When I moved to the Virgin Islands, I planned to stay for two years. That was in 2006, and I’m proud to say that yesterday marked my ten-year anniversary of working at the Beacon.
My journey began in a dingy computer lab in Baltimore, Maryland. I had just finished graduate school in poetry, and I was surfing journalismjobs.com to look for employment in Maryland or Washington DC.
Unfortunately, no one seemed to be hiring poets. Then I saw this ad title: “Writer needed at Caribbean weekly.”
“Surely, they need a poet!” I thought, picturing myself under a palm tree, sipping rum punch and writing a haiku about the sunset.
So I sent a resume. Shortly thereafter, I was surprised to receive a response from Beacon founder Linnell Abbott, who at the time was also the newspaper’s owner, publisher and editor.
To this day, I’m not sure what we talked about during our phone interview: Because of static on the line, neither one of us could understand the other. But in my imagination Ms. Abbott described the job something like this: “You’re main responsibility would be writing a poem each week, and if the salary seems low don’t worry: It’s balanced out by free beer and free lobster!”
Needless to say, I was sold.
Info sparse
I had never been to the VI — and couldn’t afford to come visit before accepting the job — so I spent the next few weeks trying to learn about the territory.
This wasn’t easy. Back then, there was precious little information on the internet, and the only useful book I could find in Baltimore libraries was an abridged version of Vernon Pickering’s History of the British Virgin Islands, which I read cover to cover.
While my work permit processed, I tried not to obsess on the Beacon’s fledgling website, which for the entire summer displayed an article about a machete-wielding man who had climbed a telephone pole naked.
Fortunately, that man had climbed down by the time I arrived in August. But this didn’t mean that Ms. Abbott sent me to write haiku at Cane Garden Bay. From day one, she insisted on world-class journalism, including thorough coverage of government, the courts, community events, and just about everything in between.
My first assignment was a welcome-home ceremony for 24-year-old Tahesia Harrigan at the Central Administration Building. The sprinter had not yet competed in an Olympics, but she had scored big at a recent international meet and was on the way up.
This was very impressive, but what stands out most in my memory is my panic after somehow getting lost between the Beacon office and Wickhams Cay.
Challenges
Even after I knew my way around, working at the Beacon was tough. Back then, owning a cell phone was prohibitively expensive: All local calls had to be made from the office, and calling home meant walking down to the ferry terminal and putting an astonishing number of quarters into a pay phone. Meanwhile, the internet was slow as Christmas.
Other staff members, however, were quick to remind me that Beacon life had been much tougher in the years prior to my arrival.
Production Manager Todd VanSickle explained that the Beacon had only recently gone digital: Before that, staffers had to physically cut and paste each issue together and rush the pages to the West End ferry to be taken to St. Thomas for printing.
Ms. Abbott took me even further back in time, showing me the typewriter that composed the Beacon’s first issues and recounting the days when the newspaper was produced in a one-and-a-half-room wooden house with no air-conditioning. Visits by chickens and goats, she recalled, were not uncommon.
Leadership changes
Six months after my arrival, Beacon Assistant Editor Scott Bronstein moved to Panama and I took over his position. About two years later, the paper turned 25, and Ms. Abbott announced her retirement.
When she asked me to be the Beacon’s second-ever editor — an honour from which I have yet to recover — I thought I was home free.
“Finally!” I thought, “Now I’ll get to write those haiku on the beach!”
Alas, the Beacon’s new majority owner, Russell Harrigan, had other ideas: He wanted the newspaper to continue its tradition of journalistic excellence.
In spite of my shattered dreams, though, I love my job: I’m proud to be a part of this tight-knit community, and every day I’m grateful for the opportunity to live and work in such a beautiful place.
And as further consolation, every so often I get to remind new reporters that they have it easy.
“You should have been here back when I arrived in the territory,” I say. “That was before the invention of paper and pencils, so we had to take notes on leaves, writing in our own blood.”
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