(Over the course of the next few weeks, the Lincoln Parish Journal is republishing some of its most memorable stories from the past year … some of our readers’ favorites).
By Kyle Roberts
During his visit to Louisiana Tech to discuss his newest book “The Barn”, award-winning writer Wright Thompson graciously sat down with the Lincoln Parish Journal to cover an array of topics in a short amount of time.
The following has been edited for clarity.
Kyle Roberts, LPJ: How would you describe your writing journey and passion for journalism?
Wright Thompson: I had a neighborhood newspaper when I was eight years old — it was me and my friend Hewitt Garmon. It was the T&G Times. I wrote all the stories and he sold all the ads to our neighbors and parents. I always had that sort of gear, and then I read a book in high school called North Toward Home by Willie Morris, and that was the first time I knew that being a magazine writer was a job. So from that point on, I wanted to do that. I worked for a couple of newspapers, but it was always with the sort of idea of wanting to write these kinds of stories.
LPJ: What was your big dream? ESPN the Magazine?
WT: My big dream at the time was Sports Illustrated, and then it sort of died in front of me. ESPN the Magazine, when it was being edited by Chad Millman, was the best sports magazine that’s ever been. The staff was unbelievable. I felt like I was working 100 hour weeks just to not get embarrassed. I’ve always missed that magazine.
LPJ: Do you have a favorite story that you’ve written?
WT: Well, my favorite story I didn’t write was John Jeremiah Sullivan’s profile of Axl Rose, which I love. In terms of a story I wrote, I just wrote one on Caitlin Clark that I really liked. I’ve written two different Michael Jordan stories. They’re all kid of like my kids — I kind of like them all.
LPJ: We could probably talk for hours about this, but where do you see news media today and the importance of getting information to people?
WT: Local media is both never been more important and never been more fragile. The watchdog function is very important, but so is the sense of community. It’s a place where the Little League box scores are. It’s place where the woman at the bank used to laminate the photographs. There is a fundamental aspect of creation of a community out of disparate people that can only really happen through local sports and local media. It’s the fire pit of a community. If you don’t have one shared set of facts where there is no arbiter, then everything’s true. And then it’s just anarchy.
I get all of my news now digitally. I don’t subscribe to a newspaper because I can’t get the New York Times delivered and it’s exhausting — I want someone to curate it for me. I would like it to show up and be like, hey, if it’s not in these pages, you don’t really need to know. But the local news as the fire pit of a community is essential.
LPJ: Last thing — where do you see news heading between AI (artificial intelligence), social media, and the attention economy? Where is this headed?
WT: I don’t think we know. I think that one of the reasons that the world is in such turmoil is that we are in this inflection age of old things dying and new things being born and all of the fear that presents. I love this idea that the Thirty Years War was caused by the invention of the printing press. I feel like the social media is the printing press of today. Before the printing press, only really the Catholic Church could make books. And now all of a sudden, anybody could say anything they want. And like, the human animal was not evolved to the point to be able to handle the responsibility of that or the fallout of it. And I feel like the internet is just the exact same thing. I think everything that’s happening now has happened before. And so I think people are always gonna wanna know what their neighbors are doing.
LPJ: Thank you for your time.
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