Why I Write TGR

The Gantt Report

By Lucius Gantt

Every now and then, some young man or woman contacts me and asks me to give them the names of media publishers, editors, and printers.

Oftentimes, I refuse because media work is serious to me, and I try not to waste time with people who are only curious about journalism.

At the end of the day, if someone is persistent, I ask them, “What is the name of your local newspaper?”. If they know a name, I suggest they should; contact their local media company.

You see, media information is valuable, and I won’t refer wannabee columnists to newspapers. If they convince me they are serious, I go ahead and help them.

Many writers I’ve helped write a few columns and quit in a relatively short time.

People, old and young, have tried to write columns like The Gantt Report but TGR cannot be imitated, duplicated, or literally copied. Even when I tried to write under a pseudonym, people would recognize my style and say, “That’s Lucius”.

So, writers find it easier to mimic, parrot or rubber stamp columnists that they read and peruse in so-called major media editorial pages.

No problem, that type of writing is welcomed in most newspapers, Black-owned or white-owned. When most of their columns begin to feel similar, now you know why.

My career and the longevity of The Gantt Report started very differently.

I decided I wanted to be a writer when I was seven years old. One day, after studying poetry in the second grade, I said to myself, “I can do that”, and I went home and wrote a poem about my life in one of Atlanta’s most notorious housing projects, Carver Homes.

I ran to school the next morning to show my poem to my teacher. I told her I wanted to be a writer.

She looked at my poem and said, “Lucius, this is nice, but instead of being a writer, you should go to trade school and be a plumber or a carpenter because they make good money!”

I said, OK, and went on with my little boy life.

I wrote my first newspaper column as a 17-year-old freshman at Georgia State College in “The Signal”, the GSU newspaper.

I was working at WSB-TV at the same time and by age 19, I was married, had a child on the way, and was also working for The Atlanta Journal as a Sportswriter. I went on to write for The Associated Press, The Washington Post, and other papers and media companies.

TGR has been around for more than 40 years. It started as a newsletter and upgraded to a tabloid newspaper. TGR became an editorial column after columns written under my name appeared in “major” newspapers and irritated some politicians in Florida, and John La Capra, a Republican client, suggested it become solely a column.

To make a long story short, no Black newspaper has ever nominated TGR for an editorial award, but TGR is one of the longest-running and most widely read independent columns in American history.

However, Purdue University has asked me to provide them with the TGR archives so the column can be available to their students and other parties around the world, quotes from TGR were displayed in the National Freedom Museum “Freedom of Speech” section and TGR has been distributed in Africa, China, the Caribbean, and all over the United States. The Gantt Report has also been published on the World News website, www.wn.com.

I want TGR readers to know Lucius is not new to the game, Lucius Gantt is true to the game!

I wish the best for young journalists, but you can’t learn to write like me by playing spades in the college student union. I am an avid book reader.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Black columnists know who I am. I love and respect them, but I have referred to one or two as “Modern Day Buckwheats”, not because of anything personal. I did it because, in my mind, they were writing to please “Spanky and the other white Little Rascals.”

In the little time I have left, I need to finish the books I promised to write and, perhaps, try my hand at playwriting and screenwriting.

But it was necessary today to let TGR readers know I do what I do for you.