Two Razors: An Editor's Farewell

… we came in?

Pardon me while I get reacquainted with my voice. Aside from an occasional foray that flickered and vanished like a Bic lighter’s flame at 2 a.m. on a winter Boston sidewalk, I haven’t written in my own voice in over three years. Since the day after Christmas 2008, to be exact. If writing’s strength comes from muscle memory, these particular muscles have atrophied through conscious restraint, as I exercised those more suited to journalism: concise, factual and absent of opinion or—to a very real extent—personality. Now that in this fleeting moment I have a chance to stretch, there's a few things I'd like to say.

Residents of Melrose, fear not: My writing in this style doesn’t mark a new editorial direction for Melrose Patch, but a final bow at the end of my editorial direction. I’m leaving. (Well, mostly. More on that in a moment.) My last day as editor here is this Friday, Aug. 3, marking just about five years and seven months that I’ve reported on the city of Melrose—first as a reporter at the Melrose Free Press, and then as editor here.

I’m moving on to become an associate regional editor at Patch, managing 12 Patch sites along I-93, from Somerville up to Tewksbury. And yes, Melrose is one of the sites within my jurisdiction, hence the earlier "mostly."

A pragmatic note: , Malden Patch editor, and , Stoneham Patch editor, will be sharing duties in keeping Melrose Patch running each day. Starting next Monday, emails regarding Melrose Patch should be sent to melrose@patch.com. Sending an email to my own address won’t mean it gets lost in the Internet ether, but sending it instead to melrose@patch.com will cut out the middleman and assist with the site’s transition.

With my exit imminent, I’m taking an opportunity to prattle on at length in a solipsistic and most certainly egotistical fashion with a goodbye and final thoughts column brimming with navel-gazing passed off as altruistic pontification. Consider yourself forewarned. (I’ll try to reign in the obscene blovation apparent in that last paragraph and this sentence, although I also warn that I relish in inventing my own adverbs.)

THE REASON WHY THIS IS HAPPENING

I’d be terribly remiss if I didn’t first express my gratitude for a coterie without whom this site would not be as successful as it is.

Atop this list is Carol Brooks Ball, my editor when I worked at the Free Press as a staff reporter and later the Magic to my Bird when I came to Patch, an Adam Smithian competition that forced me to be better than I am and that, I believe, most benefited the residents of this city.

When I started at the Free Press on Dec. 26, 2006, four days after my last day as a reporter for the Lynnfield Villager, overcoming my naiveté seems now like it was a Sisyphean task. Carol rolled that boulder up and over the hill. Every good reporter yearns for an editor who can regularly rip apart his work while simultaneously instilling him confidence. Carol deftly managed this dichotomous task with aplomb and turned a green and timid young man into a reporter. If her editorial skill weren’t enough, she’s an even finer human being and I am blessed to have worked with her and know her.

Patch is constantly evolving, and when Melrose Patch first launched on May 28, 2010—looking very different than it does today—I had a team of freelancers who saved my sanity by indulging my desire to cover everything, always, with the highest quality.

Kate House, my witty, talented and caring occasional guest editor; Veronica Meade Kelly, my purveyor of consummate professionalism; and Kathy Shiels Tully, my true writer of heart and soul. Amanda Kersey, who still writes for me and could be an editor anywhere she pleases; Grant Mukai, my unfailing taskmaster and videographer; Andrew Jeromski, my hard-charging sportsman; and Kate Estrop, my doodling calendar editor. Travis Lovett, who bizarrely would almost jump at the chance to cover a city meeting; Mary Cresse, my finely honed wordsmith; Shavaun Callahan, who captured community with her camera; and Travis Hart, my photographic auteur. And many others. My gratitude here is not enough to repay them for all they have done for me and for Melrose with their high quality work.

While Patch has a reputation of having one-man-band editors, we’re all part of a team, and my own also saved my sanity on a weekly basis (and continues to do so today). Particularly, my former regional editor Mark Micheli, who endured more of my mercurial nature than should be expected by a boss, my associate regional editor Roberto Scalese, and all my fellow editors who perpetually bailed me out. It’s hard enough knowing me when self-inflicted accretive pressure isn’t inducing metamorphic stress levels, and these people all saw me at my worst. A hagiography for them does not seem too much.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly, I need to thank David Brudnoy, who taught me How To Think in the DFW-ian sense, how to treat other people and generally how to be a human being. The world could use Bruds now more than I ever, I often lament.

I must also pause to thank each Melrosian who commented on an article, uploaded a photo to a gallery, posted an event on our calendar, posted an announcement, or blogged on the site. I’ve said before: Patch is not an online newspaper. While I handled the objective news aspect of the site, Melrose Patch is a community hub, intended for Melrosians to actively use rather than passively read. Each of you who have participated in the site made it the success that it is today. As the site continues to evolve, I hope you continue to embrace it not merely as an information source, but as a tool that can strengthen the bonds of this community.

