Lissa Joseph’s remains will make the inevitable final biblical passage ‘From Dust to Dust’ tomorrow, when Saint Lucia lays to rest one of its best local journalists.
The daring, persistent and ever-popular Daher Broadcasting Service (DBS) reporter was recently snapped away by Fatalism at just 50, ending a lifelong commitment to her work and causes.
However, Lissa’s legacy is assured, because she’ll be remembered for who she was and how she did her do and because her passage to The Great Beyond sparked a national revival of interest in more than just the Inevitability of Death.
Her last public event with colleagues was the 2025 edition of the Sandals Resorts annual pre-Christmas prize-giving, spirited and belly-filling do, where she egged me to participate in the discussion on the gap between veterans and newcomers in the profession today — best pronounced in the way journalism and reporting operated once-upon-a-time and how it is now.
But while tomorrow’s funeral will hear her final deserving tributes it won’t be Lissa’s final serenade.
Fortunately, as I was reminded earlier this week, there are youth and students with eyes on more than just the glitter and glamour of the profession.
On Monday, three Sir Arthur Lewis Community College (SALCC) interns at DBS attended the Prime Minister’s weekly Monday Press Conference, sat among the local media corps — and got a chance to question both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister (separately).
Their questions focused on matters of public interest (the Uber matter) and generational interest (‘scholarships’ or ‘financial assistance’ for young ‘creatives’).
The Uber question drew from the Deputy PM the disclosure that there may be a ‘then-and-now’ disconnect between local laws and how-far societies have developed since they were promulgated.
And the one on assistance for young creative minds drew the disclosure that government’s invitation to ‘creatives’ needing financial to apply had yielded over-1,000 responses, thus posing a serious challenge for his ministry ahead the Prime Minister’s upcoming presentation of the 2026 Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure (The Budget).
Watching Prime Minister Pierre give the interns a personal door-to-door tour of his recently-refurbished office, I imagined being Lissa present, watching and smiling.
She’d not have heard the Prime Minister several times refer to her as ‘a friend’ whose funeral ‘I will attend’, but she’d certainly have had a word (or two) for the three interns during their interactions at DBS.
And the Lissa we knew would have also found reasons to invite them to ‘share with DBS’ why they chose to enter the world of journalism.
But, if first impressions can last, I was pleased that what I saw was three SALCC students with eyes on always telling today’s stories with tomorrow’s tools, in a world where information technology outpaces the likes of me and the remaining fellow Last of The Mohicans in our ever-changing yet never-changing profession.
The time-lapse between my time and theirs is wide and ever-stretching.
In our time (way back when), I-and-I went on assignments with a heavy bag (our toolbox) containing the basic tools of our trade: notepad, pen, tape recorder, microphone, camera, extra film and batteries; today, all they need is a cell phone.
In our second half of the last century, we wrote with pens on paper, then progressed to typewriters, word processors and computers; in the first quarter of Century 21, Lissa and Guy Ellis have bequeathed our noble trade to a generation with a world of information at their fingertips, yet also one where reading is an endangered skill.
The Tik-Tok generation’s attention span barely lasts 150 seconds (two-and-a-half minutes) and Facebook fans talk in sentences, but their brevity isn’t at all about summarizing — instead about only dealing with the ‘now’ (as in ‘Breaking News’) instead of combining history with reality and vision.
But I’ve also found that too-many elders today are too-afraid of the technology and therefore care not to engage with it ‘too-much’.
I still believe (like I told Dawn French a decade ago) that the persons capable of preparing user friendly texts should develop and publish one ‘Internet for Imbeciles’ (instead of ‘Internet for Dek-Deks’ like I originally proposed) — except that today, it’ll have to be not only about how to attend Zoom meetings, but the name would now have to be more of something like ‘IT, AI and Chat GPT for Analog Addicts’.
Truly, I’ve never feared my life being ‘taken over’ by robots, if only because they have no blood or brains — and like every other human technological invention — can always be switched-off.
Earlier, many of us thought ‘Alexa’ was a woman at the end of the line and that Mr. Google was A Modern Smart Alec with information stored in clouds in the sky; and believing the mechanism reminding us of ‘missed calls’ simply fell out of the sky.
Today, however, people can let a robot (at Chat GPT) write their life stories and we can artificially question our great-grandparents.
Or, like I experienced the other day, get a personal opinion each today from Fidel Hugo Chavez, Che Guevara, Camilo Torres, Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela and Muammar Ghaddafi, on the January 6, 2026 US invasion of Venezuela.
I believe that, born at the right time between the centuries, I’ve found my ways to navigate the impossibles-made-possible by the never-ending maelstrom of changes in IT advances today, if only to preserve my sanity as a straggler in today’s humanity.
I resist until I must desist, but not at the cost of my eternal confidence in every generation’s ability to adapt in ways preceding generations refuse to even try to adopt.
That’s why I’ll always share with this and future generations (by example and through my constant chronicling) the little I’ve packed my brains with in the past over-50 years since I chose Writing over Sailing the Seven Seas.
Indeed, seeing tomorrow today is why I insist tomorrow won’t be Lissa’s Last Post!