and helped me become a better manager; the copy editors who really showed me how to write better and taught me how to be a teacher; the photographers and designers who brightened my words and the work of my staff with images and layouts that shined; and my fellow journalists who chase stories big and small every day.

Journalists don’t just reflect life, we interpret, deduce, diagnose and offer options by finding different viewpoints and opinions. Newsprint may be in black and white but life has a whole lot more color to it. That’s a mantra I’ll take with me in my next adventure.

Rob Haneisen is the former Deputy Director of Multimedia for GateHouse Media and can be reached at haneisenwrites@gmail.com and on Twitter @Rob_Haneisen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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