Tag: journalism

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What’s Called For

When you have to write a column a couple of days in advance, there’s always a danger of being overtaken by events.

This one didn’t even make it to 400 words.

“THEY CALLED PENNSYLVANIA!!” Heather shouted from the bedroom as I wrote on Saturday morning.

My brain abruptly turned into a train derailment as my fingers skidded to a stop.

“You’re kidding!” I called back.

“No! NBC, CNN, now ABC …”

I looked at my incomplete draft. And then reached for the backspace key.

Maybe I ought to buy that lottery ticket after all.

Like most of us, I had gotten used to the thought that “Call Me” might be a nice Blondie song, but it was unlikely to be seen in real life for quite some time. After all, this is how it works, right? Trickle of votes, adjust the lead, back to the count. Trickle of votes, adjust the lead, back to the count. Over and over in an endless news cycle, sort of like Peter Jennings meets Bill Murray.

To be honest, the catch-and-release pattern gave me a rueful chuckle. This used to be my former life as a newspaper reporter. In the Super Bowl-like enthusiasm of Election Day – marked by newsrooms with high adrenaline and higher pizza bills – there would always be at least one race that would defy deadlines. In a ballot full of easy calls and quick turnarounds, you would somehow draw the one that looked you in the eye and screamed “Meaningful results? TONIGHT? HAHAHAHAHA! See you in the morning, sucker!”

So yes, this is familiar. It’s just on a larger scale.

It’s also more challenging.

As a reporter, I had a job to do, a story to write at the end of it all. As a voter, it’s less obvious. After all, we’ve done our job, right? We made our call, said our say, and now we can finally be thrilled, or disappointed, or eager to see if armies of lawyers can manage to beat each other to death with briefcases.

But it’s not that simple.

When the election ends, our job is just getting started.

There’s been a lot written lately about peaceful transitions of power. That’s not just a courtesy – it’s a recognition that elective offices are under a permanent job review. Fortunes can change as easily as the tides, yesterday’s “outs” can be tomorrow’s “ins,” and when it’s your turn, you had better show the same grace on the way out that you hope to receive on the way back in.

And that job review? That’s us. Regardless of party. Regardless of faction.

And that goes on long beyond a cast-and-counted ballot.

It means watching the people we choose, and not just as a fan club. It means separating truth from fiction, learning what’s going on, learning what it means for people beyond our own sliver of the world. Not silencing our voice, but learning to hear the voices of others as well. As any choir will tell you, that’s the only way to create harmony.

It means holding people accountable for their actions, even the ones on our “team.” I use the quotes, because our real team is ultimately the country itself. No one deserves our blind support. Praise what makes us better, challenge what makes us worse, and always look for a way to bring more light and less pain to the world.

I’ve said it before – this country is never finished. We need to make sure the next chapter is one we can all be proud of. Even if we have to rewrite it in midstream.

Now and always, that is our calling.

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The Words That Matter

When you’re a reporter, the newsroom is home.

It may be a home you see more often than your real one, to be honest. It’s where the phone calls get made, the interviews get scheduled, and the miles and miles of copy get written. It’s the place of bad jokes, election-night pizza, and arguments over whether a material is called “concrete” or “cement” in print. It’s the core of the daily insanity, the “daily miracle” as each new edition of the newspaper is referred to.

It’s where life happens.

And last week, for one publication, it became where death happens, too.

On Thursday, the staff of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis lived the nightmare. Five of their co-workers dead as a gunman shot his way in. The rest, having to keep going, to cover this horror that had come through the door, to report the deaths of friends and colleagues even in the midst of trying to find safety.

Every reporter has heard the editor’s admonition to get out there because “you won’t find any news in the newsroom.” If only that were always true.

The exceptions hurt too much.

***

In a way, it’s strange to be writing about this. Not just because I did a column about press violence literally a year ago, when the stories of the day were about windows being shot, bomb threats being called in, and a congressional candidate knocking a reporter down. But because it’s a story of someone taking a newspaper seriously. Seriously enough to kill.

That’s been the exception more than the rule these days.

We’ve seen the stories of the budget cuts, the layoffs, the financial pressure put on newspapers across the country. To many people, they’re a part of the conversation that seems to get increasingly exiled to the periphery. Websites keep snapping up and recirculating their copy – it’s a dirty secret how many online news sites rely on newspaper coverage, just as television stations once did before – while the men and women at the heart of it are continually called on to do more with less.

