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I think the slug was VFW.
My fiancée and my mother told me it was really good.
My city editor must have thought it was good enough, because in the days ahead he assigned me many more briefs, along with a few obituaries and even some dictation from our statehouse reporter in Annapolis. This was heady stuff, this journalism. They even pay you for it, one old-timer told me, wistfully shaking his head.
Yes, getting my work published was pretty darned exciting. But looking back, I realize that my love affair with journalism truly began on the day my city editor invited me, after the 2 p.m. edition was in, to join the daily procession to Burke's Café. (For him and his hearty band of staffers, the trip to Burke's amounted to the start of another eight-hour shift -- unless they decided overtime was required.)
What do I remember most about those afternoons at Burke's? The chips of ice rimming the lip of the frosted beer mugs? The slightly greasy onion rings? The occasional sighting of a major league ballplayer in town to face my beloved Orioles?
No, what I remember most were the stories.
As afternoons turned into evenings, I listened as editors, photographers and reporters recalled, in great (and sometimes embellished) detail, tales of exclusive scoops, unforgettable characters and great heroism (on the part of the journalist, of course).
What stories they had.
I learned about courage and compassion from reporters like Dick Irwin, who, on a horrible Good Friday night, pulled a mortally wounded cop out of the line of a sniper's fire. In all, the gunman shot six police officers during the long standoff. Back in the newsroom, Dick was typing the story when he realized he still had the officer’s blood on his hands. (His editor, recalling the sight of Dick at the typewriter, pausing from time to time to look at his red hands, was moved to tears.)
I learned about dogged reporting from reporters like Mike Olesker and Joe Nawrozki. Even as two other reporters were relying on a now-famous anonymous source to unravel a cover-up in the Nixon White House, Mike and Joe were gaining access to confidential police files to report on a state legislator suspected of smuggling heroin. As Olesker recently wrote in his column in the Baltimore Sun, their work 'jump-started" the federal investigation; the legislator was eventually charged with smuggling $10 million worth of dope. Weeks before the trial was to begin, the legislator was killed.
And what stories I heard about John Steadman, the son of a deputy fire chief who became Baltimore's most beloved sports columnist. Though he still had almost 30 years of columns left in him when we met in 1973, John already had a reputation for championing the underdog, bringing history alive and offering his own very unique take on the sports news of the day. And how about "The Streak?" John attended every Baltimore Colts football game ever played -- both home and away -- as well as every Baltimore Ravens game until the cancer stopped his streak in December 2000. He was a legend.
Some might say telling "war stories" is just a lot of breast-beating, typical of journalists who focus on themselves instead of their communities. Well, I can only say what stories like these meant to me. They reminded me that journalism, when done well by committed professionals, can enlighten, explain, delight and help people and communities to improve their lives.
That's why I came to believe that newsroom leaders do well to create opportunities for their staffs to share their stories with each other. And it's why, over the past several months, I have asked some journalists to share with me stories from their work that remind them of the great potential of journalism done well.
I hope they help remind you of the potential of your work.
And after you read them, I hope you'll send me a story of your own that I can share.
You might help someone else remember why their work matters.
Bill Marimow is managing editor/acting vice president for news and information at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. He spent 21 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and was later named managing editor, then editor of The Baltimore Sun.
 Bill Marimow, National Public Radio |
Over the next three months, I documented that case -- and many others. The cases were deeply disturbing incidents in which police dogs, either commanded by their handlers or on their own, had attacked and mauled innocent and unarmed men and women on the streets of Philadelphia. Many of them were corroborated by independent eyewitnesses, innocent bystanders who had no reason to support either the victims' accounts or the police officers' reports.
One eyewitness, Peter Solmssen, a Philadelphia lawyer, horrified by what he saw, said at the time: "Either the dog was out of control, or the dog was under control, being handled by a vicious police officer." The victim of that attack was Joseph Patrick Loftus, a 17-year-old high school senior, who was lying inert, face-down on the sidewalk outside 1317 Spruce Street.
The first of the K-9 case stories -- including the Loftus case -- ran on a Sunday in mid-April 1984 and took up four full pages of the newspaper. The next morning, Philadelphia's mayor, Wilson Goode, ordered an investigation of the attacks reported in The Inquirer, and said that the city needed a written directive on when K-9 officers could order their dogs to attack. Later that week, the FBI and the U. S. Attorney's office began a criminal investigation of the K-9 cases.
