From the Editor's Desk

Time without deadlines

I had an extended pause this summer from both the day’s provocations and its occupations during several months of a sabbatical that was, I imagine, a bit like grace, something at the same time all around us yet beyond our possessing. One must just nod assent to it.

That, of course, was the most difficult part. I have spent nearly 40 years on deadline, always in the middle of conversations, of people’s complaints and ambitions, of rivers of facts and amid the drama and tedium of the human story. When all of that abruptly stopped and the deadlines and noise receded, I was left to contend with myself.

Not in the sense of a hermit, mind you, but more on the order of living with a sense of suspended time that is most authentically the purview of children. So mid-walk through a wooded section of Eastern Kansas at a time of morning when I would otherwise be at a desk, I simply stopped as a deer crossed the track, and we stood watching each other, no more than 15 feet apart. I wanted to say something, but didn’t quite know, really, what to say. I just stood and thought, “Do you know I’m human, yet rather harmless? Have you become, as one of my sons conjectures, like suburban squirrels, perfectly at ease with and unintimidated by the two-legged species?” The staring went on for a few more seconds until another smaller deer came bounding down a slope in the shadowy fringes of the wood and the two raced off, flickering like an old movie, through sun highlights.

Only later I realized I had done all of that without the usual gravitational tug toward the next phone call that had to be made, the next batch of e-mail that had to be checked, the next story that had to be edited.

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Time is not really suspended, of course, and in the information age, it is fairly impossible to entirely ignore the day’s provocations. E-mail brought me the news at various times that I had been fired, was being shoved sideways, had come down with an illness, was retiring. I can assure you that none of those is true.

However, the sabbatical was not just a time off for the sake of it. It served, in part, as a transition from 25 years of administration -- at my request and graciously accommodated by Sr. Rita Larivee -- back to the part of this business that I fell in love with all those years ago -- the working journalist part. Or at least as close to it as I can get. This will be my last regular appearance in this spot. I will move on from the editor’s chair and take two new titles: news director and editor at large. The first means I’ll be working with writers generating stories and overseeing special projects for the paper. The second gives me wide latitude in pursuing writing projects of my own for NCR. I’ll remain deeply involved in planning NCR’s future, in helping to develop new means of delivering the news.

~ ~ ~

In my time away from the office, I acquired a deeper appreciation for this little publication, for its independence and gumption; for its love of the deepest and most essential elements of the faith and tradition; for its willingness to turn over pages to thinkers whose words are not the somnolent recitations of dogma and rules that constitute so much of today’s “religious” discourse; for its dogged pursuit of stories that might shake loose our presumptions about issues of peace and justice. I have a renewed respect, too, for a staff that in large part anonymously but diligently puts the mission of NCR into real form -- ideas, words, photos -- week after week.

I’m glad to be back helping to put it together.

Contact me at troberts@ncronline.org.

-- Tom Roberts

Leadership at NCR is becoming a joint venture and it starts now as Tom Roberts assumes his new leadership role as news director and editor at large. You’ll be hearing more of this in my next column. But for today, all kudos go to Tom for his journalistic leadership of the newsweekly these past seven years. No easy course, considering some of the issues he has lead us through: 9/11 and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, the clergy sexual abuse crisis, a papal conclave, and the war in Iraq. As he is fond of saying, you get through it by reporting the events as they unfold; one story at a time.

If by chance you’ve been keeping a record of the awards given by the Catholic Press Association, Tom accomplished what no other editor of NCR can claim. Under his leadership, NCR was awarded the highest honor for general excellence during each year of his tenure. An achievement that speaks for itself in recognition of Tom’s audacity and commitment to journalistic integrity placed at the service of the church and a better world. Thanks, Tom.

Contact me at rlarivee@ncronline.org.

-- Sr. Rita Larivee, SSA

National Catholic Reporter, September 14, 2007