My Love Affair with Reliable Resources

by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of poetry, fiction and the Modern History Press’s acclaimed HowToDoItFrugally Series of book for writers

I fell in love with reliable resources when I became a staff writer for my high school newspaper and realized the acquisition of a deep love for that concept surpassed my original attraction for my high school’s Thunderbolt which was influenced by the special hall pass I could wear to wander the campus to report on school activities. I later learned to use “reliable resources” to support my viewpoint when our editors or staff advisors wanted to edit (or ax) one of my columns.

I learned more about the value of reliable resources again sometimes around the time CNN introduced the highlight of my weekend TV consumption; I viewed their Reliable Resources on Sunday morning as a class in constitutional law and began to see the how close the relationship to my chosen career of journalism which by then had served me well through a couple decades of assorted occupations. It was a TV’s one-of-a-kind programming and it never occurred to me it wouldn’t remain a staple of the cable station that brought believable news my way during the years I also became aware of dishonesty coming from places I had until then trusted and admired (the Nixon era, and Vietnam and Iraq wars come to mind). It kept me from losing hope for better things to come so I could focus on building a business and raising a family.

I was appalled when it was cancelled in 2020. I literally mourned for its anchor Brian Stelter who someone managed to survive under the radar with his online Reliable Resources Newsletter. Had I been more of an internet aficionado, his new journey would have helped me avoid years of negativity. Even in these bad moments, things were getting better. Not perfect but good enough to start believing in Camelot again.

Flash forward to slowly growing to love my hometown newspaper. It wasn’t The New York Times, but it was sure enough reliable. I even found value in it when new ownership started re-labeling much of what had traditionally been identified as simply “the Opinion page.” That page became “Opinion Voices” and even their columnists were targeted with headlines that carefully delineated in one word, Voices. Yes, both bold and italicized. So did their new label, “guest contributors,” when editors felt that was needed—apparently to strengthen its stance on free speech because it helped readers more easily identify what the simple word opinion had managed to do for a long time across the breadth of trustworthy media.

I also began to follow ideas (and dangers to watch for) that come from PEN America. During her interim co-CEO stint and chief program officer, Summer Lopez, interim co-CEO and chief program office was among the first to warn of the then-recent revelation that a lawsuit by a sitting president had brought the world’s largest trade book publisher and two authors for (gasp!) publishing a book! And she did it when it seemed other sources—reliable and otherwise—were being pressured to avoid criticism.

I’ve always been proud of PEN with its global membership of writers and literary professionals. I’ve even participated in some of PEN’s efforts to support young writers by sponsoring seminars, only one of the paths they use to support our founding fathers’ determination to keep our country operating differently from the European countries they all hailed from. You know. FREE.

It turned out I had been ignoring the signals. I opened my daily newspapers to Steve Lopez’s opinion piece dominating the LA Times Opinion page with the decree that reliable resources are in danger again. This administration seems to love the freedom afforded by our courts to speak our minds but tends to rely on diminishing other reliable resources like laws and precedence to govern. It’s clear enough: This lawsuit “against a book publisher” is a “dangerous escalation.” I only hope that it doesn’t become the straw that broke the camel’s back for readers of this blog at writebythesea.com and other media. I hope that this time the back that gets broken is from that heavy load known as “truth” hurled by writers themselves. All writers including authors of books and the powerhouse executives that publish their work. I hope they’ll all use the power of the pen to keep resources reliable before we lose the power of free press, free speech and, using Lopez’s words, “the freedom to write.”

Howard-Johnson is the recipient of the California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, and her community’s Character and Ethics award for her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly’s list of “Fourteen San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen” and was given her community’s Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts. Carolyn writes nonfiction for writers, poetry, and fiction and has studied writing at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom; Herzen University in St. Petersburg, Russia; and Charles University, Prague, as well as several universities right here in the good ol’ USA.