And they still do it.

I’m not talking about angels. I’m talking about people who make good choices, bad choices, and sometimes even bizarre choices in what they cover and why. Here and around the world, they ask, they learn, and they tell the story, even when someone would rather they not.

Sometimes they die for it.

Around the world, just this year, 33 of them have. Most of them by murder.

***

To our Founding Fathers, the conversation would not have been strange. On the Fourth, we look back to when several of them wrote words that could get them killed. When the signers of the Declaration pledged “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor,” they knew it was no empty promise.

“Do you recollect the pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress to subscribe what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants?” Dr. Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania recalled in later years.

“Let us prepare for the worst,” Abraham Clark of New Jersey wrote after signing. “We can die here but once.”

The right words at the right time matter.

And in journalism, this is why the work goes on.

Sometimes badly. Sometimes well. Reporters get praised, threatened, reviled, thanked, and even ignored – sometimes all in the same week. And even if newspapers went away tomorrow, the work would still go on somewhere, in some form, because it is too necessary to a free country to have people ask and learn and tell the story to others.

The story won’t stop. So the storytellers must go on.

At the Capital Gazette, one page of one edition was left blank after the shooting, save for the names of those who died and a brief tribute. A moment to pay honor, to feel the pain.

And then the work continued. As it has. As it will.

This is a country made by speaking out. And the words will not be silenced.

Not even in their very home.

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Making an Im-Press-ion

(Appeared first in print 4/10/2017)

When you’re a teenager, it’s easy to wonder if you’ll ever make a difference.

That’s not a problem for the kids of Pittsburg High School. Not after turning their southeast Kansas school newspaper into a star of investigative journalism, and turning their school’s administration upside down in the process.

Yes, really.

For those who missed it, the teens probed into the background of their newly hired principal and found that some of her credentials didn’t seem to add up – in particular, that the university where she earned two of her degrees didn’t appear to be an accredited institution or even to have a physical address or working website. In fact, they discovered, it had a reputation as a “diploma mill.”

By the time they were done, what could have been a routine story about a new principal ended up by asking some very awkward questions. Awkward enough that the principal announced her resignation, just a month after her hiring.  By then, the kids had the attention of the national media and the thanks of the school district’s superintendent.

“We’d broken out of our comfort zones so much,” 17-year-old Connor Balthazor told the Washington Post. “To know that the administration saw that and respected that, it was a really great mo ment for us.”

I’ll add my own applause to that. These are the kind of lessons that need to be learned, not just by high school journalists, but by any citizen in a democracy.

And it happened because the kids had the opportunity to learn, the freedom to act, and the initiative to do something about it.

Kansas school papers, like Colorado ones, have a guaranteed freedom of the press for high school journalists. (In fact, Colorado passed that guarantee while I was still in high school myself.)  The schools have only a limited ability to restrict what appears in the paper – mainly, things like libel or obscenity – allowing students, like their grown-up counterparts, to work uncensored.

But that only matters if you have writers who are willing to go past the obvious. And much journalism, whether high school or professional, is comfortable to stick with the routine. The state championship winners. A new class or a retiring teacher. Much of it is necessary stuff, but it doesn’t often demand much of the writer or the reader.

To go further, a good reporter needs to remember two principles. Always ask the next question. And always verify the answers you get, even if they seem to make sense. Especially then. “If your mother says she loves you,” the old newsman’s saying goes, “check it out.”

In a day when many newspapers are folding (no pun intended) and when social media allows the half-true and the false to circulate more rapidly than ever before, that’s an important skill for everyone.

These kids have learned it. And then some.

And in the process, they’ve taught a few lessons of their own.

They’ve shown a reminder that learning isn’t limited to the classroom, the test, and the textbook. The extracurriculars – newspaper, theatre, music, and more – offer a host of valuable lessons for the student who’s willing and able to take advantage of them.

They’ve reminded us that an alert media can make a difference. That an alert citizenry can make a difference. All it takes is a willingness to look, and a determination to keep looking.

They’ve even given us some hope for the future, that the next generation is ready and eager to join the conversation.

That sounds like a lot to build on one article in one school paper, I know. But they’ve worked to build it. And I suspect they’ve learned that it’s a work that never stops. The name of “journalist” is always being re-earned. Much like the name of “freedom” or “democracy.”

Let’s get to work, shall we?

