You still writing? You in any newspapers?

January 4, 2016 11:13 AM

Chris Rose’s Pulitzer crystal sits in his small French Quarter apartment, its glass badly chipped from various accidents. The disfigured accolade for his work on a reporting team at the Times-Picayune is a reminder of both prowess and loss... Since then, New Orleans’ news community has seemingly cast Rose aside. No journalism entity in town will hire him, he tells me, not even freelance... And so for all of 2014, the 53-year-old Rose was waiting tables to pay rent and feed his three kids.

The irredeemable Chris Rose
posted by Spinda (17 comments total)

He can always get a job as a Humphrey Bogart zombie impersonator.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:20 AM on January 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have many feels about this piece. It reminds me powerfully of why I fell in love with New Orleans, and also why I eventually had to leave.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:30 AM on January 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Chris Rose also features prominently in this ESPN piece, "No White Flags".
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:31 AM on January 4, 2016

Katrina and her aftermath is another reason why Billy Brite (he used to be known as Poppy Z Brite) doesn't write much anymore. His ensuing PTSD and loss of his home and many pets just sort of broke him down. There are too many psychological scars in the city for so many people, including those who loved the city so much, it's practically a secondary character in their work.
posted by Kitteh at 11:35 AM on January 4, 2016 [17 favorites]

Huh. That sucks, but at least Lolis landed on his feet. He was the better writer of the two, back in the hideous day when I was printing the Picayune pdfs and obsessively reading every scrap of news.
posted by Don Pepino at 11:46 AM on January 4, 2016

Did I know that Billy Brite was formerly known as Poppy Z Brite? I did not! Wow, that's so neat. I read a number of his trashy gothic-y books years ago in my queer adolescence. And he must have transitioned when even older than I am now. Am I too old? I am not, I guess. Although probably it helps to be self-employed. I'm sorry that he's having a bad time.
posted by Frowner at 1:05 PM on January 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Chris Rose called me up once. He asked me how I felt about being on the Internet.

This was relatively early in the Internet era, and he had found 57 Chris Roses via search engines, and was methodically calling and talking to each of us, asking us how we felt about privacy issues online.

He patiently listened while I recounted a recent dream I had about a second Chris Rose also being in my town, making all the opposite choices of what I was choosing, and having a fabulous, richly rewarding life (as opposed to my own staid existence.)

Chris was friendly, generous with his time, and kind to me. He later mailed me a copy of the article he had written, after having talked to all the Chris Roses. I have nothing bad to say about the guy, and he's always welcome at my table.
posted by newdaddy at 1:30 PM on January 4, 2016 [38 favorites]

Thank you for posting this article. It's baffling, but based on comments above, I suspect it is likely baffling in a very New Orleans specific way.
posted by OrangeDisk at 1:48 PM on January 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's not a good time to be a print writer anywhere, but it's an especially bad time in New Orleans. The Times-Picayune is a laughable shadow of its former self, now publishing only three times a week and having laid off over half of the staff that was there to cover Katrina. A lot of the old TP staff went to the Baton Rouge Advocate which made an effort to horn in but it's still really the paper of the capitol and not very New-Orleansy.

The suspicion about Tom Benson being behind Rose's blackballing is very believable. Benson is by far the most powerful man in Louisiana and he is very image-sensitive, and there was a lot of thought that Rose's book and ongoing story were not helping New Orleans' recovery. This is probably why thtey pulled the plug on his ongoing series before the outright blackballing. What Rose says about ten editors not letting him write is literally true. That's about the number of people in the NOLA region right now who might have a job for Rose, and if you're any of those ten people and Tom Benson comes to you and suggests gently that if you want access to cover the Saints you better not be running any Chris Rose articles, you really don't have much choice. It probably doesn't help that the Benson family is going through a nasty upheaval with the new wife cutting the old kids out of the business empire.
posted by Bringer Tom at 3:06 PM on January 4, 2016 [10 favorites]

Wouldn't he be able to get a gig outside New Orleans?
posted by Omnomnom at 3:12 PM on January 4, 2016

Wouldn't he be able to get a gig outside New Orleans?

You raise a really good question, i.e. "If you can get a job elsewhere, why don't you?"

Applying my own journalism experience to this: Some beats and expertise travel more easily than others. A really great local/civic reporter can make the argument to any publication that what they bring is the know-how and ability to cover a subject, and a shorter ramp-up period is a good thing.

But an editor could just as easily counter that what makes a good local/civic reporter is their roster of contacts, their history of coverage, and their ability to separate "This happened!" from "This is worth paying attention to" owing to history.

I've never been a local reporter -- I went right into tech, science and business. But I did marry one, and his best work was informed by his previous work. It's one of the most rewarding and vibrant genres of reporting, but one of the most perilous, IMO, because you're so tied to geography.
posted by sobell at 3:48 PM on January 4, 2016 [13 favorites]

I expect to read Benson's obituary any day now. Apparently a judge ruled him competent in June to end a lawsuit by three of his family members who have been cut out of the will. If this crazy old bat is calling news managers and blackballing Chris Rose that's sad but may be too absurd even for New Orleans.
posted by bukvich at 5:11 PM on January 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

This was relatively early in the Internet era, and he had found 57 Chris Roses via search engines, and was methodically calling and talking to each of us, asking us how we felt about privacy issues online.

I remember finding a white pages online in probably 1994. I was high on all kinds of drugs and called up everyone with my exact name, of which there were about 30. Only one answered (it was around 4am on the east coast) and he was a fascinating fellow. He was cleaning his guns, lived on a cranberry bog, and was about to leave for a duck hunt. Later on, I found a listing for "God". I called him, it was a 213 number in Los Angeles. "God?" (Impressively deep voice) "Speaking, who is this?"

He was (if memory serves) a pan theist, and had fought many court battles to get himself listed as God in the phone book. He said his dream was that you could open the phone book and see only God. He conceded when I mentioned that this might make the phone book pretty hard to use.
posted by chaz at 6:04 PM on January 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

I encourage all of you to read the CJR's linked previous piece on Rose and Rose's column about his own depression after Katrina. That column saved lives.
posted by Corinth at 6:06 PM on January 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Re, going somewhere else...people who have the nawlins virus will never leave. It's a soul level connection for them that has it. Where other people see a filthy swamp overrun by tourists and oil company devastation, the sons and daughters of those bayous see beauty and magic and history. They are as rooted as the magnolia trees, their very toes grasp the black soil of that delta like they were planted there. New Orleans isn't just a place; it's a tribe, a life, a religion, a voodoo roux of joy and desperation. And at his age, there's no leaving until the final jazz band plays.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:46 PM on January 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Metafilter: there's no leaving until the final jazz band plays.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:59 PM on January 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

"Wouldn't he be able to get a gig outside New Orleans?"

I'll let Lafcadio Hearn field this:

Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. Its condition is so bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.

posted by komara at 8:26 PM on January 4, 2016 [9 favorites]