By summer, Mayor Goode had removed 12 of the K-9 unit's 125 officers and implemented new reporting and training procedures for the police dogs. In the six months after The Inquirer's series began, attacks on civilians dwindled to a handful -- a trickle compared to the 358 that were recorded between September 1981 and May 1984.
Dirk Shadd is a photographer for the St. Petersburg Times.
For most of the six years I covered the Tampa Bay Lightning, they were the worst team in hockey. Then, two years ago, they started to make a playoff push. When they were playing at home, I used the back elevator to get to the locker room area, and I'd usually ride with players' wives -- they'd talk about their husbands, telling me things like all they did was play PlayStation. We got to know each other.
Then, after the team won the Stanley Cup in 2004, one of the players -- Pavel Kubina, from the Czech Republic -- asked if I could get him a few photos for his "Cup Day." He said each of the players would be given the Stanley Cup for a day of celebration in their home towns. Could I come? If I got to the Czech Republic, Kubina said, he'd take care of me.
After talking with my editors, we decided that I would spend a good part of the summer traveling with the Cup. I really didn't want this Cinderella story to end -- that moment on the ice, with everyone crying, as they hoisted the Stanley Cup over their heads.
Sure enough, when I walked out of the airport at the first stop in the Czech Republic, there was Kubina, leaning against his yellow Ferrari. "You're late," he said.
 Dirk Shadd/St. Petersburg Times
Tampa Bay Lightning player Stan Neckar clutches the Stanley Cup to his chest on the cobblestone streets of Pisek, Czech Republic. |
I think the real significance of this story hit me after one all-nighter in the Czech town of Pisek. As dawn approached, I found Lightning player Stan Neckar lying on his back on the cobblestone sidewalk near a 14th-century bridge, the oldest in the Czech Republic. Two baguettes served as pillows beneath his head; he was hugging the Cup to his chest.
He told me he had taken the Cup to the bridge to watch the sun rise and think about his life.
"You realize it's the last hour and that could be the last time," he said. The seldom-used member of the team cried hard, tears of joy. "Even when I had a kid, I never cry. Even when I'm injured."
This wasn't Kobe sitting on Shaq's lap, saying bling, bling, bling. This was a hockey player who had been assigned a small role and had played his heart out. He knew he might never have this opportunity again. He also knew, with pride, that his name would be inscribed on the Cup.
At times like this, I shot through my own tears. I didn't want it to end, either.
Virginia Smith is a medical writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
 Virginia Smith, The Philadelphia Inquirer |
Souchuck's plan was to raise the money in $100 increments; donors would buy memorial bricks in honor of loved ones who had worked (or died) in the mines. I interviewed him at length, and several other senior citizens, some still suffering from black lung. It was very moving.
Souchuck was enormously grateful when the story ran. I heard no more from him until October of 1998, when a packet arrived from him. It contained a letter and a dozen photographs of a dedication ceremony for a truly beautiful memorial to the miners.
"You should be very proud of what you have done," he wrote. The story had run on the wire all over the country. More than $340,000 had been raised!
Tracy Davidson is a consumer reporter for WCAU-TV, the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia.
 Tracy Davidson, WCAU-TV |
After my first story, which included the do's and don'ts of hiring a moving/storage company, victims came out of the woodwork. Meanwhile, I was talking with the moving company owner. He wanted to make the story go away, which wasn't going to happen. I invited all of the victims to the station for a mass sit-down interview of their experiences, and I invited the owner to come face the music.
He did.
Then he promptly took each person into a private room and wrote checks to make them whole. He wrote more than $42,000 in checks… and they cleared. The story aired.
The owner of the company actually thanked me, insisting that he had not known what was going on within his company until I brought these situations to his attention. Regardless of the truthfulness of that, the bottom line for me was that he thought I was fair in doing a story that could have been a sensationalized slam-dunk. Of course, the consumers were elated. And, hopefully, the viewers learned even more about how to protect themselves from the practices of rogue movers.
