Friends

Let me tell you about my best friends.

Since COVID, I’ve thought a lot about the ways we can connect. For the first time, we can connect with anyone in the world, even overcoming language barriers. As a professional communicator and someone who traffics in words, I feel privileged to be living in such a moment. 

Yet it doesn’t take the place of human connection, of looking someone in the eye, of sitting next to them. Of simply clicking with them. In this, I find myself reflecting on my four best friends from childhood. 

We came together as middle school kids over Madonna and parachute pants and forced Sunday mass and Duran Duran. Nearly 30 years ago. Today, we are still those kids. Inside, I feel 12. Never mind that I’m not. We keep drifting back to each other.

As teenagers, we just stuck together. Sometimes, we were virtually inseparable in the small Pennsylvania town where we grew up. One usually was with the other or in some combination. It wasn’t uncommon for a couple of us to show up someplace dressed the same, even as adults. 

In the summer, some of us walked three miles one way to see each other if we didn’t have a ride. When we graduated, we went our separate ways but we weren’t really…separate. 

Through deaths, moves, job changes, heartbreaks, and joys of love, we were always in touch. When my brother was killed in a car accident, one came to see me and stayed with me even though I could barely talk, let alone stand. When another struggled through a bad breakup, I showed up and helped her lug all her things (“too much stuff,” I told her) out, in a rush. 

They were my peer role models and we embraced the idea we could do anything if only we worked for it. There were no other options, were there? When one fell off this wagon, someone would remind her of that. 

We eschewed “limits.”

They — we — were driven to simply be who we wanted to be.

 It’s a deceptively difficult thing to do — to be independent and to be yourself. 

It’s also hard to know sometimes which to be: Beautiful or intellectual? Do we have to pick one? Can you lead with both?

I didn’t have the words for it at the time but I felt even though my family told me otherwise that society sometimes boxed women into a lane: Are you a mother? Are you what you choose to work as? Can you wear the dress and not that navy man-suit all the time, in the workplace when you kinda stick out? Can you lead with looks and your brains? Do you have to pick one? Does being independent mean you also are not vulnerable? Can you be all these things?

The answer is yes, you can be all these things and more. I can look at my friends, and say yes, here it is! We are business owners, an attorney, a nurse, and an executive. We are parents and partners. They are all of that, but they are first, authentically themselves. And that is what is most important.

You are beautiful and you should own that. And you are smart and yes lead with your intellect too, rooted in the most honest expression of self not with what you want to do but what you’ve done. Lead with that too. But be humble and work hard but keep the ego in check because no one is entitled to anything. 

No job is beneath you. We all celebrated when we could (were forced by our parents) to get jobs as soon as we turned the legal age. Some of us scrubbed toilets and waitressed at a restaurant. One sliced cold cuts at a sandwich shop. Another lifeguarded. Yet our makeup was always on point….because why not?

When the first in our group saved her money and bought a car for $600 — a blue and rust monster — we thought it was beautiful and we all piled in. We helped pay for (or completely funded) our higher education costs working through school, sometimes two jobs at a time.

Today, I think we are largely girls turned women. 

And even when you don't ask for an opinion, opinions are issued. 

Today, we see each other sometimes during holidays. We usually get together once a year. We laugh-scream. And we have a messenger group where we catch up, and sometimes tell the other what to do. 

These are women who could nurse you back to health with the most lovingly prepared meal seasoned with herbs she grew, thoughtfully plated, and in the next second knock the wind out of you with verbal razors, if they were wronged. Or maybe even if they weren’t. 

And these are also things I learned by knowing them, some of which take courage and vulnerability to live by:

• Uncontrollable laughter can make your stomach hurt

• You determine your worth, not others

• Lead with your inner and outer beauty that is the truest expression of who you are. You don’t have to pick one over the other

• Don’t lower your standards

• Love is beautiful, but sometimes you love things and people that aren’t. Get rid of them.

