Re: Awesomesauce!
"I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger. I was going to be a reporter," says Saldana, who has been writing about crime and corruption since the 1980s. He tells me how he started out on the streets of New York, where he spent his teenage years with his friends stealing cars and drugs, working for newspapers in exchange for food and shelter.
In 1981, Saldana was hired to write for the New York Post, but he never really felt at home there. He went home to L.A. "I was working for a newspaper but I was not part of the newsroom. I was a reporter in exile," he says. He quit and made his way to New Orleans. He lived in a small apartment with a woman who was the only one to accept him. "My apartment was so bare. There was a lot of food, and a lot of stuff that I had to carry," he says. "I did not have a TV, or a computer. So I was completely dependent on the woman who let me stay in her apartment. That was a very good thing.
... and it makes a career in journalism sound so appealing, too!