Q: What’s with the shaved head?

A: There should be some easy answer here. Professional swimming aspirations? No. Unfortunate political leanings? No. Fresno = hot; bald = cool? No. Well, a little, but no. The truth is I got a haircut once when I was home from college. I distinctly remember the day and the time and the place and the woman with the excessively long fingernails, and she looked at me and asked if she could thin-it-up a little on top. She said it fast like that, as if it were no big deal. Thin-it-up a little. “Suuuure,” I said, because what did I care? I was cocky. I had locks for blocks. Hair to spare. I was sitting before a giant feast of roast beef and lamb and sweet potatoes and buttered corn on the cob and suckling pig and that Thanksgiving green bean casserole with the crunchy stuff on top. And someone asked me for a sliver of  ham and I cried out, “BUT OF COURSE! There’s plenty here for everyone! What is but a sliver of ham to such a man as I?” Because I spoke very oddly back then. And so she thinned the top a little with these strange-looking sheers and that is the day I began to go bald on top. It took a while, of course. There was years of denial and over-applying of Rogaine and some awkward combing forward that inspired taunting from the girlfriend of that era.

Eventually, I got a job as the general news columnist in La Crosse, Wis., where they decided to put my face on billboards, probably as some sort of mass rodent removal project. There was at least eight billboards around a town of 50,000 people, so everyone saw them. One was me in an old white thermal with a tattered black T-shirt over it that said, “Fish-O-Rama VII.” I don’t know what Fish-O-Rama was, but it was apparently important enough that they held seven of them. I bought that T-shirt years ago with my friend Jon at a Salvation Army in Lawrence, Kan. It’s just one of those shirts that feels right, 200 washes later it’s as comfortable as ever, best $2 I’ve ever spent. Anyway, on the billboard I was standing in the middle of the street with the thermal and the Fish-O-Rama shirt and a black stocking cap on my head and in big letters it read, “No, seriously, people like him.” I thought that was clever. The other billboards were just me in regular work clothes. I was keeping my hair short at the time and by then it was supermodel thin on top. I’d given up trying to comb it toward the bare spots. And people would be introduced to me for the first time and say, “Oh, Matt James. Nice to meet you. I saw your billboards. I thought you were at least 45.” This happened, roughly, 78 times per day. I was 26 years old at the time. In desperation, I shaved my entire head with a razor and it turned out to be a great move. Head isn’t too weirdly shaped. Now people say I look 42, 43 tops.

Q: Are you always so wordy?

A: Yes.

Q: Are you interested in politics? Who is your favorite politician?

A: I am intrigued by politics, I’ve just never been overly involved. I’d like to be a self-proclaimed expert someday, truly understand every facet of government, the entire system, what the duties of each position are, what every committee is responsible for, but it just seems like such a big project. It’s like learning the piano or reading the Bible. It’s something I want to do, but who has time for that?

My favorite politician will always be Bob Dole. I can’t tell you exactly why. Lots of reasons, I guess. He’s from Kansas. I’m from Kansas. He was a war hero and didn’t really talk about it that much. He seemed like someone with whom you could make a handshake deal and know he that wouldn’t screw you over later. He married someone smarter and better looking than himself and was secure about it. Back in ‘96, I was going to school in Omaha, Neb., and voted absentee in the presidential election. Except I waited until the last day to send in my ballot and had to overnight it back to Kansas. To this day I brag about paying $11.50 to vote for Bob Dole in a state he was going to win by 82.6% of the vote anyway.

Q: That was kind of an awkward “with whom” in that last answer. Was that even correct usage?

A: No idea.

Q: Aren’t you a professional journalist?

A: In much the same way John Daly is a professional golfer. I’ve had my moments.

Q: You wanna go back and change it?

A: Maybe later.

Q: I hear you don’t even have a college degree. Is that true?

A: It’s not as bad as it sounds. I went to journalism school. I just got really bad grades.

Q: How does that not sound bad?

A: OK, it’s not good. But I didn’t switch to journalism until my senior year of college, after I transferred to the University of Kansas. By then, most of the journalism students my age had done internships at metro newspapers and had job offers. I was still trying to figure if the quotation marks go on the outside of a comma. I tanked my entire junior year, taking science classes I had no business being in. I ate five credit hours of ‘F’ in Organic Chemistry II. Well then I got into print journalism classes and everything was great for the next two years, but it was a race against the clock to get my overall GPA back to 2.50. That’s the minimum requirement to get a framed, stamped piece of paper from the William Allen White School of Journalism. After my last semester, I walked through the graduation ceremony, cap and gown, parents and pictures, the whole thing, and it was only after I had moved to Chicago and started working at a weekly paper in the suburbs that my parents received a letter announcing that I had finished with a 2.48, or something like that. So to get the degree, I have to go back and get a good grade in one class. Any class. Pottery. Advanced Bolivian Architecture. Golf. Ballroom Dance. The History of Castro’s Third 80-Year Reign. Any class. But it has to be a University of Kansas class because transfer courses only count as pass-fail. I could take a continuing education course online but those are expensive, and besides, I’d rather have the story than the degree anyway. Somewhere, my parents are still in tears.

Q: It seems like print journalism could be close to extinction. What do you think newspapers did wrong?

A: Let me just say that I hope newspapers live on for centuries, in some form or another. I’m biased, but there is just something noble and invigorating about a newspaper. Newspapers, at their best, hold people accountable, and I’m scared our society could lose that. I just read a Washington Post story the other day about how much less scutiny the police in Baltimore are under, mostly because of newspaper cutbacks. It’s already happening, to some extent. Beyond that, though, when I wake up and hold a newspaper in the morning, I feel alive, at least 15% smarter and more informed. It’s like taking your brain out for a morning jog. It has world events, local news, the weather, comics, puzzles, coupons. It’s an amazing, amazing concept, the newspaper. A lot of people feel that way. Unfortunately, I’m the only one of us under the age of 62. I’m kidding. Sort of. 

The common misconception is that people don’t read newspapers any more and that just isn’t true. Subscription numbers have fallen some, but not like you’d think. More people read newspapers online than ever before. It’s the advertising losses that are bankrupting newspaper companies. It’s just too cheap and easy to advertise on the “series of tubes.” Companies all have their own web sites now. I could take a web developer and two reporters and create an online “newspaper” over the weekend. And we’d be competing for those same advertising dollars. As a delivered-to-the-doorstep entity, the newspaper has almost no competition, advertising or otherwise. Online, well, it’s a shark tank out there. Frankly, I’m not sure there’s a lot that newspapers could have done. Technology has changed everything. It was inevitable. Now, newspaper companies probably should have seen it coming and prepared better, you know, by scaling back instead of gobbling up other newspapers chains and taking on enormous debt, but I think a major alteration in the way people get their news was inevitable.

Q: How old are you?

A: 32

Q: You realize this reads more like a Q & A than a FAQ, right?

A: I’m becoming aware, yes.

Q: Are you married? Kids?

A: My mom fed you these questions, didn’t she?