• Don’t use your looks to do what hard work and skill should get you

• The right thing to do is the right thing to do

• Italian purses are the best

• Respect for yourself includes setting boundaries

• Be with people who make you feel good, with no agenda

• Cooking together and for others is one of life’s great pleasures. Cook for those you love like it may be your last meal.

• If you want something, go get it, quick. No one owes you anything.

These are my best friends. I haven’t always been great about keeping in touch, sometimes terrible in fact, but no matter how much time passes we still seem to be those kids. And for that I am grateful. 

Newsrooms Old And New

I was an ink-stained wretch for almost 25 years until more people began dropping their morning newspaper in favor of reading news online.

I loved it, and yet, I left to pursue business interests combined with journalism.

Many writing and editing roles are now remote, yet no home office or coffee shop can match the old-school newsrooms I’ve experienced for sheer drama, angst, and excitement.

It’s that process—passionate, dedicated people throw together, who disagree, compulsively brainstorm, and pick apart the smallest details—that produced special reports on government waste, daily stories on the whys of tax increases, pressed for more open records, and told the stories of locals who did right—and wrong.

Journalism is not dead, but the rich and varied environments of these places are fewer, and the news people that read today is affected by the size and composition of the staffs working for news organizations.

I was lucky enough to work in five newsrooms, in Pittsburgh, near Chicago, and near Erie, as a writer and then editor.

In “news-of-record” media outlets, most newsrooms have editors’ meetings daily to talk through stories of the day, what to slot as most important, what to develop, and what to brief.  Sometimes one key question could make a story front page or kill it. This was not easy. Assigning editors are expected to know not just the facts of what their writers had gathered, but how they were backing up those facts.

Each day we were challenged. We did not walk out of news meetings with a bowl of compliments. Instead, we had to make it better. Make it rise. 

Failure is not an option.

If everyone agrees with each other—or they are afraid to say what they think—it doesn’t work. The stories you get will not be as well-developed. Nor is this process as strong if the newsroom lacks diversity in experience, perspective, and background. 

We are, in essence, a test audience for what you will read. And we are rarely happy with anything we read or what we see.

Imagine people thrown together, drawn by instinct, desperation, and pure belief there’s redemption in a story well-told. People who carry the weight of responsibility for telling a story, they know otherwise, might not be told. Imagine people who HAVE to do this thing, as if it were another human need, such as eating. Some are bone tired because they seemingly never stop working. 

They will work day into night, sometimes at the expense of family and friends. They will knock on the doors of strangers, cold call, approach you on the street, and if you ignore them, perhaps find you at Sunday mass. They will dig through numbers, file Open Records requests, and curse when the agency denies them. That’s a journalist.

Some of these people are disasters outside the newsroom. They might have troubled marriages. Substance abuse problems. (“He’s a great reporter—when he’s sober.”) Others may be workaholics, leaving the office at 6—only to say—“I’ll be back later, I’m just getting something to eat,” as if it’s perfectly normal. Others didn’t like to talk to people at all. Still, others might have a hair-trigger temper that could flare unpredictably.

Others could have quirks, unique to them.

One editor, seeking privacy to take personal calls, used to crawl under his desk and curl up into a ball. On more than one occasion I walked by, looking for him, and a hand, would jut out from under the desk, a long, thin finger pointed out as if to say, “I’ll be right with you!” Soon this was so widely accepted people knew where to look if they didn’t see him. Yet he was good: He’d pop out and come up with the catchiest headlines, and produce a tightly-edited story.

But we all shared this: A deep and abiding need to tell the story.

There’s a magic in the collaboration that happens when there are so many different types of people in the room—compulsively outspoken, angsty, passionate people. It makes for sometimes arguments and hurt feelings, but this process also tends to produce some of the best stories. We ask questions readers might ask. What one person doesn’t think to ask, another might.

Which goes to the value of intelligent discussion. Stories live or die based on whether the premise can hold up to questions.

Can you back up what you are saying?

Does the premise make sense? What the f&^% does that mean? Who gives a f*^& about that? 

Readers should expect no less of the news they read each day. 

