What was your first job as a journalist?
I didn't have one. I had a classroom. Thirteen years of standing in front of young people who were living the stories that eventually made it to my byline — in Newark, in Baton Rouge. The journalism came later, but the reporting started the day I walked into Weequahic High School and realized the system I was supposed to teach within was the same system I needed to write about. My first published piece in the Louisiana Illuminator was my formal debut. But the investigation had been running for over a decade before anyone gave it a dateline
Have you ever used a typewriter?
Yes. My mother had one — old fashioned, heavy, loud enough to wake the neighbors. I used to sit and press the keys just to hear the clack of something that sounded like it meant business. Didn't know then that I was practicing. Turns out the typewriter was my first studio session.
How is social media changing news?
It democratized the megaphone and handed it to everyone simultaneously — the scholar and the conspiracy theorist, the eyewitness and the fabricator, all amplified by the same algorithm that doesn't know the difference between a source and a rumor. Anyone can write an opinion now. Anyone can build a following. Truth is no longer the price of admission — consistency and confidence are. And that should terrify us, because a lie told boldly and often enough starts to feel like journalism to people who never learned to tell the difference.
The burden that puts on those of us who actually do the work — who verify, who cite, who sit with the complexity before we publish — is enormous. We're not just competing with other reporters anymore. We're competing with the speed of outrage. And outrage doesn't wait for the second source.
That's why I'm more committed to rigor than ever. The work has to be undeniable precisely because the noise is deafening.
