For any journalists, who find themselves out of work for whatever reason-either due to a layoff, a buyout, or simply fed up with the miserable circumstances demolishing their chosen profession-Lorraine Adams [See Biography ] certainly feels your pain.
“It's an unmitigated disaster out there’’ Adams told me. “ I know of so many amazing people who are out of work.’’
The award winning journalist isn’t afraid to admit her life outside of journalism ran into some choppy waters. She was a writer-in-residence at Eugene Lang College at the New School 2005-2007, but to her dismay she soon discovered it was a low-paying position with little chance of it turning into a full time position like she had hoped.
Her attempts at freelance writing was equally as disappointing. Unable to develop the necessary aggressiveness required in pitching stories to editors, her stint as a freelance magazine writer was a disaster and short-lived.
After leaving the newspaper industry in 2001, Adams turned her attention to fiction writing. Her literary novel, Harbor published in 2004, was based on her reporting for The Washington Post surrounding the arrest of Abdel Ghani Meskini and and the investigation of the 2000 terrorist plot he was involved in to drive a car full of explosives from Canada to Los Angeles and detonate them at Los Angeles International (LAX). Her first literary effort was critically acclaimed in a number of publications, including the New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, The Guardian, and the Times of London. It also won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for First Fiction in 2004; and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award in 2006.
Her second novel, “The Room and the Chair ‘’ (Knopf, 2010), a thriller about Middle Eastern politics took her to Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to chart the life of an American fighter pilot, a journalist in fact, closely modeled on a rookie Washington Pot newsroom reporter. Amy Wilentz, reviewing the book for the Los Angeles Times wrote: “Lorraine Adams is a singular and important American writer. "The Room and the Chair" establishes this without question: It is remarkable for its ambitions and its achievements. It's a war novel, a reporter's novel and a psychological thriller.’’
The Room and the Chair was also warmly received by The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, BookBeast, BookForum among other publications.
Prior to establishing herself as a novelist, Adams, who grew up in New Jersey, kicked off her newspaper career working for The Concord Monitor, a small New Hampshire daily newspaper before moving on to the Dallas Morning News, where she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, along with Dan Malone, for their reporting that charged Texas police with extensive misconduct and abuses of power.
After leaving the Morning News, she landed at the Washington Post to work with its Investigative Staff and the Metro Investigative team. She was subsequently assigned to its National staff in which she covered the Justice Department. Unhappy with the paper’s coverage of terrorism, she decided to leave the Post and test the waters as a freelance magazine writer; though she stayed on as a contract writer for their “Book World’’ through August, 2003.
Assessing her journalism career, Adams told me “my work was always unpopular and I wasn’t an easy edit. My work at the News and the Post gravitated to issues of social justice and the marginalized.’’
Beginning in 2005, she began writing book reviews for the New York Times Sunday Book Review, most of them focusing on foreign fiction from the Muslim world. “But the pay has been steadily eroding’’ Adams informs me, “as have the ads and the number of pages, and in the last three years reviews of foreign fiction, never a top priority, have been squeezed further.’’
Most recently, Adams has written on Pakistan for the Daily Beast and Granta Magazine. She's also written reviews on other subjects for the BookForum and The New Republic. But for those with designs on becoming a full-time book reviewer, Adams warns that if you want to support yourself, such a career path is really only possible for the top reviewers in the country. And with her fiction writing absorbing so much of her time, Adams says she has little time to devote to book reviewing.
Just as discouraging for writers hoping to go it alone is the harsh reality that so many online only news sites, such as the Huffington Post and others, want to enhance their profitable sites with first-rate editorial content without having to pay a dime for it.
“I can’t tell you how many times people ask me to write for free’’ Adams tells me. “The atrocious practice of not paying writers is epidemic. Some people may think a strong resume is a bulwark against that situation. But it’s not. Check out mine: B.A., magna cum laude, in literature from Princeton University (1981) and an M.A. in English and American literature from Columbia University (1982).’’
Her assessment of the bleak condition of the newspaper industry and how it disintegrated before our eyes is just as abrasive.“ It was greed and shortsightedness on the part of management, who paid us poorly even when they were delivering double-digit profits to shareholders instead of investing in journalism. Now our pension funds are under-funded, and soon many American cities won’t have a newspaper’’ Adams vented.
With such a dark and dispiriting appraisal as a backdrop: What encouraging words of advice, if any, does this Pulitzer winning journalist and successful novelist have for those who are in search of a new career outside of the newsroom? “My advice to anyone no longer in the business is first, you’re not alone. This is a disgusting time to be a journalist. Two, as George Eliot once said, “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” Go out and do what you love. Three, if you can’t get paid for what you love to do, earn a living at a lower rate of pay at some kind of work but with your dignity intact. You didn’t create the industry’s woes.’’
Adams, who lives in Harlem, New York City with her husband, Richard Price, a novelist, is currently working on a new piece of fiction set in the Middle East and Lahore, Pakistan. She won a Guggenheim in 2010 to support work on this novel.
-Bill Lucey
WPLucey@gmail.com
July 9, 2012
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