Some of the best stories happen when someone is curious, asks questions, gathers facts, and presents it the toughest readers: a roomful of editors and fellow writers who are compulsively nitpicky, some, and who cannot help but see flaws in most things. It’s at this point in the process that the stereotype of editor-as-curmudgeon is in full bloom. What about this? What about that?

Where’s the nut graph?

What’s your point?

“It’s not ready.”

And a journalist’s commitment to his or her work is perhaps best illustrated this way. Here’s a picture for you: A copy editor one day hung up the phone, and, without taking his eyes off the computer screen, said:  “Awww, I want to kill myself.”

Two other copy editors jumped up.

“What’s wrong?” one said.

“My house is on fire,” he said, still looking at the screen.

“What???! What???!

“Why don’t you leave?”

“Everybody’s out. It’s out. I can’t do anything. I have pages to do.

“We’re on deadline.”

Fellow staffers took up a collection in an old coffee cup to help him recover.

Instead of taking the next day off, he showed up in wrinkled pants.

“It’s OK, all my clothes are fine.

“They were in the dryer.”

Leadership Lessons From A Mentor: Newsman Bob

“Somebody has to tell the mother her baby is ugly.”

With a gleam in his eye, that was the late editor Bob Fryer’s way of saying that a story needed work. He was an award-winning leader of local newsrooms in Western Pennsylvania who worked on the initial launch of USA Today, an internationally distributed Gannett paper.

In the late 1990s, Bob became an editor at Trib Total Media, building the Pittsburgh edition into an award-winning daily paper.  

His approach to producing journalism to hold the powerful accountable remains relevant today, as media outlets big and small shutter or slash staffs.

That’s why the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania each year awards a $5,000 scholarship in Bob’s name to a college student studying communications. Each year friends and family gather at River Forest Country Club — Bob’s favorite course — and raise money for the scholarship. His family leads the effort and donates the funds. Former coworkers and other journalists help. Counting this year, we’ll have raised more than $30,000 for seven scholarship recipients, since the outing began in 2012. Additional proceeds benefit cancer-related charities.

When Bob died in 2011 at the age of 64, the Press Club named a scholarship after him and boosted our efforts. Bob was my mentor, as he was for so many people.

The scholarship winners don’t really know much about him. So here goes:

“There will always be problems, distractions, and not enough people,” he’d tell me when I was a new editor in my 20s (which is to say, I knew nothing), working directly under him. “Your job is to work around it as best you can.

“Your job is to show people what can be.”

He required a thorough combing of the facts to strip a story down to a simple, compelling sentence. Here are a few:

The City of Pittsburgh is going bankrupt.

The Pennsylvania Lottery preys on those who can least afford it.

The nuclear plant in Apollo might cause cancer.

Facts were measurable, provable. Anything else was opinion or worse, speculation—these things didn’t belong in a news story.

He emphasized stories that illuminated the effects of a previously unreported problem, demanding that we clearly lay out to readers why that story mattered to them.

“We have to give voice to the voiceless,” he’d say. “We speak for people who can’t speak for themselves.”

He’d stroll through the newsroom, hair pointing in different directions, hand in one pocket of his rumpled, khaki suit, often looking down and muttering under his breath. Or, arms crossed, glasses perched on his head, at the Page 1 copy editor’s desk, working out headlines.

Most editors remain in the background, faceless and mostly nameless to readers. They save writers from their worst enemy—themselves.

Inside the newsroom, Bob spoke loudly in other ways.

“Why the hell am I reading this now, and why does it matter?” he’d say. “Come on, let’s fix this thing.”

His delivery after reading drafts often came in a sentence so direct it might take your breath away.

“Oh, there’s the lede….all the way down at the bottom,” he’d say, smiling mischievously and looking up through glasses perched on his nose.

“Periods are free,” he’d say, after reading a long-winded passage. “Use them often.”

Sometimes, Bob’s emotional exuberance manifested itself in a profanity-laced tirade. “I just care,” he might say later.