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Now You See It

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, whatever his other gifts may be, has clearly never been a reporter.

That might sound obvious, like noting that Bill Gates has never been an NFL linebacker. But it may explain a curious decision of Ryan’s on Wednesday.

For those who missed the drama, several Democratic members of Congress staged a sit-in Wednesday, literally sitting on the House floor until a gun control bill would be heard. This would be shown to the nation via C-SPAN, an all-Congress, all-the-time cable network that normally draws a lower viewership than competitive crochet.

And then Ryan gave the protesters a gift of inestimable value. He ordered the House cameras turned off.

Now, since the cameras belonged to the House and not to C-SPAN, Ryan had the right to do this. No question. But that’s not the same as saying it was a smart thing to do, since:

1) Several of the protesters carried these amazing devices called smart phones and could stream live video for C-SPAN to rebroadcast.

2) Nothing attracts a reporter’s attention – or an audience’s – like a closed door.

It’s sometimes called the Streisand Effect, after a long-ago attempt by the singer to remove a picture of her home from an online collection of 12,000 pictures of the California coastline. Before Streisand’s efforts, six people had viewed the photo online. In the month afterward, that soared to over 420,000.

People want what they’re told they can’t have. Especially when someone powerful or famous says so.

It works on a smaller level, too. Years ago, I was covering the efforts of Emporia, Kan. to hire a new city manager. This was of moderate interest to the community since the incumbent was one of those long-timers who had been around since “Crocodile Dundee” was the biggest thing to hit movie theatres.

And then moderate interest became burning interest. The Emporia City Council went back on an earlier decision and decided it wasn’t going to announce the finalists for the position.

The result was a flood of emails and online comments, a front-page story and a very rapid surrender by the council. The decision to close the doors had become a bigger story than any announcement of the finalists could ever have been.

Most of us, whether reporters or consumers of the news, don’t have a lot of time in the day. There are a lot of things screaming for our attention, most of them claiming to be pants-on-fire urgent. So it’s normal that a lot of stories, sometimes even fairly large ones, will slip beneath the radar of the average reader or viewer.

But we’re also a stubborn bunch. We have been for a long time. And when someone talks down to us saying “You don’t need to see that, “it almost always prompts an immediate “Why not?” For a moment, we KNOW where to focus our attention – and our frustration.

I’m not saying that the gun-control bill was good, bad, or as ugly as Eli Wallach. I am saying that its proponents should send Paul Ryan a thank-you card. Whether they succeed or fail in their quest, they’ve gotten the attention they wanted, and then some.

Come to think of it, maybe the Speaker’s found a second career. I’m sure there are many other struggling broadcasts that could use his assistance in getting a larger audience.

“Live from the Pepsi Center … it’s the 2016-2017 Denver Nuggets season that Paul Ryan didn’t want YOU to see!!”

Couldn’t hurt.

Let us know, Mr. Speaker, willya?

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Well, Look at That

About 10 years ago, my boss took me to the emergency room. Nothing huge, just a bleeding chin that needed three stitches after my spur-of-the-moment attempt to make the Olympic parking-lot diving team. You know, the usual.

On his way back, he drove by an accident. He slowed down, as drivers do, and took a glance. So did another driver, one who found the accident much more fascinating than the road.

Boom.

And like that, my boss’s car had a keepsake.

We’ve all seen it. We all know it happens. And most of us shake our heads in disbelief – until we’re the ones going past the car crash or the house fire. All of a sudden, you just can’t look away. You have to see more.

You’ve joined the rubberneck brigade.

The word’s an interesting  one. “Rubbernecking” originally described the out-of-town tourist, the sort whose head swiveled at every building taller than two stories. Now it’s become the badge of the morbidly curious and the curse of the highway patrol; at least one study suggests that gaping at crashes is almost as likely to cause an accident as yapping on a cell phone.

And since the Big Flood, it’s become a pastime for some that’s second only to Broncomania.

You know what I’m talking about.

The driver who swings around abruptly on the highway, to get a better look at washed-out homes.

The passerby who has to climb over or cut through a snow fence, to see if the Greenway is really as damaged as the city says.

The folks who hike around barriers and across still-dangerous country to where people are rebuilding – not to offer any help, but just to see the sights.

At one story I covered, a frustrated Longmont Dam Road resident called it “disaster tourism.” Some of the things her neighbors wanted to call it couldn’t be printed in a family newspaper.

I call it heartless.

