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9 years, 8 months and 1 week of Cases and Controversies.

SCOTT PIEPHO
Cases and Controversies

Published: November 16, 2018

A little over 10 years ago, Rick Smith, then the editor of the Akron Legal News, returned my call. My younger child and I were at a park for a play date from which I had to step away to take the call on my cell. That typical work-from-home dad transaction launched this column.

I had gotten in touch with Rick to ask about possible freelance reporting assignments. Instead, he asked me to pitch him a regular opinion column. I had been writing a politics and policy blog for a few years and he wanted a version of that for the paper. After a few months of drafting columns on spec, negotiating pay rate and mission here and some budgeting on the the paper’s end, my first column ran toward the end of February 2009.

Now, with my 10-year anniversary within hailing distance, I am taking an open-ended leave from the column.

For even longer than I’ve been writing this column, I served on the board of Asian Services in Action Inc. The organization’s longtime CEO Michael Byun is stepping down to return to his home state and two board members—myself and Elaine Tso—have been asked to serve as interim co-CEOs while the organization conducts a search for a permanent replacement.

ASIA Inc. works with refugee and immigrant populations providing linguistically and culturally appropriate services aimed at achieving self sufficiency. The organization has increasingly advocated for the rights of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

Adding this new job has amplified the complexity my already challenging gig-economy life. That said, I’ve decided to step back from my column mostly because I cannot ethically write opinion pieces while drawing a paycheck from an organization with a clear stake in the policy debates that the current administration is placing at the center of American politics.

It may seem that an opinion is an opinion, but I’ve found that the two roles carry subtle but ultimately dispositive differences. My job as a columnist includes acknowledging opposing arguments, exploring nuances and pointing out complications on my way to offering opinions. In fact, many columns stop short of ending on an opinion when I think pointing out the questions raised by present circumstances is more interesting and valuable.

On the other hand, sitting at the top of an organization with an advocacy mission will necessitate my full-throated, unreserved endorsement of positions that benefit our clientele. I’m fortunate that those positions align with my own, but I will be advocating in a manner different from and inconsistent with the sort of nuance mining that readers have come to expect from this column.

By some measures, this is the worst time imaginable for me to take a step back from opinion journalism. We’ve just completed the midterm election in a presidency that, whatever else one may think, is certainly proving to be consequential and transformative. That election has seen significant power shifts in both directions. In all, this is an interesting time to be in the opinion journalism game.

To be honest, my feelings run more to relief. The Trump era has shorted out my enthusiasm for following politics. Among most journalists, assessments of the Trump administration runs from “this isn’t great, but of course we’ll survive” to “this could really end disastrously.” I’m in the latter camp. I genuinely fear the transformations we’re seeing, both in our governing institutions and in our politics. I regard the recent election results as necessary but not sufficient for arresting our slide toward authoritarian kleptocracy.

And as you might gather from that last sentence, I haven’t found a lot of nuance and complication to write about lately.

But while this has not been the best time to do this job, I will miss it and especially I will miss having an enthusiastic reading audience. This column has been a cornerstone of my development as a writer in the decade plus I’ve worked on it. I’ve received a surprising (to me at least) level of support, both from people I meet in the community and via email which I am unforgivably bad at responding to.

These pages have seen close to 250 of my biweekly missives. Over the life of this column, I’ve won three statewide journalism awards, earned a graduate degree in creative writing and expanded considerably my portfolio of published works. All that time these pages felt like my journalistic home.

I don’t know what professional opportunities lie ahead and if they will include returning to journalism. My long-term mission here was both to spotlight under-appreciated aspects to current debates and to encourage readers to think beyond surface level media takes. If in reading this column, you’ve found arguments you mostly agree with, then it is what it is. But if you have learned something new or accepted a different angle, I will take that as a job well done.


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