Curtis Stephen stands out among journalists we know for so many reasons. He is a young reporter – still riding his third decade – who has maintained (with such dignity and enthusiasm) long-held values of the craft (dogged pursuit of detail, commitment to truth and willingness to struggle and sweat to make a story relevant and interesting).
Even more to the point here, Curtis embodies the very reason-for-being of this news site/blog: to address, through dissemination of information and sober perspective, the phenomenal economic and social transformations occurring in the great borough of Brooklyn.
These changes have much – one might even say "everything" – to do with race, culture and a local economy being driven by out-of-control real estate developers.
Curtis, though he never boasts about it, has sacrificed the perks of working full-time at MSM news outlets or stations in order to have the independence to pick and choose the stories that he writes.
Largely those stories have dealt with injustices of the criminal justice system, with hip hop culture and with the complexities of real estate development in Brooklyn.
Curtis' longer ambition is to tell the story of the amazing year 1977, the year of his birth, when the Son of Sam sowed death in the city and a blackout exposed violent fissures in the fabric of our society at the time.
The wonderful wonk publication City Limits (now mostly online) has been the venue of many of Curtis' pieces of late, including one earlier this year on the many tens of thousands of stop-and-frisks being conducted by city cops on blacks in the city, largely, of course, in Brooklyn.
Curtis, who is of Trindadian descent and a graduate of Long Island University, has also written opinion pieces for Newsday, including an August 28 article marking 40 years since the death of jazz iconoclast and legend John Coltrane ("A Role Model for Change").
A glimpse of the substance of other pieces can be gleaned from a hip hop culture review he did in February for Black Issues Book Review.
On the front page of The Amsterdam News, on July 12, Curtis tested the waters for his book or film ambitions about the Great Year 1977, offering sober recollections and reflections on the '77 blackout and its social ramifications.
It was so fitting that the radio station WBAI chose Curtis, along with two other great city journalists, Nayaba Arinde and Herb Boyd of The Amsterdam News, on Saturday, December 29, to reflect on happenings of 2007.
And now, Curtis, it's time to hit those computer keys and ring in a New Year!
I've been following Curtis' career for quite some time. He is indeed a class act. Brooklyn Ron isn't half bad either :)
FXS
Posted by: Frank | January 08, 2008 at 09:25 AM