OK, so I’m going to share some feelings. Prepare yourself people. I know not everyone is comfortable with emotion, and some of those happen to be newspaper people. I think in part it’s because we deal with emotional upheavals every day—in the stories of the people we write. Perhaps that’s why reporters carry around that stereotype that we drink and that our lives are, well, a little off track some of the time. A bit of that is true, I know many of us work hard to be part of our communities and have well-intentioned lives. But it takes work. So my feelings this week have to do with the Tucson Weekly staff: our staff writers, and our photography and production team, and everyone else in between—our freelance contributors in the deadtree and our blog, The Range. This past week hasn’t been particularly crazy. We’ve experienced worse. But there’s been enough personal and work trains colliding that it made me take serious pause to recognize how lucky this paper is and how lucky I am to work with them all—people who care about their work and yes, care about Tucson and each person they connect with and write about. They really do. Besides feeling lucky, it gives me hope. You know that Facebook list request that goes out every once in a while about who you want with you for either a good bar fight or the zombie apocalypse? Well, I pick these people (and few more that I depend on). We’d survive, and we’d have a damn good time doing so, despite all that “Walking Dead” has taught us. We’d also probably continue to put out a newspaper just because we’d have to. So look around your office today, folks. Embrace them without violating any HR rules, and go home and hug the others. We’re damn lucky.
— Mari Herreras, mherreras@tucsonweekly.com
This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 1, 2015.
I believe that I wrote something this awful once—in junior high school.
Although I didn’t always (almost never) agreed with Jimmy Boegle, but when he wanted to share some feelings, he wrote this:
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/editors…
My comments followed.
You are a good leader, Mari, for saying these things. We’re all not so lucky – and have crappy managers (note the difference in words) who shit all over us and then expect us to do great work.
Hope your staff appreciates you as much as you appreciate them.
We love her a lot.
You people suck i posted two comments and they were removed…just shows how truly racist you are only Whites and Mexicans allowed.
In a badly written sentence Tina rants:
“You people suck i posted two comments and they were removed…just shows how truly racist you are only Whites and Mexicans allowed.’
If you read some of my past comments you can note that I don’t suffer the fools at the TW gladly. I was even (temporarily) “banned” once for tweaking a past editor and bruising his feelings.
Clearly, I haven’t seen the posts that you refer to; perhaps there was some indication in them. If so, I apologize; otherwise, it appears that I have not given TW staff enough credit. For them to glean that you are neither white nor brown displays remarkable clairvoyance.