2 weeks Ago
I am always looking for inspiration for a column idea, and that was provided this week by Lumberton icon Jim Kirkland, who sent me an email with a Q&A column by Sean Dietrich, an American writer of books and newspaper columns whose focus is life in the South and its people. I told K-Land I could have written what Dietrich indeed did, which is somewhere between self-aggrandizement and the ultimate insult for Sean. Following is my attempt to prove it.
Q: Donnie, what made you decide to have a career in journalism? A: Well, I want to blame Jimmy Carter, who was president when I graduated UNC with a Business degree in 1979 and the country was in a recession, and I found myself, shall we say, not a high draft pick. Speaking of recessions, ..
. . After a four-year sideways drift, my late buddy John Fish threw me a lifeline and I began writing at The Robesonian, eventually figuring out what I was doing.
I never had a goal to be wealthy, so this is a rare pursuit I achieved. Q: Do you get paid for writing a weekly column? A: Barely. Q: What do you think is your greatest achievement in your journalism career? A: There are so many.
(Smiley icon here). I am proud of our coverage of Hurricane Matthew in 2016, which I did from the comfort of a hotel room in Charlotte that had a spa and continental breakfast, while my reporters did the hard work in knee-deep water. But I think it might be having survived working for seven publishers without getting fired.
Surprisingly, only one of them would I punch in the nose if my alcohol intake was sufficient, and I saw him at a bar. Q: Do you have an editor for this column? A: Well, I have a friend who reads this column and makes suggestions. She is not a fan of what some call run-on sentences, so when she finishes editing, the number of commas in the column has usually been reduced by about half, while the number of periods has typically doubled.
I do not believe she has an appreciation for Charles Dickens, so when she returns the column, I do a search and replace, commas for periods. Q: Do you pay her? A: Divide barely by two and you get why even bother. Q: What are your favorite themes for your columns? A: I pluck from my narrow existence, which circles in an orbit of college athletics, the focus being UNC and a hatred of Dook, golf, cats, beer and my attempt to remain upright with a cow valve stitched to my aorta.
They are in a perpetual state of being topical. For instance, last week I visited my heart surgeon, and I am good to go for another year. I am sipping a Bud Light as I write this, constantly refreshing a page on Inside Carolina to see if we have found a big.
I am going on a golf trip next week with fellow Pikas, and as I write this Boots is staring at me, obviously wanting some wet cat food. My columns are also heavy on self-deprecation, which is a well that just does not run dry. Q: Anything you try hard to avoid? A: Actually, it’s easy to avoid politics.
Notice, for example, the ellipses above that follow the word “recession.” Q: Do you have fans? A: Well, I do have people who tell me often they enjoy reading my column, and none of them are related. There is a fellow I see at Food Lion on West Fifth Street who sometimes approaches me and says nice things.
But there is no Facebook group called “Fans of Donnie Douglas.” Yet. Q: You began this column saying you believed that you could write a column that could, these are my words, perhaps be confused with Sean Dietrich’s work.
Do you think you have pulled that off? A: Well, the ultimate arbitrator will be Jim Kirkland, and I expect an email shortly after he reads this. But I will share this: In his Q&A, Dietrich was asked, I will paraphrase, what he does when he cannot come up with an idea for a column. He said, “write a crummy Q&A column.
” So, yea, I think I pulled it off. And, Sean, should you ever read this, recall what Oscar Wilde said about imitation and flattery. Reach Donnie Douglas by email at ddouglas521@hotmail.
com..