Some withered under these verbal razors. But reporting the news well was what mattered—not ego, not personal viewpoint…and certainly not feelings.

Sometimes, he offered praise but that wasn’t the point. The point was to get it right. He always had suggestions for how to “fix” the story. Perhaps surprisingly, his talks were often motivational and empowering.

And if deliberating over options, he’d argue for his choice and frame it thusly:

“Why do you do it?” he’d say. “You do it because it’s the right thing to do.”

Doing “the right thing” was an oft-heard refrain, one of many “Bob-isms” that come to me at certain times.

But as much as he loved a good story, he loved—perhaps just as much—helping people succeed. And that didn’t happen by just producing journalism — it started with being relentless about who he hired and how he put people together.

I was just one of many editors, photographers, designers, writers, and graphic artists who considered Bob a mentor.

Early on, I sat next to him while he edited, often one finger at a time. I watched. He’d ask me what I thought, then type what he wanted. Eventually, he told me to sit in his chair and edit while he sat next to me. It was terrifying.

I did not become the leader that Bob was, but I took in all I could.

Sometimes, he’d call me into his office and put his feet up on the desk.

“We’re not here to do people any favors. Just hire the best people you can find. Put your energy into those people. You have to protect them, take away all the distractions of the office so they can do their best work,” he’d say. “Show them you’d run through a wall for them. You have to take the blows. You worry about the little stuff that’s not so little. You stand up for them; at least, the ones who want to work. Solve their problems. Make sure they’re OK.

“They have to trust you. You have to be honest. Tell them as much as you can.

“If you can’t tell them, tell them that.”

Then, “Raise the bar. Show them what can be.”

Over several years, I was fortunate enough to take on more challenging roles: Managing a department, hiring, recruiting, reconfiguring a staff, starting publications, and more. Often, I was dispatched to consolidate or reconfigure an operation.

“Fix it,” he’d say. Or: “Make it better.”  

Note to students: Find your Bob Fryer.

We must count on ourselves to raise the bar. Because it’s never been about what can’t be — in journalism and in any profession. Focusing on what doesn’t work or isn’t here anymore rarely helps us innovate.

Moving forward is about imagining what can be and being unrelenting about finding a path to get there.

Kim is a past president and current board member of the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania. To learn more about the 2023 scholarship, please email kim@postindustrial.com.

To register for the golf outing click here.

Building New Ventures

I was, improbably, the owner of an eight-unit apartment building.

I grew up working in a family business, and I always knew I would build one of my own. But first I chose journalism, working for two decades in newsrooms. Later in my career, I helped build new products to try to maintain a competitive edge, hooked to creating connection with local readers.

By 2007, evolving news operations meant smaller staffs and more freelancers. There were lots of editors and fewer jobs. I wanted to work on my own terms. 

I considered a pizza shop or other restaurant, a grocery-delivery business, etc. but for me, nothing seemed as recession-proof as property investment. And my family was in the restaurant business; you’re at the whim of Sally and Sam choosing to buy your wings or pizza or pancakes. My plan was to build something that could stand on its own so one day I could help create or invest in another type of business — ideally, a media company where I could produce journalism on my own terms.

I wanted to develop an approach that was an answer to journalism’s antiquated business model, while offering a more story-driven and connected approach to advertisers.

I’m charged up by a challenge — even a risky one, and by getting good deals.

So in 2008 I found a building through a friend of a friend in a community just outside of Pittsburgh. The aluminum siding was banana yellow, set off by rough-cut lumber accents. The rough-cut theme carried through to each unit—early shiplap. The building appeared to have minimal interior updates since circa 1975.

I loved it.

My friend threw his hands in the air. “You don’t know how to change a toilet.”

“So what, I’ll learn,” I said.

“I’d rather change a wax ring on a toilet than work somewhere else outside the newsroom.”

“And I’ll never become homeless, because I could live in the big apartment upstairs!” I clapped my hands together in delight, thrilled at the prospect of not ever being homeless. 