Charlie DeLaFuente is a staff editor on the copy desk of The New York Times. He has been a city editor at three other newspapers.
 Charlie DeLaFuente, The New York Times |
It turned out that the regulations prohibited the ambulances from using their sirens, except to take severely injured patients to a hospital. They couldn't use the sirens to go to wherever a gravely injured person might need assistance, or to take someone not at death's door back to the hospital.
The explanation of whatever city agency was in charge of ambulances was that the sirens annoyed people in residential neighborhoods, and so they were banned some years earlier. (Police cars and fire trucks were not covered by the ban.)
I determined that, in some cases, the few minutes that might be saved by cutting through traffic could spell the difference between life and death, and that's the way I wrote the piece.
Even though the Press was a paper of limited influence, circulated in only one of New York City's five boroughs, city officials changed the policy soon after the piece appeared, so that ambulances could use their sirens at the drivers' discretion. That's the rule to this day.
I still think of that piece from time to time, for its powerful illustration of how newspapers can be a force for good, without adopting or advancing a reporter's or institution's political agenda, but just by forcing bureaucracies to apply common sense.
John McIntyre is assistant managing editor for the copy desk at The Baltimore Sun.
At The Sun, they call me the Death Slot, because of the propensity of notable people to drop on the nights that I work the desk.
One Saturday evening in 1997 I was in the slot, looking at the stories that had been laid out for Page One, when a bulletin came over the wires that Princess Diana had been in an automobile accident. "That'll have to be tucked into the front somewhere," I muttered.
 John McIntyre, The Baltimore Sun |
Glauber called back. "Be ready to change that story. I think she's dead. They're not talking about her the way they would if she were alive or expected to live."
I had just set the story in type for 1A for the second edition when a bulletin came over the wires: "Princess Diana dead." The weekend editor picked up the phone, called the printing plant, and said -- for one of two occasions I've heard this in a quarter-century as a copy editor -- "Stop the presses." And, by God, they did.
We got a staff story about the death of Princess Diana on Page One for the bulk of our home-delivery editions, for a day when The Washington Post, which had earlier deadlines for the editions that go to our circulation area, did not. And it happened, in part, because The Sun has a copy desk that can move fast and surely, and on deadline.
Daniel Zwerdling is a correspondent on National Public Radio's national desk.
In some ways, I'm slowly getting more demoralized by the general state of the world -- by pollution, by the greenhouse effect, by people's prejudices and hatreds, by poverty and religious vendettas and by corporate greed. But every once in a while, I get to see or hear how my stories have affected people, and it reinvigorates me all over again. It reminds me why I love being a journalist. It reminds me why I feel lucky to be a journalist.
It happened again late last year. I spent months investigating how the Department of Homeland Security is treating -- or mistreating -- immigrants whom they've decided to deport. I had never done much reporting about immigration, and so I was stunned to discover that the government locks up tens of thousands of non-citizens in jail every year.
Some stay behind bars for months, some are locked up for years, even though the government has not accused them of any crime.
These are immigrants who've merely overstayed their visas, or who committed some sort of crime years ago -- and in many cases, got off by simply paying a fine -- but under the nation's tough immigration laws, Homeland Security rounds up everybody who hasn't followed all the rules and "detains" them in jail while the department arranges to deport them.
Many of these immigrants are locked up in terrible conditions. One day they're at home, raising a family, working hard, paying taxes; the next day, government agents show up and shackle their hands and feet with metal chains, sometimes in front of their children, and haul them off to the same jail where the government puts murderers and rapists. Some jails are crowded and filthy. The guards slap them around and call them "f-ing immigrants."
 Daniel Zwerdling, National Public Radio |
I also documented how a group of guards at another jail in New Jersey beat up two detainees while they were handcuffed -- and repeatedly kicked them in the head -- while about a dozen other guards watched.
As I plodded through five months of investigating all this, my mood started to sink. I was worried that I'd get in trouble with my managers for taking so long and for not getting on the air. I was worried that when listeners finally heard the pieces, they'd shrug -- "So, big deal, the abuses at Abu Ghraib were worse …" And most of all, I assumed that the government would ignore the stories as though they never existed. I started to brood, "I shouldn't have ever done these stories in the first place."