TWO RAZORS

As for my final thoughts, which seems like they were aforementioned during the Clinton administration at this point, I’d start with the caveat to not take this as sanctimonious moral advice or even—pardon the nightmarish Derridean evocation—as truth. These are merely the ramblings of someone who has grown to care for this city to a level that I never expected or envisioned, and finds a strange comfort in the democratic passion exuded by its residents. Nor should these be taken as a commentary on any specific subject, but instead as general, overarching thoughts floating around in my imperfect skull.

Dissent and criticism are vital to achieving any sort of progress in this world, whether personal or communal, and should never be readily dismissed unless the most blatant qualification exists for tossing it in the trash. When those dissents and criticisms are aired, consider them on their merits and never use an ad hominem justification to stick your fingers in your ears and go "LA LA LA LA LA."

When developing criticisms of the issues at hand, I implore each of you to keep two maxims in mind. The first is Occam’s Razor, which has been expressed throughout history in various forms, but given my collegiate course background in classical antiquity, I’ll quote Ptolemy: "We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible."

When faced with an issue, use what you know and is verifiable, and don’t use assumptions or speculation. If you feel as if sufficient facts aren’t at hand to develop a plausible conclusion, search out those facts (and press the, um, press for more). At a certain point, though, you must formulate your opinion based on the best amalgamation of evidence available, devoid of any unverifiable theories or of emotional arguments, of pathos (although the latter, when used correctly, can sometimes be employed to illuminate arguments of ethos or logos). Don’t fall into paralysis by analysis either, like Calvin when he fell into a neo-cubist painting and saw both sides of everything, but don’t walk around with one eye closed. There’s depth of field in everything.

The other maxim is Hanlon’s Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." "Stupidity" may be a little harsh for my point—if you prefer, "incompetence" or "ignorance" in the most neutral sense of either word—but bear with me. This maxim is a cousin to the earlier protestation against ad hominem justifications. We yearn in an intrinsically human way for a narrative that provides a cohesive explanation for people’s actions and events in the world around us.

Mixed with natural prejudice and pathos, this creates a volatile concoction. Explaining bad things happening or something we disagree with by developing a perceived machination brings order to our world and a sense of reassurance. Our reassurance is borne from our tendency to make assumptions (see how this dovetails with Occam’s Razor above) that understandably buttress our own prejudices and thus validate our worldview. When our view isn’t supported, we’d rather believe that forces with malicious intent marshaled against us, rather than the more plausible possibility that we simply haven’t convinced people of the righteousness of our stance. When a bad decision is made or opinion expressed, we fuel our ideological fires by pouring this volatile concoction over the coals, instead of considering the likelihood that best intentions sometimes pave the path to hell.

These admonitions apply equally to elected officials, those in non-elected city and school positions, those who hold a majority view on an issue, and those who dissent. It’s easy to indolently take things at face value because it provides the cohesive narrative that reassures us, and to dismiss any dissent, criticism or probing questioning as emanations from an echo chamber that Just Doesn’t Get It, or worse, is consciously undermining attempts at progress. On the flip side, it’s equally easy for those who dissent to dismiss the winning argument as a conscious attempt to undermine a strive for progress, thus providing the cohesive narrative that reassures us of the validity and righteousness of our stance.

COLUMN'S CRUX, A.K.A. EVERYTHING SAID ABOVE BUT SHORTER

If all this sounds like an clinically verbose call for critical self-awareness and civility, well, it is. When assumption, speculation, and implication of malice are subtracted from the public debate, we’re left with what we verifiably know and the merits of the argument. We have what Taoists might call P’u, the uncarved block, that forms the cornerstone of what DFW would call a Democratic Spirit: "one that combines rigor and humility, i.e., passionate conviction plus sedulous respect for the convictions of others." (Pardon me for two David Foster Wallace references in this column—I go to that well pretty often.)

And let me contradict myself—as I usually do—by making the pathos argument: Appeals to logos aside, when we remove assumption, speculation, and implication of malice, we excise those elements that hinder our ability to make our best arguments in an attractive way. Myriad idioms evoke this idea—more flies with honey than vinegar, disagree without being disagreeable—but I always return to what my father repeatedly told a young, argumentative, hot-headed boy during his formative years: It’s not necessarily what you say, Daniel, but how you say it.

If you’ve read this far, I thank you for your indulgence. I'm sure it's all a little Ecclesiastes 1:9 to you and whatever civic primer you previously read or heard said the same far more eloquently. More important than reading the ramblings contained above, I thank you for your passion, your participation, your readership and your forgiveness for any mistakes or errors that I made over the past five years and seven months (remember Hanlon’s Razor here. Please).

Normally after reaching the penultimate point in a correspondence like this, I end with a glib remark about how since I have nothing else to say, here’s a picture of a rabbit with a pancake on his head. But since I can’t embed photos directly within this column, and (aside from 5 Things You Need to Know Today the rest of the week) this is my last chance for a pop culture allusion, I’ll end with this:

So long, farewell, Auf wiedersehen, goodbye.

Isn’t this where …