Never mind the large sum required for the 20 percent downpayment plus closing costs required for commercial loans. Nevermind there were no legitimate leases, and I had little history about the residents. Nevermind I had no experience writing leases, handling evictions, or fixing a leaky faucet. Nevermind the bankers had no incentive to offer a commercial loan or that I had to work the phones to find an affordable insurance policy.

My eye had fallen upon it.

I WANTED IT.

Nothing would stop me — I’d figure out a way.

And I did.

And I then found that only half the residents were paying something each month, at rent rates about 10 years out of date. A new investor’s nightmare: low cash flow, high capital costs and a building of belligerents. And yet I viewed this as an opportunity.

The problems began at once.

The promises of rent that never came.

The late-night calamities that jolted you from asleep to 500 mph in 10 seconds.

The resident who left two inches of Carpet Fresh through the apartment. The bobcat. The Angry Man who left the shower running for days at a time — which reflected in the $800 water bill.

The hoarder.

The hissing lizard.

The late-night emergencies.

The unanticipated dramas. One resident called, to report another was taking all four parking spots out front. He spread out his clothes “to air out” one spring after his wife pitched him and his threads outside the winter prior, “because she didn’t like his girlfriend.”

One call came on Thanksgiving eve. I was two hours away at my parents’ house.

“Uh, Kim, we have a situation. The front porch steps are gone.”

“WHAT?????”

“My sister and I were ….uh, we were just dancing and it…um…it fell apart. But don’t worry, the fire department’s on the way over. They’re going to help my sister.”

I hear the wail of sirens.

My insurance flashed before my eyes. I break into a sweat and feel a surge of adrenaline.  I scream at everyone around me to shut up, even though no one was talking, as I check to make sure I paid the quarterly insurance bill.

The resident and her sister — a guest — hosted a party. The steps had become separated and crashed to the ground.

I’ve learned a lot by doing. I worked nights and weekends to handle evictions, install toilets, rip out carpet, install flooring, hang doors, drywall, and more.

You also learn that landlords can help contribute to a community in the most meaningful of ways. We can provide clean, comfortable, reasonably-priced housing. 

In turn, I am responsive to the residents; for maintenance calls, someone is there within 24 hours. I offer tools to help people build credit. I want the residents to be happy and comfortable — it’s good for business. It’s good for everyone.

For me, it’s about the money — but not only about the money. It’s about building a profitable business that is limited only by the hard work, creativity, and vigor you apply to it. It’s also about helping people build credit and improving the community by offering moderately-priced housing. Not too high, not too low, but just in the middle.

Today, I can spot applicants who work hard and take pride in themselves and their living space. 

In turn, I aim to make improvements regularly, although the building is never really done.

I’ve always wanted more and more, so months after I took a buyout from my employer in 2016, I acquired and gutted a single-family home on a half-acre of land. There was no running water and no working toilet. The shower was stained orange from rusty water. The kitchen cabinets were askew and worn. A 36-inch, territorial snake, lived in a crack in the basement wall 

A colony of salamanders had taken over a dank corner in another portion of the basement.

But there is a giant, sweeping oak in the backyard. A cornfield abuts the property. In the evening, you get a clear view of the sunset. The neighbors are lovely. The whoosh of leaves blowing and the smell of fresh-cut grass is all around you in the summer. And there’s an iconic ice cream stand near the tree-lined road.

That’s the living room, above, with new flooring, paint, trim, and doors. It was one of the best summers I ever had, ripping, fixing and building back up. The residents moved in on Halloween weekend. I love them. I back them up just as we do with all the residents. They are partners in the success of the business.

Next up: I want to bid on a government-owned house with a tree in the kitchen, a smashed out bathroom and a dirty mattress in the bedroom. 

I found the house while running through the neighborhood. I stopped and stared.

Love at first sight.

There was a tattered picture on the bedroom floor of the former owner in happier times. I researched the owner history and the owner.

HEY LOOK, I said, in a third-floor bedroom, the home gets a lot of natural light.

That was because all the windows were broken. Also, part of the wall was missing.

Still, I think it’s perfect for a picture window.