AS MUCH AS I LIKED BEING a stoneman, I had a notion that I could write at least as well as the writers whose copy I placed in a chase.
To that end, I subscribed to Editor & Publisher for its classified advertisements.
I DON’T RECALL how many resumes I mailed — this was before email was popular and widely available — before the editor of the Peru (IN) Tribune offered me a job.
Back home again in Indiana
What I did NOT know was that it was a job competition.
I drove from Cocoa to Peru — my nickel — and air freighted my Belgian Shepherd believing I had a job.
Delta Airlines was supposed to deliver the animal to Indianapolis; instead it went to Indianapolis where someone forgot to offload him, then to Cincinnati (actually Covington KY), then back to Indianapolis.
When I finally reported to work, I learned that another applicant for the same job, the editor, and this scrivener were to attend a city council session. The candidate who did the best reporting job — that is, the one whose copy was closest to the editor’s — would get the job and the other person would go home
I stayed in Peru for about six months, slowly going broke between the picayunish pay and Indiana’s state income tax — something I didn’t, and don’t have, In Florida.
I did learn to take a decent photograph. “Get closer,” the Chief (and only) Photographer told me.
One of my first assignments was to write a feature story about a fellow who cleaned the banks of the Wabash River of debris.
I didn’t want to bother the man. After a while, the boss gave me an ultimatum: “Do the story or find another job.”
Turned out the guy was a wonderful interview and he was delighted someone cared about what he did.
I had the police beat, among other things, and one of the last jobs I did in Peru was cover a traffic fatality. Wintertime, snow everywhere, A guy was heading home from a safety conference when apparently he fell asleep and crashed into a car going in the opposite direction. About 5 a.m. I got a call from the State Police telling me if I wanted photos to get a move on; nothing could be moved until the coroner arrived and he was supposed to be on his way. Armed with a Yashica Mat TLR camera and a monster, battery-powered strobe (right), I shot the scene, got the accident information from the cops, and took the film to the paper to be developed.
The photo made the front page, with the irony of the driver returning from a safety conference, but I thought no more about it.
Several months later, the Tribune’s Chief Photographer sent me a check; one of the insurance companies bought the photo and I received part of the payment.
Indiana’s a nice place to visit, but I had enough of snow and extra taxes.
I packed up my few belongings and my dog and headed south.
Getting warm in Titusville (fl)
I don’t remember exactly how I happened to end up in Titusville FL. I know I walked in and asked to talk to the Managing Editor. (This tactic worked twice for me.)
I met ME Bob Howard and I had a job before the afternoon was over.
I also had a roommate.
The Titusville Star-Advocate, a Gannett property, had one reporter who, with Howard, wrote everything in the paper. The reporter, Jess Gregory, happened to need someone to share the rent on a two-bedroom house. The Star-Advocate met all my requirements.
Jess and I covered everything. Luckily for me, I had the service clubs, which meant a free lunch. On a reporter’s salary, that’s a good assignment.
There were days when we each had multiple bylines on multiple pages.
The Fire Department was on my beat and I had a special permit from the fire chief to cross fire lines. That may not sound like a “big deal,” but the Star-Advocate was in competition with Today in Cocoa, the Miami Herald’s Brevard bureau, and Orlando’s Sentinel-Star. I could go where their reporters could not. I did pay a price for this privilege: I was a slave to a Plectron, a single-frequency radio receiver that went off whenever there was a fire in the city. I took it to work every morning and took it to the house every evening.
I bought my first camera with a loan from the company. The camera was a Honeywell Pentax H3v. The only thing fancy about it was a match-needle light meter. I used it for years, gave it to a friend who in turn passed it on to his son-in-law.
The Star-Advocate was then a five-day PM which meant than on Friday, unless there was something to cover, Jess and I went to lunch and on our return, he fell asleep at his desk.
As nice as it was, I had visions of greater things.
Turns out, so did Jess; he ended up flacking for several a couple of NYC companies: American Express and General Motors. He followed the money and did well.
Ely calls
I was at work in Titusville when the ad man/publisher of the Ely NV Times called the office. I was invited into Bob Howard’s office to take the call. The call was a job offer made after the ad man discussed me with Howard. In any event, I foolishly accepted the offer and soon headed to a small town in north eastern Nevada.
