Like many longtime reporters, I have done my share of soul-searching as late. The explosion of landmines all across our field: devastating. The question that the country, the world, asks is legitimate: Is journalism, as we know it, becoming extinct?
On the one hand, what established news organizations once dismissed as partisan, unchecked rhetoric is now considered mainstream news. On the other, journalistic ethics vanish when established newsrooms grow so insular that they dismiss realities because they do not see them. We are at a tipping point.
If there has ever been a time that calls on experienced journalists to investigate stories tenaciously and intelligently, it is now. Smart, relentless reporting can and must impact our country, our culture: our very idea of citizenship.
Susan Gregory Thomas 
Welcome to Philadelphia! i have recently moved here too. and am looking to write…well have stated to write a book about my own collapse of the same things with verbal abuse thrown in there (actually the main attraction). Lost my Heart, Lost my Mind it is called.
I look forward to getting your book, In Spite of it All.
Hello, Susan! Looking forward to reading your book(s) and following your new adventures in Philadelphia.
How does anyone keep it going! Thanks for the details
Susan, congratulations on what sounds like an authentic great life! I look forward to reading some of your work. Have a unique perspective on parenting myself so will follow your blog.
Good for you, Susan. My daughter was lucky enough to win a scholarship to a private all girls secondary school in Brighton, England. She wasn’t really intellectually inclined but obviously showed potential. As a single parent with her father being insolvent, there was no way I could have afforded to send her to a private school without that scholarship. It was super to see her in a school that wasn’t bursting at the seams, and now she’s a grown woman who is passionate, successful, and has become my guiding light.
So I am totally behind your decision, however difficult it might have been, to opt for private.
Inspiring to hear how you stuck up for yourself.
Fabulous bit on not sharing checking accounts. Having already been through Bachelor #1 who nearly bankrupted us — I was clueless and trusting and he had signed on to that new-fangled thing called “online bill statements” thru Amex long ago–I made it clear with Bachelor #2 that I’ll never co-mingle money or accounts again. Live and learn. It’s sad how ex’s who once goo-gooed over their babies quickly lose interest once they’re out of the house and not involved in the day-to-day raising of those children.
Hey Susan, Such an inspiring story. I wish I had had the balls & guts to stick up for myself like you did. I am a fan.
Hello and Thank you,
Former school Teacher with burnt-out. Gave more than I had for too Long. But still in contact with former students and families. What a ride. Now a little nutts and trudging a new path.
Thank you for your sharing,
Keep up the urban farming. Hunting and gathering is becoming our future,
~ Peace ~ J.L.M. 🙂
I read your article in More magazine and I just love your work! Great stuff. I haven’t read anything as touching in a long time and when I found your article on teachers dealing with X parents, I forwarded it to some of my educator friends.
Great read, alot like Willam Styron’s Darkness Visible. We have lived parallel lives. Thank you for articulating our experience and not pulling any punches.