One of my older relatives was what he called a “newsman” for 40 years, working on a city daily. He never went to college let alone got a degree in Journalism or English. He planned to be a printer, eventually have his own print shop, so he learned touch-typing in high school.
After high school, he took a job as a printer's apprentice during the day, and worked the night shift at a local gas station. There was a cot behind the register and he dozed there between the infrequent customers, usually long-haul truckers. He ate midnight pie-and coffee at the diner across the street and became friendly with the night waitress, who had gone to the same high school, but quit when she was 16 to go to work. On her break she would walk over to the gas station and they would entertain themselves on the cot.
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| His first published news story., |
When he was 19 he got his draft notice. Because he could touch-type, the Army made him a clerk/typist and shipped him off to Viet Nam, where he was assigned at first to typing up assorted paperwork, then assigned to the division newspaper, a job he found interesting and enjoyed. Also it was perfectly safe. He spent his off-duty hours smoking Park Lanes, a heroin-laced local brand of cigarettes, and hanging out at the local steam-and-cream, a sort of massage parlor/steam bath staffed by pretty young local girls who gave expert handjobs and, I assume, provided other services as well. He went on R&R to Australia and spent most of the time there in a brothel. All in all, he had a great time, and was glad to have served in the army and been sent to Viet Nam.
When he got back to the States, he saw a help-wanted ad for a printer at a newspaper and applied, but while he was waiting a harried-looking man asked if he was there about “the job” and he said yes, and after a brief look at his resume, from which he only seemed to have noticed that he had written for a newspaper and served in Viet Nam and apparently assumed he was a stone-cold killer, he was hired — but not for the printer job, rather as a police beat cub reporter, the man remarking to him, "You've learned what the world is really like so you can handle cop world." He was a bit surprised but took the job because he needed one. He did, however, explain to the editor who hired him that he didn’t know the first thing about being a reporter, going out and getting news. He had only written up information provided to him. The editor replied, “Kid, you can learn everything you need to know to do this job in three months. If you can’t, I’ll fire you.”
And he did learn — nut graphs, pyramid style, knowing no one reads past the jump so put favors to sources back there, have at least two independent sources for every statement of fact, have a fat Rolodex full of reliable sources, snitches, gossips and blackmailers that you keep in a locked drawer, share your opinions with your bartender not your readers, never use a two-syllable word when a one-syllable word will do, Democrats are corrupt, Republicans are naive, cops don’t give a shit about anybody…and so on.
He discovered that covering the police beat was far more exciting than what he had been doing in Viet Nam. He had a police scanner in his car, which prominently displayed a "Working Press" decal on the front windshield. He was right on the scene at accidents, fires, crimes of all sorts. One of the first crimes he covered was a bank robbery. He interviewed everyone he could think of and put together a good, fact-filled story that his editor complimented him on. But an FBI agent called him, curious and somewhat suspicious about how he had gotten so much detailed information. Apparently the FBI, supposedly specialists in bank robbery, had only a copy of the police report and hadn't done any on-scene investigation.
And so it went, year after year, as he moved on from police reporter to political reporter and columnist. For a while he even had a commentary slot on the TV station owned by the newspaper, discussing local politics. When he retired, his last column was a thank you to the local draft board for tapping him on the shoulder. Being drafted, he wrote, was the greatest thing that ever happened to him except for marrying the night waitress across the street from the gas station, which he did when he was mustered out of the army. They were married for 50 years.
