Hunting in Harlem Read online

  Laying out his articles upon his desk, Olthidius Cole organized the submissions the same way: the ones to be cut, the ones that had potential or were just satisfactory, and those pieces that were exemplary. In the most esteemed pile was, of course, the consistently impressive sports writing of Charlie Awuyah and classical news reporting of Gil Manly, one set for the front page and one for the back automatically, but there were also two other articles of interest that gave Olthidius Cole hope for the future. Both were longer, three-thousand-word-plus pieces he himself had personally solicited the moment he caught his father starting to pack his things, both were written by graduate students from the New York area whom Cole hoped to recruit directly out of their respective schools of journalism.

  The first story, written by the Columbia grad student Althea Woods, coincidentally dealt with the last Columbia J-school alumni the New Holland Herald employed. It was a look back at the Mount Morris burning books fiasco from over a year ago. Hands down, it gave the most insightful critique Cole had seen of the continually blurring line between news and morbid entertainment that was further obscured when New York City local news chose to run live images of a man lighting himself on fire, reshowing them repeatedly in the days that followed, their clips becoming increasingly graphic to compete with the national and cable news outlets that had jumped on the story's bandwagon. It was also the first critique Cole had read that questioned author Robert M. Finley's motivation for the suicide at all, which was surprising considering the book's numerous reprints since it was first rushed to press. Woods had even obtained an internal document from his publisher citing the abysmal sales of the original release of Finley's The Great Work. The article also examined what actual percentage of the book's gross was going to the family of Piper Goines as requested, as well as the issue about the book's title, if Robert M. Finley would have actually agreed to changing it to Burnin' Luv in Harlem, but so many articles had been written about both of those subjects already that Cole planned to edit out those bits. If the actual book was half as interesting as this article about it, Cole mused, maybe he would have read more than twenty pages before giving up. Dry, dry stuff. Just dreadful. Still, some people were just fanatical about it, a good-size group, Apparently. Dry, dreadful folks, Cole imagined. The man was no Bo Shareef, Cole snorted. Now that's a writer.

  The second story was from the student at NYU, Lucretia Yates a lot of potential in that one, very astute, knowledgeable, she was white, but the rest of the staff would just have to get over that. Her submission was a collection of profiles of the new pioneers of black New York, the next generation of leaders taking control as the baby boomers were forced into retirement along with their old ways. Olthidius Cole saw himself as being a prominent member of this movement and - if he did manage to keep from calling up Yates and requesting a profile of himself be added - wanted the foreword to put it in the context of his own recent ascension. Besides that context shift, Cole loved her whole thesis: that this was a less sentimental group, secure enough for the harshest of self-criticism. They were the first generation of black leaders not formed by the struggle against a hostile white world, Yates argued, so were more likely to be focused on their own world's internal dilemmas.

  One thing Olthidius Cole would alter about Yates's piece was the order of the subjects, particularly which profile would come first. If this was to be a cover story, the most compelling profile should be the first thing the reader sees. The person Cole chose for that honor was the new president of Horizon Realty. In the wake of the announced retirement of flamboyant former congressman Cyrus Marks, Horizon was continuing its tradition of high-profile front-men with the appointment of Cedric Snowden Jr., a product of Horizon's own Second Chance Program. A swashbuckling figure in his public relations photo, a rags to riches story, it had all the ingredients that New Holland Herald readers demanded. The man even answered questions in the form of sound bites. When asked what was the key to Horizon's success, particularly in light of their planned expansion into Brooklyn, Newark, Pittsburgh's Hill District, and Washington, D.C., in the year to follow, Cedric Snowden smoothly replied, "When you believe in what you do, what you can do you won't believe."

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  Mat Johnson, a former resident of Harlem, has returned to his native city, Philadelphia. He is also the author of Drop.