Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody!

I present to you: another photographic absurdity from my childhood. Dig in!

It Was 20 Years Ago Today...

The three of them were taken early in the year. Billy Corey was taken driving his '74 Ford LTD after tossing his girlfriend into a mirror. Teddy "Maddog" Creed knifed an old lady for her pocket change at the mall and was taken. And Kev Buckingham was taken after holding up some video store in the suburbs.

The three of them had taken the deep six. But the three of them would be back. Soon.

—from "The Posers," written December 27, 1987, the day a 15-year-old nerd realized what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.

Holy Crap. I've Been a Professional Journalist for 16 Years

See that short little front-of-the-book item above? That was my first professional (read: paid for it) clip, ever, published in Philadelphia Magazine in July 1991. Or, if you prefer, the year Dave White was born. (Go ahead and click on it to read it.)

"Philly to Jersey: Send Us a Bill" appeared in Quick Hits, which was the upfront section of the magazine. The section was edited by Theresa Conroy, now a kick-ass reporter at the Philadelphia Daily News. But I remember the original idea came from assistant editor Lou Harry, who saw a bit of humor in an otherwise boring press release and tossed it to a 19-year-old intern, looking to make his bones. (Um, me.)

I won't lie to you; I'm pretty sure I was heavily edited. The kicker ("Suckers") sounds like Lou or Theresa; I think the "... kind of, well, lost theirs" was me. And the interview was all me. I can't remember how much I was paid for this story. But the thrill of seeing my name in a magazine would have been payment enough.

Not that I told Philly Mag that.

Why I Never Changed My Name

"Duane Swierczynski" is quite a handle, isn't it? But hey, don't blame me. I've tried to change it before. Throughout my senior year of high school I submitted short horror stories to whatever markets I could find, including markets way out of my grubby little immature reach. Markets like Weird Tales, probably the oldest and most respected horror and fantasy magazine in the world. But I was a punk kid who noticed they were based in Philly, so I thought: What the hell, right? The story I sent Weird Tales was called "Submission," and I gave it that title because I thought it would be fun to open up a cover letter with the sentence: "Dear Editor, please find my submission, "Submission," enclosed with this letter." (I was 17. This is what passed for wit in my teenaged mind.) I also asked about internships or assistant-type jobs, figuring that maybe I could work my way up from the mailroom or something. And finally, I decided that a "Duane Swierczynski" could never make the pages of Weird Tales. I needed something snappier. So I lopped off my last name and became "Duane Louis."

A while later I received a rejection letter, but it contained a great piece of advice from co-editor George H. Scithers:

Use your full last name. It's real, and people will remember it.

(Click the letter above to read the whole thing.)

So, nearly 18 years later, big thanks to George Scithers. Or blame. Whichever you prefer.

An Adrenaline Shot of Inspiration

Today I was a panelist at communication workshop at La Salle University, my alma mater. The audience was full of high school students and their parents, and our job was to tell them what it's really like to work in broadcast and print journalism, film or mass media. The panel did a great job of telling the truth (e.g., "Newspapers are dying") while still encouraging the young people who want careers in these fields.

I would know. I used to be one of those kids.

In April 1989, nearly 18 years ago (as impossible as that sounds), at the tail end of my senior year of high school , I attended a similar workshop at La Salle. The topic: newspaper journalism. I went because I was a staffer at my high school paper, even though I only wrote book reviews of horror novels I liked. A budding Woodward and/or Bernstein I wasn't. Newspapers were boring. Except for the comics and movie ads.

Midway through the morning, I shuffled into a classroom to hear Frank Rossi, then a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, talk about his job. I expected it to be deadly boring. And when he started discussing one of his recent columns, which was about the plight of watermelon farmers, I knew I was right.

In fact, if you had asked me to come up with the most boring topic for a newspaper column, like, EVER, I would have said:

Um, how about the plight of watermelon farmers?

But as I listened to Rossi speak, something astounding happened. I started to put myself in the heads of those watermelon farmers, and goddamn if it wasn't tough. There were business pressures. Environmental nightmares. The hope of a full crop, and the harsh reality of that season's yield. For a few minutes, the fate of the crop was the most important thing in the world.

And that was the moment when it clicked for the first time: You could actually do this kind of shit in journalism. Go inside someone's head. Take the reader to a place where they wouldn't (or couldn't) go otherwise.

I thought only fiction writers had that kind of fun.

Between the end of my senior year and my first day of college, all of this stuff was kicking around in my head. Rossi's lecture had sparked something in my brain. A few weeks after that workshop, I sat down and typed Rossi a thank you letter.

A short while later, I received his hand-written reply, which I've pasted above. (Click it to enlarge.)

It was like a sign. Or a benediction. Or something.

But it jazzed me all summer, and when I entered La Salle for real in September, I brought a bunch of writing samples up to the Collegian office on the third floor of the student union building and applied for a job as a news reporter. Eighteen years later, I'm the editor-in-chief of a weekly newspaper, and talking to kids about careers in journalism.

Frank Rossi passed away only a few years after that workshop. I never had the chance to thank him in person. I very much wish I could have.

But I think about Rossi whenever I talk to a student about my day job.

And, of course, I think about those watermelons.