Tuesday, November 05, 2013

 

For ten years, I reported dutifully to the Hoboken office daily, part of that weekly publishing machine out of which we somehow managed to get a newspaper.

Hoboken takes a certain getting used to even when you live there and see it frequently.

This is not the historic Hoboken that General Pershing when he told the troops leaving for Europe in 1917 that they would be in home, hell or Hoboken by the following Christmas (most weren’t). Nor is it the Hoboken depicted in the classic film, On the Waterfront, although many of the motivations are the same, this need to make money on what is considered some of the wealthiest real estate on the planet.

I ached not to get out of the Hoboken office, but for a better beat – Hoboken or Jersey City – rather than the isolated Secaucus.

When they offered me Bayonne, I jumped at it because it was full of life and was a long standing paper in a larger community. Then for ten years, I worked that beat, and gradually saw the paper shrink and the staff diminish and the town – although still promising – not quite living up to its potential.

With the staff mostly gone, I began to feel isolated, and so I plotted to get another beat, that would bring me back to the Hoboken office – where I might feel part of something again.

So when they offered me Jersey City today, I accepted it, understanding its limitations and its challenges.

Who knows where it will go from there.