But the moment after the first of two pieces was broadcast, NPR started getting deluged by e-mails from listeners, saying, "This is why we support public radio. This is why we need more investigative reporting -- because we need people like you to expose this dark side of America." Some said they had already sent angry letters of protest to government officials and to the jails.
Over the next few days, even more amazing things happened. The Department of Homeland Security announced that it was banning the use of dogs at all the jails where it detains prisoners. And the jail where the guards beat up detainees called to say almost a dozen employees were to be disciplined over the incident; at least two guards were being fired.
And here's the kicker: when I called two of the victims whom I had profiled -- one had been deported back to Egypt, the other to Guyana -- and I told them how the stories had changed government policy, it sounded like they were about to cry. Their lives had been turned upside down -- in fact, each felt that his life had been ruined, and that hardly anybody in America cared. But now they say they feel as if people across America do care. And they feel proud that by being brave enough to tell their stories publicly, they helped make life a little bit better for detainees who will be locked up after them.
My journalistic batteries were recharged.
Jane Hansen is a reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
To me, the greatest privilege of being a journalist is the role I've gotten to play every now and then of being a catalyst. I never cease to be amazed by individuals' basic decency and their ability to change things for the better when we, as journalists, do our jobs well.
 Jane Hansen, Atlanta Journal Constitution |
I've written about children prostituted on the streets of Atlanta, children who die from parents' abuse or neglect after they've come under the so-called "protection" of the state, children raised under the scourge of their parents' crack-cocaine addiction. The challenge in all was to overcome confidentiality so I could show the face of one child behind these issues.
The public's response to all these stories was overwhelming to me. After the child prostitution series ran, the U.S. attorney's office and FBI conducted an overnight sweep and eventually prosecuted 11 pimps who were prostituting children as young as 10. The Georgia Legislature passed a new law, making it a felony to prostitute children under 18. After the child abuse series ran, the public demanded change and the legislature responded. The heads of both the state and county child welfare agencies were fired over a cover-up involving a child who had died. Again, the legislature passed several bills to reform the child welfare system. The governor pushed through legislation to include certain child abuse records under the state's Open Records Act. And dozens of individual citizens came forward and offered to give one of the children I'd profiled a decent burial and his own headstone.
Personally, though, the most overwhelming reaction to me was the response we got to the series about children raised by parents addicted to crack. Hundreds of people responded, and they were from all walks of life. They ranged from people who got together and created a shelter for crack-addicted babies abandoned at birth -- a shelter that thrives today -- to individual acts of kindness. A synagogue adopted a drug treatment program for women and wound up refurbishing the facility, buying the children clothes and babysitting for free while the mothers attended treatment sessions. Several young men volunteered to mentor teens whose addicted parents had left them to raise themselves. A single mother putting herself through college called to say her two-year-old had outgrown all her baby clothes and, while she had a sentimental attachment to them, she wanted to give them to someone who really needed them.
One call like that makes me feel I've done my job. It really restores my faith in people and makes me grateful that I work in this business.
Tom Coakley is "Globe NorthWest" editor at the Boston Globe.
Sometimes the tales you hold in your head never get into the paper, but are an aside to the story, a momentary emotional release from the job of reporting.
 Tom Coakley, Boston Globe |
We had come to his family homestead -- a small, tidy place with a spotless, uncluttered dirt floor -- and his mother, dressed in mourning black, was making us dinner: rice, beans and tortillas, cooked fresh on a wood stove.
There was a white horse in the yard, and for some reason, I got on him and started him down the slope to a broad, meandering branch of the Rio Papigochic. The horse stopped at the river and started to drink.
I did my very best East Coast, city-boy giddy-up but the steed would not budge.
By then, Wunsch had made it to the river. A mountain-states native who had grown up with rodeo, he was shaking his head and chuckling as I slid off the horse in frustration.
Up gets Wunsch on the horse, wheels him around halfway up the hill and takes him at a gallop across the river as if chasing bandits in some spaghetti western.
Seems that horse could tell a patsy from a player without ever looking back to see who was on top. (Incidentally, Wunsch's pics were so good I felt like my story was a 2,000-word cutline. Twenty years and two jobs later, the photos still hang in a room in my home.)
