Back to the Streets

On Friday September 19, some of the us former Post employees and other media types got together for the Greater Cincinnati Society of Professional Journalists 2008 Awards Banquet and Hall of Fame Inductions. I was not on the list of award recipients. I have no complaint because SPJ has been good to me in past years. I attended to support several of my former colleagues. For me it was a bittersweet evening. Seeing some of the people I worked with brought home how much I missed that daily interaction with the accomplished journalists I worked with. As E.W. Scripps chairman William Burleigh made his speech,  pages from various years of the Post flashed on the screen the audience saw what I always knew, the Post did good and sometimes great work. Far from the Grand Ballroom at the Phoenix and on the pavement of Main Street in Over The Rhine I encountered a vendor selling Street Vibes, an alternative newspaper that addresses issues of homelessness and social justice. This vendor is as grassroots as you can get. To photograph or write about those type of issues is why a lot of us got into journalism in the first place.I worked for a company whose motto was "Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way". On December 31, 2007 it got a little darker here in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. © Melvin Grier