The Pickup is an independent media company doing culture journalism for curious Oklahomans. We write stories for real people, not AI scrapers or search engines. Become a paying subscriber today to read all of our articles, get bonus newsletters and more.
Following up the roundly successful first season of Sterlin Harjo’s latest hit series, The Lowdown, a media-slash-music hootenanny Thursday night at the storied Cain’s Ballroom will celebrate the life and legacy of the real-life inspiration behind the show’s main character: Lee Roy Chapman, the rabble-rousing writer who dug into Tulsa’s history and published exposés that broadly altered the city’s view of itself and — at least if you’re a sign that said “Brady” — literally changed the Tulsa landscape.
The event is titled “You’re Doin’ It Wrong,” which was something of a motto for Chapman. Maybe less a motto, really, than a battle cry. He seemed to wield it as a declaration of punk positioning or outsider status, a critique of established institutions and practices. Then again, if you’re wagging fingers and telling people how to do something “right,” you’re arguing less for nonconformist points of view and more for simply a new kind of establishment — the way you think insiders ought to behave.
This seems to have been a primary complication in Chapman’s life and work. In some ways he was an outsider — publishing journalism without journalism training, researching history without a history degree. One obituary for Chapman labeled him “a self-taught historian” and “a true citizen journalist.” To fully understand this important and impactful but also provocative Tulsa figure, it’s useful to attend to those specific adjectives.
A True Outsider
Calling anyone a “self-taught” anything throws a little shade on their skills and stops them just short of claiming a bona fide credential. A dictionary definition of historian says such a person must be an “expert in or student of history,” providing just the kind of pivot away from sanctioned expertise that Chapman relied on. Many assume that an accredited education and methodological training are a necessary prerequisite to printing “Historian” on a business card. Saying Chapman was “self-taught” denies that — even while it infuses a useful maverick sensibility into the description that Chapman promoted for himself.
The phrase “citizen journalist” is more fluid. A particular education has never been a consistent precondition for reporting just the facts, ma’am, and in my own two-decade career as whatever constitutes an “official” journalist, I worked alongside numerous skilled professionals who lacked mass-comm degrees and mastered the trade on the job, learning by doing. Journalists are not examined for their credentials a la lawyers or doctors, so calling Chapman a “citizen journalist” may be an insult only with the same flavor as “citizen scientist,” which implies someone doing the grunt work helpful to “real” science. Chapman’s obit even makes excuses for him: “While he had no formal training as a journalist, Lee Roy’s depth of knowledge and ability to uncover uncomfortable truths should rank him among the state’s top investigative journalists.”
In the 21st century, though, does a figure like Chapman require the excuses? Rank, credentials, and qualifications seem to have been democratized along with everything else in the digital era — and because of it. Beginning with blogs and followed by social media and podcasting, none of which require supervised training or dues-paying, the traditional gatekeeping role of legacy media and even academic institutions has come off its hinges. Creators, curators, and influencers reach global audiences and intercultural impact without the need of a publishing contract, an editor’s approval, or a university degree. Substack is the new journalism. YouTube is the new ABC.