When I was a young journalist working for a weekly newspaper in Charlotte, North Carolina, I “quit” my job suddenly after working on a big story that I got stuck on. After working through the entire weekend, Sunday night I wrote a letter to my editor Tucker Mitchell, telling him that I couldn’t finish the story I was working on about the South End, so I’m tendering my immediate resignation. And then I went home, told my roommate I’d quit, and we made plans to go to the beach.
Fortunately, Tucker was a patient and tolerant editor. He called me Monday morning and basically told me I was overreacting and to come in so we could talk about it. You might assume I jumped at the chance to make things right, but you’d be wrong because I was a 20-something who hadn’t learned better yet. I asked Tucker if I could have a couple days off to go to the beach. I don’t think his quick, “No, Cari. You need to come in today,” even embarrassed me at the time. Although, I feel a bit of a flush now in the retelling of it.
The story I was working on about the South End meant a lot to me as my life in Charlotte began in the South End. My first post-college home and job were both in the South End and because my salary as a reporter for a weekly newspaper was barely above the poverty level, I was still working nights and weekends at South End Brewery and Smokehouse as a waiter at that time. I personally knew many of the people I had interviewed for the story. I felt a lot of pressure to tell all their stories as clearly and accurately as possible. When I went into the paper that Monday morning, Tucker helped me reshape the piece into a cohesive story we ran in that issue, and I didn’t quit my job that day, but I wouldn’t make it too much longer there for other reasons.
Recently, I’ve heard an echo of that South End story as I’m launching GM Jane on Substack. Only this time I’m not even considering quitting. This time it’s all about me. No editor to hold me back or bail me out, although there was a bit of red tape I had to deal with, and I did hit the pause button for a minute after my first two posts here. That’s due in part to a bit of overwhelm about all I want this platform to be and so many ideas are flowing in, much like the South End story.
There was also a technical component. Since I am a registered financial advisor, any outside business activity must be approved by my company and then reported to FINRA. It’s a highly regulated field and sometimes that requires a bit of patience. GM Jane is now approved with the stipulation that I don’t write about financial topics. In celebration, I added the paid subscription option.
Instead of panicking or giving up, this time I took the pressure off myself, knowing that I would write post number three when I was ready. I’ve taken the “should” out of my life lately. I’ve come to realize that shame and fear aren’t good or healthy motivators for me.
I’ve also lived a lot of life since I was that 23-year-old girl, who was tenacious and fearless while also being idealistic and naive. I’ve been integrating all the versions of myself since the Charlotte days. It took about 23 more years, right about the time when I moved back to New Mexico, to feel all the pieces clicking into place. Unlike the first time I moved to New Mexico, when I was running from Charlotte and towards Albuquerque, sight unseen, this time, I wanted to be deliberate about the move and what my life would look like. I chose to live in a small rural New Mexico village (this just means small town Midwest peeps) about 30 minutes from Santa Fe. I planted roots, and I slowed down. I was listening for my own voice. I deprogrammed, meditated and slowly unpeeled my own onion.
Looking back, I spent a lot of adulthood trying to find the life I thought I was supposed to have. Chasing a dream that to this day I’m not sure if I ever really wanted or if it was just imprinted on me from my Midwestern upbringing. I know now that there isn’t any person, place or job that I wish I could go back to and that I am exactly where I am supposed to be.
As I was writing this and searching for the South End story (see scanned story below) from the collection of my newspaper clips over the years, I realized that all of my jobs over the years have led me to this exact moment in time, (Cue Whitney Houston’s 1998 hit – “One Moment in Time”) especially my time as a young reporter at The Leader newspaper. There was a bit of foreshadowing in the subjects I covered back then.
In January 1998, I wrote a story for the paper about the then-brand-new Roth IRAs that were introduced that year. Then in September 1998, I had a cover story about day trading. And of course I wrote about restaurants, as well.
Everything came full circle though, and I ended up quitting that reporter job over the exact thing that got me the job in the first place – paid advertising stories run as news.
My first story assignment for the Leader had been as a freelancer and was a paid advertising story about a carpet cleaning company. Talk about being humbled right out of J school. But it paid off, because they hired me full-time a few months later as a business reporter.
I still had to write the paid stories, but I was also able to write and develop my own niche with real feature-style business stories. I wrote about a young city unfolding before my eyes. It’s still odd to me today, but when I discovered Charlotte’s zoning meetings, I was enamored. Seeing how a city grew from the standpoint of zoning was fascinating to me. The head of the zoning committee, thrilled that he was getting any media coverage – even from a small weekly – dedicated time to helping me. He took me to a fancy lunch at a private dining club Uptown and became a trusted source.
Then one night when we were covering local elections, I ran into him at the election headquarters. He greeted me warmly and then said, “I saw your Men’s Club story.”
I felt all of my journalistic credibility crumble underneath me. But what could I say? The story didn’t say “paid advertising”, it said by Cari Anderson.
Tucker seemingly hated the paid stories too but as the editor, who answered only to the publisher, his answer was always, “It’s the job, Cari.” So, I decided to go straight to the top and sat down with the wife part of the co-owner and publisher duo, Sis Kaplan. I explained that selling six stories on carpet cleaning or air duct cleaning wasn’t in the best interest of anyone and if I could just work with the advertising department and salespeople directly to ensure they were selling appropriate packages that made sense, it would be much better.
She called me indignant. I had to look up the word after I left her office. It’s embarrassing to admit straight out of the University of Illinois’s Journalism school I didn’t know the word indignant, but what kind of writer would I be if I omitted that part of the story?
I quit appropriately with a two-week notice about a month later — citing journalistic integrity — when a new round of advertising stories hit my desk. As we now know, print news was in the process of dying a slow death in the late 90s. Today, I realize that the paid stories probably brought in substantial revenue for this small weekly newspaper that ended up folding in 2002, a year after the husband part of the publisher duo, Stan Kaplan, died.
I always thought I’d find a reporter job at another paper. That’s when my path clearly forked and restaurants really got their claws in me.
Newspapers were only a road on my path. Restaurants are another. GM Jane is where all the roads converge — a platform built with purpose
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