A version of this article appeared in the Lansing State Journal
As Michigan
State’s Wharton Center celebrate its 40th
anniversary season, it reminds me how closely my arts and music writing history
at the Lansing State Journal is linked to the opening of that great performing
arts center.
It was in
July of 1982 that I approached Mike Hughes, arts editor at the LSJ, to see if I
could have a stab at writing music criticism for the paper.
Hughes,
always the exuberant and positive observer of the world said, “Sure. Wharton
Center is opening in September, and we don’t have anybody to cover them. You’re hired!”
I was
shocked and surprised. I approached the
LSJ a couple of years earlier but that editor pronounced my writing far too high
brow for Lansing audiences.
What I
didn’t understand by Hughes hiring me so quickly was that I would be hired as a
stringer, a free lance writer. I would
be paid by the article without any long-term contract. This translated to the
reality that any time, if Hughes or the LSJ in general, did not like my
writing, all they had to do was not call me. There was no real commitment on
the newspaper’s part – just an opportunity for me.