I recognize the irony of a reporter saying this. After all, part of my job is to go to places where the worst is happening and see it for myself. I’ve stood by families as their home burned to cinders. I’ve watched the water rise in neighborhoods and walked through mud-ruined trailers with their residents afterward. I’ve even seen emergency workers drape the sheet over drivers whose luck ran out one dangerous day.

It’s never comfortable. Any of it.

I draw lines, of course. I never get in the way of emergency workers. I try not to do anything stupidly dangerous. I approach victims carefully, trying to be a neighbor as much as a journalist. And if they want me out of their face and off their property, I respect that and go.

I’m not just there randomly. I’m doing a job. In a way, I’m there so 500 other “tourists” don’t have to be.

And always, always, I make myself remember these are people in pain. Not just fodder for a lookyloo.

Maybe I haven’t convinced you. That’s OK. Sometimes I don’t always convince myself, either. But one thing I am convinced of – that callous curiosity carries a price tag.

There isn’t a place for it. Not here. Not anywhere.

It’s natural to want to see what the flood did. (If it wasn’t, our paper would have just wasted a lot of time and money.) But safely. Humanely. Please.

If getting a closer look makes you do something dangerous, it’s not worth it.

If getting a closer look puts you in the way of people trying to help, it’s not worth it.

If getting a closer look means stepping on someone’s heart, it’s really not worth it.

Have a heart to go with those eyes. Remember that these are still our friends, our neighbors. Treat them with the love and respect they deserve.

Let’s have fewer rubber necks and more open arms.

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Going Out Of Our Tree

Heather has always loved history. And she’s always loved lists.

Now that she’s discovered genealogy, I might not see her again until June.

“Ooh, Scotty!” she calls, staring at a computer reproduction of a handwritten census record from a forgotten generation. “Look at this!”

To be fair, both of us have always had at least some interest in the family tree. Heather knew that John Chapman, aka “Johnny Appleseed” was a distant ancestor of hers; I knew of a 18th and 19th century relative who’d translated the Bible into Sanskrit, as well as a rumored family connection, through the Careys, to Anne Boleyn. And we both had plenty of relations who had caught the bug, whether it was her grandmother visiting old Kansas graveyards or my uncle, a Rochat family expert who once hosted an 80-year-old Swiss cousin as she toured the country … by motorcycle.

So I guess it was somewhat inevitable. Especially when Heather got a year’s membership in an online genealogical service for Christmas. Suddenly, our nights have been filled with Hargetts and Leatherwoods and much more, many with curious stories of their own.

She’s found Southern ancestors who deeded slaves in their wills.

She’s found a relative who was acquitted of murder, after shooting a neighbor who was trying to stab him. (The neighbor’s family, naturally, told it a little differently.)

And while we knew about her Civil War relatives who had been in Andersonville prison and on the doomed Sultana – a steamship that blew up and killed 1,800 people, many of them returning Union soldiers – we hadn’t known that I’d had a forebear who’d fought in the War of 1812.

I felt a familiar curiosity as I peered over her shoulder at the growing entries. It was only later that I recognized the feeling.

Darned if it wasn’t like being a newspaper reporter all over again.

People have often asked me why I got into newspapers. (Actually, these days it’s phrased more like “Why on Earth would you want to be in newspapers?” but oh, well.) And there’s a lot of reasons, from a love of writing to a teenaged hope that the job might score me Bronco tickets some day. (Again, oh, well.)

But at the root, it’s simple. I love telling stories. I love hearing stories.

And I’ve learned that everyone has a story worth hearing.

I’ve told this to middle-schoolers and heard “Not me!” Usually, within about 20 minutes, I can prove them wrong. Sometimes it’s big, like the tale of a World War I veteran or a fifth-grader who organized her school to raise money for Hurricane Katrina. Sometimes it’s smaller, but no less worthwhile, like a child who’s on the staff of her elementary school’s first newspaper. And sometimes, it’s just plain weird, like the man who’d been mistaken for someone else with the same name since junior high school, to the point where he nearly got arrested for what his doppleganger had done.

It’s all lives touching lives, history being made at the personal level. And in a sense, reading and writing about those lives is almost an act of caring, a way of acknowledging that those lives matter, that there’s more to the world than what’s caught inside our own skin.

Ultimately, in knowing the stories of others, we understand our own just that little bit more.

Maybe even the part that reads family trees at 1 in the morning.