Ely was a Donrey property. I discovered the ad man/publisher and an unreliable “reporter” put together a skimpy daily paper in a strike-bound county. Wire service was via an AP “pony wire” shared with the local radio station. Dear Abby and the horoscope filled out the paper.
What I didn’t know before heading west was that Kennecott Copper “owned” the three major towns in White Pine County: Ruth, where copper was mined, McGill where it was smelted, and Ely, which provided “services.”
Image of open-pit copper mine
Ely is in a valley — at 6,000 feet above sea level. TV came to the valley from Salt Lake City via repeater towers high on the mountains and all tv sets were (supposed to be) taxed to fund the towers.
The Times was one of Donrey’s shoestring operations. In order to heat water to develop film, I had to set a water bottle in the sun. Prior to my arrival with the Pentax (ibid.), all photos were made using a Speed Graphics with a Polaroid backpack. Not only was the camera bulky and difficult to hold and focus, in the winter, the Polaroid film had to be warmed under a jacket in order for the image to develop. Almost instant, albeit expensive, images.
At both Donrey products for which I worked, the publisher was an ad salesman. The Ely paper had another ad man, a typesetter, a pressman, and a “reporter.” Fortunately for me, the typesetter’s spelling was far superior to mine and she saved me from embarrassment on more than one occasion.
The reporter proved unreliable and was fired. (After I left she was hired back.)
I left Ely in November rather than continue dealing with the “publisher.”
Trenton Makes — The World Takes
My next stop was back across the country to the Trenton Times-Advertiser, then owned by the Washington Post. I covered Burlington County which hosted Fort Dix, McGuire AFB, and Deborah Hospital.
Fort Dix was the site of the first Vietnam desertion court martial.
During my tenure in Trenton I was “invited” by the Department of Defense to cover (read “provide PR for”) the military either in Germany or Puerto Rico — in January.
You may recall I am a Floridian . To me the offer was a “no brainer.”
I accepted the government’s offer and shortly thereafter I boarded a plane at McGuire headed for Pope AFB to pick up a planeload of 82nd Airborne paratroopers from Fort Bragg who were soon to “drop in” on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico.
The Army had established itself earlier on the island and the guys from the 82nd expected to land on an empty field. Pity; no one told the cows.
Once I was on the ground on Vieques, I was given a tour of the Army’s defenses. There was a Hawk battery on a point. I saw an Air Force C-130 and thought I had a photo op so I asked the shavetail lieutenant “commanding” the two-missile battery if he could raise the missiles as if tracking the C-130.
“Can’t do it,” the officer told me. “There’s a bug in the system.”
How long has the battery been on the island, I asked.
“A week.”
Enemy 1, Army 0.
The Army almost failed again when it ferried me from Vieques to the main island in a helicopter.
Once in the air, the pilot told the passengers that the aircraft was losing hydraulic pressure and if we went down in barracuda-infested waters we should stay inside the machine until the rotors stopped spinning — even if we were under water.
I later made the same jaunt in a Navy plane, sharing the ride with a four-striper and the plane’s crew chief. My level of concern was zero.
Deborah Hospital, now Deborah Heart and Lung Center, is tucked away in New Egypt NJ. New Egypt was — and may still be — little more than a wide spot in the road, but the hospital has a positive international reputation. I didn’t write enough about it.
One sleepless night I drove around Trenton and from that developed a “mood piece” feature for the Sunday magazine. I tought it was pretty good.
Apparently a student at one of the local schools also thought it good — good enough to plagiarize.
What the student didn’t know what that the students’ efforts were critiqued by a Times-Advertiser staffer who recognized my article. (The only thing the student failed to plagiarize was my byline. Had she, it would not have been plagiarism.)
Neither of us won anything for the mood piece, but I still have a copy, a bit yellowed by age, hanging on my wall.
New Jersey is New Jersey (cold) and the Trenton Times-Advertiser was headed for hard times, so I packed my suitcase and headed back to Florida until my next cross-country jaunt.
Brief interlude
Back in Florida I found busy work selling booze — mostly 79¢ 1/2-pint bottles of “white port.”
After a few months of this, I thought I heard California calling, so I pointed the car west.
