There is inherent power in the written word, and I’ve come to realize the impact. I need not look any further than the handmade card that sits on the desk in my room, written to me nearly two years ago. The cover reads: "congrats on quitting the Alligator," in bold letters. That’s how excited I was to leave this newspaper after Summer 2013. It was an occasion warranting celebration. It was before I understood the value of written words.
I was half-in-half out most of that summer and selfish. I planned the Alligator to be a three-month stopover to see if I actually liked to write. I was unwilling to pay my dues to an institution I didn’t respect and a paper I thought was beneath me.
Copy editing was a chore I didn’t take seriously on nights I was paid to do so. Any errors in the paper that summer were probably on me. Then, just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in last summer. Or, more accurately, I fell back in.
After parting ways with GatorCountry.com, I called former sports editor Jonathan Czupryn and asked him if he "needed any help." I had no place to write and needed a home. Humbled, I slinked back into the office I openly put down after I first left. Serving as Jon’s assistant, we made a paper twice a week for three months. I began to feel invested in this musty hundred-year-old office and the words we produced.
I had no idea at the start, but so began the greatest professional year of my young life.
On a journalistic level, my growth has been unreal because I work with the best student journalists this college has to offer. I sat with the Associated Press’ Mark Long last month at the NCAA Tournament. He’s an Alligator alum and he was telling me — or more accurately bragging to me — about his staff. He boasted about where they ended up: some at ESPN, some Sports Illustrated, the highest heights this profession offers. That day he said something that stuck with me: "I’ll put my staff up with anyone’s."
I am proud to say that one day I’ll put the alligatorSports staff I worked with up next to Mark’s, and we’ll win. Morgan Moriarty, the girl who knows more about football than you. Does that intimidate you? Good. Jon, my man who’s already been published in the New York Times. Jordan McPherson, the wonderkid I can never say enough about. The sky is the limit for all of us, and I can’t wait to see what all four of us will do.
We’ve criss-crossed the southeast as a group stuffed in a car eight and 10 hours at a time, from Morgan’s speeding ticket 45 minutes into the drive to Media Days to the questionable hotels we shared many times.
We had lunch Saturday, the first time all four of us had been together since Jon graduated in December. We ate pizza, laughing about how frustrating it is to land a job and all the fun we had covering the football team. They’re my friends, and I count myself lucky to have those relationships. I’m proud of what we did, not only those four but our entire team of fact checkers and beat writers. People have told me over the last few months that our sports section has been as good as they’ve seen in years. That’s an awesome feeling.
It was never just about me, and I think in the end that’s what I’ve learned in my second stint at the best student newspaper in the country. I’ve learned as much through my failure covering the Treon Harris investigation as I have from staying up 24 hours straight to chronicle the beginning of the SEC Network, my longform look at Billy Donovan’s career and columns about anything and everything.
This is the last time my byline and my written words will ever appear in this newspaper. Typing that is sobering because it really means it’s over. A position covering UF athletics is one of the most important in sports journalism and it has been an honor to do it alongside talented and wonderful co-workers. But finally it’s been an honor to do it for you, the reader.
My long-running joke in the office is "the internet doesn’t read the newspaper," a nod to the current state of journalism. But there is an unbelievably romantic quality to seeing my words in a printed newspaper — this printed newspaper. I’ll miss that. To anyone who ever reached into an orange rack and grabbed a paper: thank you. To anyone who’s ever clicked on a story or emailed me with a suggestion or even a complaint: thank you. Thank you for caring in your own little way about something that has made such an impact in my life.
The first time I left the Alligator, I was happy. This time, it’s bittersweet. I’ll always long for what we had here on the pages Johnson’s Journal and everything else I wrote was printed on, the pieces that are always too long for Jordan’s inch count, just like this one.
It’s time to write words somewhere else, so now with all the respect and love I have in my heart, I say goodbye for the second time. No cards this go around, no celebration, just all the thankfulness I can muster about getting a second chance here; I don’t know where I’d be as a man or as a writer without it.
Follow Richard Johnson on Twitter @RagjUF
