Working the Commons Substack posts

. . . and a new home for new content from Working the Commons

My favorite reporter, Clark, second from left with his editor, Perry, photographer, Jimmy, and girlfriend/colleague, Lois. The real reason I wanted to be a journalist since I was 10 years old, although I have to admit I’m not sure I ever read any of his stuff in the Daily Planet.

To my faithful subscribers and followers on Substack, just a note to let you know I haven’t passed on to the Big Chat Room in the sky.

I’m digging into another project in earnest, and it’s taking more time than I would like.

My basic reporter bones have been itching since I retired in 2016 from my second career in government. My first love and career was journalism, print journalism, the old-fashioned kind. I loved every minute of my time as a working reporter. Now, I’d like to take another run at it since I left the profession in 1983. I miss the five Ws and H dictum¹ that used to guide my writing as a local beat reporter. Once I absorbed that lesson in Journalism 101, it became the lens through which I explored every writeup on every issue. You don’t see a lot of this discipline on social media these days.

Nor do you see much inverted pyramid story organization. That’s where your lede addresses the most important fact(s) about any event in the very first paragraph of a story, in 35 words or fewer. Subsequent paragraphs are likewise placed in order of importance to the story. I admit, I tend to write long these days. Too many years in the bureaucracy, I think.

So, I have been working recently to get back to my roots in print journalism. I intend to split Working the Commons between Substack and a stand-alone website I am designing on Bluehost. I plan to make the website of the same name, Working the Commons, a more traditional news enterprise, with news and features about the millions of good (and a few bad) people who labor in public service to all of us. It will also include articles about ongoing issues in the public square and will have a more local and regional reach. I plan to include a calendar of upcoming events and a discussion page, along with news items, again, largely local and regional.

This new home for Working the Commons will read more like a newspaper or magazine, except that it won’t have an Opinion Page. That part will stay with my Substack blog. I will include links to Substack on the new website and from Substack back to the website once it’s up and running.

The truth is I no longer have the energy bandwidth to do the website design (I’m teaching myself all the techie stuff I need to know to do it right), and maintain a weekly edition of Substack. Once the website is launched, I’m confident I will be able to resume my weekly Substack schedule while maintaining and updating the website.

But for now, I’m planning to take a week or two off and try to get my website launched by my 76th birthday on Feb. 26th. I don’t have associates or staff or consultants working with me on my Substack or website, just me in my small study in Spokane, WA., so it is taking me longer than it might for a group enterprise with trained web designers.

And to be honest, my wife and I are of an age where our weekly calendar seems to be heavily populated with the words “doctor” and “exam.” And I have finally admitted to myself that I need to make workouts at the local YMCA a part of my weekly routine if I want to live long enough to see Trump getting on that last helicopter ride off the White House lawn. (Let’s all pray that’s what happens.)

So, these new realities in my personal life tend to slow me down a bit, too. That’s why I’m clearing as much other work from my schedule for the rest of this month as I possibly can to focus on creating the website I envision for Working the Commons.

I once designed a website for my union local when I was in my 40s. I had to learn HTML to make that happen. Of course, HTML has been replaced over the last 30 years by XML, JavaScript, Python, and CSS, which are all much more powerful tools for creating more versatile and attractive websites and for providing a more drag-and-drop environment for nonprofessional web designers like me. Thank God, I don’t have to learn these new software tools. I just need to learn how to use them to call out the programming features that gets me the look and functionality I want as I build on a pre-designed template.

So, I’m sort of learning that new turf piece by piece as I assemble my ideas and plunk them into this working template. It’s never as easy as they say. I’m not hopelessly inept at this stuff. In fact, I actually enjoy learning it. I’m just a bit slower than I used to be.

When I do get the website ready for prime time, you all will be the first to know. I’m going to email each of you and include an announcement and link in a Substack post.

In the meantime, thanks for your patience.

Jim Wavada

1. That’s who, what, when, where, why (5 Ws) and how (H), the questions every legitimate reporter is supposed to ask when writing about current events.