Dan Habib worked at the Concord Monitor as a staff photographer from 1988-1992, and as photo editor from 1995-2008. He lives in Concord and is a documentary filmmaker based at the Westchester Institute for Human Development.
Too often, we only get to express our full appreciation for someone after they are gone. So it was a gift to those of us in Mike Pride’s enormous orbit when his family shared that he was nearing death earlier this month.
I sent this email to Mike on April 20, a few days before he died, telling him how much he meant to me and so many other journalists. It is lightly edited for reader clarity.
Mike, it’s hard to put into words what a mentor you have been to me. And how much my appreciation for you as a bold leader and journalistic innovator has grown over the years.
There are way too many examples to name, but a few moments I experienced directly come to mind.
I vividly remember showing you the photograph of Ginger Blanchard of Hopkinton weeping over her daughter Brooke’s casket in 1996. Brooke was killed at age 17 in a car crash. You gave me sage advice – before we publish this painful photograph, call Ginger, describe the photo, and let her know our plans to publish it so she was not caught unaware. As you know, Ginger told me she was 100% behind publishing the photo if it could save one other family from the grief that she was enduring. When readers cried “invasion of privacy” after seeing the photo, you wrote a follow-up column explaining that Ginger supported publication, and the criticism evaporated. Ginger’s public work as an advocate was launched in part through that publication. And our readers saw the essence of grief.
When I proposed the idea of spending a year attending middle school health and fitness class with pioneering Rundlett Middle School teacher Tom Walton (who also sadly passed away recently), you gave me the support I needed to pursue that project. But the real badass move by you was wholeheartedly supporting the publication of the resulting special section on teen sexuality and then printing more than 100 letters to the editor (about 2/3 of which were supportive mind you!) You knew this was a controversial conversation that our community needed to have – awareness building that could literally save lives and avoid unwanted teen pregnancies and STDs.
That project truly launched the rest of my career of deep-dive storytelling, both through my own work and the work of people I supervised like Preston Gannaway.
Speaking of Preston, whenever we told you we needed a lot more time and newsprint to tell the story of Remember Me, you fought for both. You knew Preston and writer Chelsea Conaboy were on to something special, and look where your support took them, and the paper: A 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Preston and the Monitor.
There were so many other photojournalists that you supported and mentored alongside me, so many smart – if risky – decisions you made. Who sends a photographer from a small daily to Romania? You do, and Andrea Bruce came back with a remarkable story of children living in the sewers who made their way back to New Hampshire as adoptees.
And then of course there was my 1992 Bill Clinton-in-the-bathroom picture – hmmm, should we publish such an intimate photo of a candidate who was flailing in that moment (“I didn’t inhale” and Gennifer Flowers)? Of course we should! It told a story of the moment, so we’ll run it across six columns! Hope you recall that he chuckled and signed it when he saw the photo in the Monitor newsroom while campaigning for Hillary.
There is a throughline through all of this. You were an exemplar for me, and so many hundreds and hundreds of other journalists, most of whom were in a formative moment of their careers, of what true community journalism looks like when done with integrity, guts, grit, and daring. You also taught me how to mentor others, how to give critical feedback constructively, how to nurture but hold accountable, and how to take the hit for someone lower on the masthead when you knew you could absorb it better than they could.
All that’s to say, you played a formative role in who I am as a journalist, filmmaker, as a citizen, and more than anything as a human being.
You made the world a better place through your actions, leadership, and ethics.
I am so grateful to you, and thankful we had 17 years together as colleagues.