My Life in Journalism

Savannah
 

Yes, I know about the book. Savannah, as Dr. John Duncan once told me, is a "City of Live Oaks and dead people."

But let's clarify a few things you might have gotten wrong from the movie.

It's decadent, but less than New Orleans. It's has its share of voodoo, but less than Beaufort, S.C. It's lively, but less than Charleston. It's prosperous, but less than Jacksonville, Fla. And its cosmopolitan, but nowhere as much so as Atlanta. Let's remember, Native Americans never lived in the area that would become Savannah: it was (and is) most of the year a gnat-infested swamp.

I lived there for 10 years, and at times felt at home. My parents loved Savannah, spent half their life there, and died there in the winter of 1996-97, still loving Savannah.
It's is a city of good ole boys and girls, of cliches and clubs, parties and cotillions. It's not just who you know in Savannah, but who you went to school with and where. It's about brown noses and glad hands, sham affection and crass commercialism, situational ethics and a booming drug traffic (the list of area politicians arrested is long and distinguished).

All this makes being a reporter in Savannah remarkably simple. You just had to know the rules. Beat up on the social programs, like the local mental hospital, and all is well. Report about the drug problems of a certain minority politician, and it's the lead. Suggest that the local utilities are not run in the public interest, and expect a trip to the principal's office.

I met some wonderful people in Savannah, some, like Dr. Duncan, unique and memorable. But ultimately I fell under the curse of most journalists: I started hoping for a good disaster, mass murderer, plane crash, anything to break up the boredom. When your publisher thinks a great story would be a puff piece about the local paper plant that will run, coincidentally, on the same page as a half-page ad from that same plant, it's time to look elsewhere.

So I started Inside Savannah, a nice, polite city magazine that struggled (thanks in no small part, to my own lack of guts), and died.

I must admit Savannah has a higher concentration of close friends than elsewhere. It can be a pretty place to visit (other than May to September, when the gnats and/or mosquitoes are unbearable).

But I wouldn't live there again on a bet. And don't ask me about the book.

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Copyright 1999 Thomas Gould
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