Pe­ter Ray Blood

I have al­ways lived by the adage, "doh wait 'til yuh dead, to thank those who've been good to you, and to tell those that mat­ter that yuh love dem." This month marks 16 years since fel­low jour­nal­ists David Cuffy and Jones P Madeira con­vinced me to leave my up­ward-mo­bile and se­cure job at Trinidad Ex­press to join the Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian. This was af­ter spend­ing 14 years pre­vi­ous­ly at the Ex­press, mak­ing me a vet­er­an jour­nal­ist of 30 years ex­pe­ri­ence, much more than the life ex­pectan­cy of to­day's ban­dit. In hind­sight the de­ci­sion to en­ter the field of jour­nal­ism in 1980 was a crazy one, es­pe­cial­ly as I'd ear­li­er spent a decade on aca­d­e­mics and work in the field of Com­put­er Sci­ence, re­tir­ing as a young man as a Sys­tems An­a­lyst, hav­ing done op­er­at­ing and pro­gram­ming on IBM sys­tems.

The ad­ven­ture be­gins...

There are times I won­der if I'd stayed in IT whether my lot would have been con­sid­er­ably bet­ter to­day, giv­en the for­tunes of most of my col­leagues of 30-plus years back. Hav­ing be­gan as a rook­ie re­porter un­der the guid­ance of ed­i­tors like Owen Bap­tiste, Raoul Pan­tin, Suni­ty Ma­haraj and Kei­th Smith, I quick­ly took to the job like the prover­bial duck to wa­ter. In a very short time I was ap­point­ed ed­i­tor of the de­funct Sun evening pa­per, and short­ly af­ter a full-fledged Arts & En­ter­tain­ment ed­i­tor.

Com­ing to the Guardian, I was for­tu­nate to al­so work with icons in the pro­fes­sion like Therese Mills, Carl Ja­cob, Lennox Grant, Andy John­son, Judy Ray­mond and Do­minic Kaliper­sad. Jour­nal­ism opened up a new and ex­cit­ing world of pos­si­bil­i­ties to me as it not on­ly in­tro­duced me to count­less promi­nent and in­ter­est­ing peo­ple, but al­so took me abroad, to places I may have nev­er vis­it­ed as an IT techie. Be­ing an Arts & En­ter­tain­ment Ed­i­tor and pre­vi­ous­ly man­ag­ing two pop­u­lar dis­cothe­ques in the city, I met an as­sort­ment of in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed su­per­stars in the arts, some­times host­ing Wel­come to Trinidad par­ties for them at Im­pact and Rolls Royce In­ter­na­tion­al dis­cos.

Among some of these stars I rubbed shoul­ders with were Michael Jack­son and the Jack­son Five, Bob Mar­ley, Luther Van­dross, Dionne War­wick, Rober­ta Flack, Li­onel Richie, Jef­frey Os­borne, Ed­die Mur­phy, Jody Wat­t­ley, Howard He­witt and Sha­la­mar, Hugh Masekela, Fela Ram­some Ku­ti, Pe­ter Tosh, KC & The Sun­shine Band, Kool & The Gang, 3rd World, Aswad, Steel Pulse, Siz­zla Kolan­ji and many more. Jour­nal­ism al­so al­lowed me to touch peo­ple, not just lo­cal­ly, but across the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. I was able to write for sev­er­al dai­ly news­pa­per in the re­gion, as well as for Time's South mag­a­zine, mag­a­zines and pe­ri­od­i­cals in the US and Africa, do ra­dio doc­u­men­taries for the BBC, Ja­maica tele­vi­sion and talk shows in Bar­ba­dos.

The ad­ven­ture con­tin­ues...

One of my proud­est achieve­ments was be­ing se­lect­ed by the late By­ron Lee, along with peo­ple like Stephen Lee He­ung, Steve Dereck, Allyson Hen­nessy, An­gela Fox, Ger­ald Agos­ti­ni and Iw­er George to con­ceive and pro­duce Ja­maica Car­ni­val in 1988. My jour­nal­ism acu­men was so­licit­ed then by the Ja­maican Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny to do two tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­taries on car­ni­val, and columns for The Glean­er news­pa­per. Trav­el­ling abroad in the name of jour­nal­ism has al­so tak­en me as far Italy, as well as through the re­gion and the USA and Cana­da to serve as a car­ni­val judge.

Re­al­i­ty check

While it may sound like a roller coast­er ride of ex­cite­ment and ad­ven­ture, I am al­so sad­dened by the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the pro­fes­sion, es­pe­cial­ly with the grad­ual lack of pas­sion for the job, es­pe­cial­ly by young work­ers. Peo­ple now come in­to the field think­ing it to be a "glam­our pro­fes­sion," a eight-to-four job, or a step-up to greater, bet­ter-pay­ing vo­ca­tions. In­com­ing jour­nal­ists dur­ing the decade past, spoilt and buffered by in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions ben­e­fits, and un­der­trained, though high­ly qual­i­fied, have now be­come clock-watch­ers, soft, un­will­ing to go that ex­tra dis­tance to get the job done prop­er­ly.

I am al­so dis­ap­point­ed that I have not ac­com­plished what I con­scious­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly set out to do 30 years ago. At the time I en­tered the pro­fes­sion, in­dige­nous cul­ture had no place on main stage. I saw it as my cru­sade to use the me­dia to ex­pose, show­case, cham­pi­on and lift our ca­lyp­so, pan, chut­ney, parang and oth­er artistes. To­day, of 35 ra­dio fre­quen­cies, a mere three con­sis­tent­ly play lo­cal mu­sic or high­light our artistes. To get a lo­cal pro­duc­tion or se­ries on tele­vi­sion con­tin­ues to be like pulling teeth as lo­cal cor­po­rate en­ti­ties are stout­ly re­luc­tant to in­vest in the arts; a mere hand­ful step­ping up to the crease in the past 30 years.

One pro­duc­tion house, led by a pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty, in try­ing to get fund­ing for a project, sent let­ters to 150 com­pa­nies–ten re­spond­ed; five signed on the dot­ted line. I'd prob­a­bly go to my grave know­ing that I have failed in this jour­nal­is­tic pur­suit. But, to the afore­men­tioned, and those un­named, who helped shape the man and jour­nal­ist I have be­come, Thank You. Some­time back in the '70s a wise old man told me: "love what you do and you'll nev­er work a day in your life."

I have nev­er worked a day in my life.