It’s easy to think of the business world as black and white – or black and red, as the case may be.
But reporter Michael Diamond shows us it’s so much more.
At its core, it’s about people. The people whose drive and ingenuity keep the economy going. The people who struggle to pay bills. The needs and wants of a society and the way people build a life or legacy around them. The families who have poured their lives into keeping a generations-old shop or restaurant running. The medical advances and facilities that literally keep people alive.
He has been telling these stories on the Shore for more than twenty years, and his understanding and insight into the engine that drives the region is essential to understanding our neighbors and community.
Tell us about your background. Where do you come from? How and why did you start reporting? How did you end up at the Asbury Park Press?
I grew up in Denver, Colorado, and read the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News every morning, mostly the sports and comics. After I was cut from my freshman baseball team in high school, I needed to find a new activity, so I started writing for the school newspaper. I eventually went to Dickinson College, a liberal arts school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and became editor of the school newspaper. I fell in love with journalism. I am curious about people’s stories and why the world works the way it does. I enjoy the challenge of staring at a blank screen and writing a story on deadline. And I’m super shy, so it gave me an excuse to talk to strangers. After graduating, I worked at a small newspaper outside of Pittsburgh and then worked at a newspaper in Southern California for five years. When I saw an opening for a business reporter in Asbury Park in 1999, I applied and was hired.Is there one story from your career that really stands out? What was it and why?
Gosh, I’ve been here 25 years and written thousands of stories. I’ve discussed the 1990s tech bubble, the Great Recession, Superstorm Sandy, and a pandemic. A few stand out.
A year after September 11, I went to Middletown, which lost dozens of residents in the terrorist attacks, to see how the community was recovering. I ran into Tom Redmond outside a church that day and he said, “I’m really glad to be alive. I just feel the sun here and my feet on the ground and my granddaughter’s hand.”
Twenty years later, I visited hospitals to interview workers on the front lines of the worst pandemic the world had seen in a century. They didn’t have enough equipment. They didn’t know how to treat the disease. They got sick themselves. That was a scary time.