Stuck in Lodi (again)
I found a job with the News-Sentinel as a beat reporter. The local cop shop was a major stop on this beat.
Most arrest information is public knowledge; in other words, the cops can’t refuse to divulge information about who they arrest.
Not in Lodi. In Lodi, the cops were in bed with the newspaper management and felt if unnecessary to release the information I needed. Complaints to management resulted in a reprimand. The writing was on the wall and I soon found myself “available.”
As it happens, the song, Stuck in Lodi again was, according to Wikipedia, about Lodi CA. There also are about 20 other “Lodis in the U.S.\
Aside from the pact between the cops and the publisher, the only other memorable thing about Lodi was the train tracks that ran down the middle of the main street. It’s a bit disconcerting to see a locomotive coming toward you on the street.
Being “stuck in Lodi” once was enough.
Red Bluff and Donrey again
Using the same tactic I used in Titusville, I walked into the Red Bluff Daily News and asked to speak to the managing editor. Lou Walther came to the counter and we chatted a few minutes. I don’t know if I told him I once worked for Donrey; if I did, it was obvious Donrey had not mentioned me. I started work the next day.
My beat was Tehama County (right), but mostly from Red Bluff south to Corning via Los Molinos, with a side jaunt to Gerber. Almonds, olives, sheep, and cattle were the county’s main products.
Part of my official beat was the Superior (county) Court. While cases usually were pretty routine, the judge, a bit of a curmudgeon, taught me a new word: “recidivist.”
He chastised one defendant as a “recidivist.” What’s a recidivist, I queried His Honor.
“Look it up,” was his reply. I did.
We had a murder and when the cops made an arrest, the article was headlined with a 60- point type banner above the fold on Page 1 — maximum exposure.
Later the “murderer” was found innocent in Superior Court (my beat). I wrote the story, making certain is was about as many column inches as the original article.
Then I had the chutzpah to insist that my article get a 60-point banner headline above the fold. After all, the original article ruined the man’s reputation; the least I could do was to help restore it.
Mirroring Ely, the News was so tight the buffalo would bellow if a nickle was squeezed any tighter.
I was told that, to cut down on mileage; I had to “visit” out-of-town sources by phone. Some sources, such as the Corning City Council would not tell me anything about council sessions. Corning had its own newspaper, Mari Petty’s Corning Daily Observer, to protect. (Mari Petty and the Corning Daily Observer information thanks to Reference Librarian Georgia Scott of the Tehama County Library.
So, once again, I was on the road again.
Living near Three-Mile Island
My next, and last, newspaper stop was at the Harrisburg PA Patriot News as part of “Slim” Milliron’s Sunday department.
Working for Mr. Milliron was one of the best jobs a reporter could imagine. My “beat” was the entire Patriot-News circulation area. Most of the time, I decided what to write about. Occasionally I was pointed in a direction.
One “direction” was Three-Mile Island, then a bone of contention between those that wanted nuclear power and those that opposed it. I interviewed people on both sides and, in the end, my copy filled an entire (broadsheet) page. While no prize winner, it did bring letters of commendation from all sides.
Another “full page” effort was a plan to develop a transportation hub, with everything centering around the airport. Somehow I even managed to squeeze a “frog” into the article.
For the curious, a “frog” (image to the right) is a railroad switching device that moves tracks to align with one of several track options.
When I wasn’t writing feature stories, I did weekly Man In The Street interviews and worked on the copy desk, reading other writers’ work and writing heds (heads). I even served as Make-Up Editor on occasion, but I never touched the type. The ITU was stronger than my temptation. (Editorial also was unionized — the “Guild” took money from every paycheck and returned absolutely nothing.)
I won’t say the Newhouse publication was “cheap,” but it charged personnel to park in its parking lot. That’s OK for someone who comes in and stays in until quitting time, but for a reporter who comes and goes throughout the day . . . The fee was nominal, but it was a fee none-the-less.
All good things must come to an end, and belt-tightening at the Patriot-News reduced the Sunday staff.
With that I sold my car and bought a subsidized plane ticket to Israel where I ended up as a technical writer via a stint in PR.
When I came back four years later, many newspapers had computerized (I lacked the necessary skills) or were on the verge of going under; I couldn’t buy a newspaper job.
But life goes on and it did, but not with newspapers.
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.
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