Ten days ago, I toured our Gwinnett printing plant and experienced an unexpected thrill.
Midway through the tour, Vice President Joe McKinnon disappeared behind one of the giant presses and returned with Sunday's Living & Arts section. The cover featured "True Confessions of a Crime Writer," a story I'd written for our award-winning feature, Personal Journeys.
It was the first time in nearly 25 years as a journalist that I’d witnessed the magical moment when the scribbles from my notebook printed on the paper that becomes the miracle of your daily newspaper.
Today, we’re celebrating the one-year anniversary of Personal Journeys. We launched the series to open windows into the lives of people who make metro Atlanta a dynamic place to live, and give our readers writing and reporting that they wouldn’t find anywhere else.
I'm enormously proud of what we've accomplished. Some of this work has been recognized in local and national competitions. Some has led to offers of employment for featured subjects facing hard times. One story, about the dire predicament of the Gwinnett County Sexual Assault Center, resulted in a new facility and money to cover the rent.
All the stories have been significant for the way they connect Atlanta Journal-Constitution readers to interesting people in our community, and deepen our appreciation for the folks who call metro Atlanta home.
But as a journalist, I’m especially proud of how our reporters and photographers have honored the trust placed in them by the subjects they’ve written about and photographed.
Over the past year, those featured in Personal Journeys have trusted our reporters with intimate details of their faith; the creative process; racial healing; illness, depression and suicide; the psychological toll of a job loss; and the ravages of addiction, to name a few.
Think about the courage and trust required to share those sorts of personal details with someone who will write it for the world to know. Dozens of people did just that. Not once did I take a call complaining that the reporter had gotten it wrong, or had been unfair.
More common was the reaction of Patrick Whaley, whose difficult rehabilitation from gunshot wounds was chronicled in Personal Journeys in July.
“We, the entire Whaley family, thank you for your dedication, devotion to tell Pat’s story and for your willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty to get it right!!!” the family wrote to reporter Helena Oliviero and photographer Jason Getz.
In February, we published the courageous story of Jeremy Williams, the Greenville High football coach whose body was succumbing to Lou Gehrig's disease.
Photographer Curtis Compton spent hours with Williams and his family and captured the former coach in photos that revealed the ravages of his disease.
Compton talked to Williams before the story ran to let him know the nature of the images. Williams wanted people to understand the day-to-day reality of his disease, and he trusted Compton’s pledge to present the photos tastefully.
I remember how nervous our editor, Kevin Riley, was before we published his piece on WW II vet Eddie Sessions in June, under the headline, "The Replacement Soldier."
Riley spent hours with Sessions and his wife, Shirley, at their home in Carrollton. Eddie Sessions proved a difficult subject. He had mixed feelings about his service, and was naturally stoic about his experiences.
Riley worried that he and his family might find his portrayal unflattering. Yet he also knew it was accurate and honest.
That’s how the Sessions saw it, too.
“I could not imagine how you would put all these pieces together, what the story line would be; I thought it would have to be like trying to catch snowflakes,” Shirley Sessions wrote to Riley after the story ran. “We bought a paper Saturday night; we just couldn’t wait until Sunday morning and were astonished at what you had done! Just incredible. I cannot thank you enough for having brought this to fruition.”
Why does this matter? It matters because trust is an increasingly rare commodity in American life today, and not just as it relates to the media. The financial crisis shook our trust in banks and financial institutions. Testing scandals damaged our trust in educators. Partisanship in politics has degraded our already low confidence in government.
That’s why it’s important that our journalists have honored the trust placed in them by those they’ve written about in Personal Journeys.
And that is something that we can all be proud of.
Send your suggestions for Personal Journeys to personaljourneys@ajc.com’
