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Newsroom Confidential: Fabrications, Part 2

A lot of good reporters get the shaft.

No one ever got the shaft harder than Suzanne, my deskmate at the Old Colony Memorial in Plymouth and one of the best reporters I ever worked with.

Suzanne started at the paper a few months before I did, her first job right out of college. You wouldn't know it unless she told you. She oozed with confidence and ability. Her beat was the most important and toughest at the paper. She had the general town government beat in a town bubbling in constant political dramas. And she consistently delivered great copy while having to deal with very difficult subjects.

On top of being incredibly talented, Suzanne was also one of the nicest and sweetest people I've ever met in my life. She was constantly calm (whereas I'm constantly not) and she also had a great sense of humor. She was without question the most popular person in the newsroom and deservedly so. I really enjoyed a lot of my time at the Old Colony Memorial and my friendship with Suzanne was a large reason why.

Right around the same time I was hired at the OCM, a new publisher took over the reigns at the paper. His name, too, was Greg. He largely was a non-factor on staff my first few months. Then, one day, no joke, after he watched The Big Lebowski, he made everyone in the newsroom refer to him as "The Dude," even though he was balding, had a creepy neck beard and was in his 50's. All of his major pronouncements at the newspaper were prefaced with a quote from The Big Lebowski. Nothing ever made sense.

He also, one day, changed everything we came to know at the paper.

We had a staff meeting one morning where it was announced that Greg had "blown up" the newsroom. Gone was George, our old managing editor. Nan, the editor-in-chief, was placed in charge of our op-ed page, moved to an office away from the newsroom.

I was shocked about the changes, but largely because I had no idea they were coming. At all. Everyone else at the paper seemed to have known what was happening. Some reporter I was. I also had an "eh" feeling about what happened. I was only at the paper for a few months when this went down. I liked George but didn't work with him all too much. I also thought Nan was a really competent editor with a sharp eye for detail. She wasn't exactly the warmest person, but she knew what she was doing.

The biggest change effecting yours truly came with the announcement of who our new editor was. His name was Charlie. I had met Charlie while out covering the town because he wrote for one of the dailies in the chain. One of our walls was adorned with plaques from all the various awards given to our paper over the years. Nearly all of them were won by Charlie. The people in the newsroom had a fondness for Charlie, but he also had a reputation as a problem child.

Charlie also worked for Nan. They didn't get along so well. And now that Nan was unceremoniously cast aside, she had a major chip on her shoulder against both Greg and Charlie.

(On top of that battle, there were also all kinds of other jealousies about who was promoted to what position. The whole place became the drama capital of the South Shore pretty much every night. Imagine going from an episode of Rugrats to an episode of Locklear-era Melrose Place overnight.)

The Old Colony Memorial was a bit stale. Everyone said we were losing money. With a new guy in charge, a pretty significant change was likely.

But to change EVERYTHING all at once? And to create hostility and tension when previously there really hadn't been any? The Dude had to have a huge ego or a complete lack of sense to think that all our changes would work.

It was not the best of strategies. Especially not by someone so fond of Little Lebowski's Urban Achievers.
*****

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Plymouth was their form of government. Plymouth is run by a "town meeting" form of government, meaning residents can vote on legislative issues a few times a year. However, the town was growing by thousands per year. It was a classic battle of tradition vs. pragmatism. Do you keep a truly representative form of government dating back from the literal founding of our country? Or do you move on because you've entered a new era? Do you embrace efficiency or do you embrace generic soullessness? It was constantly brought up amongst the town's leaders.

The town was going to vote via referendum whether or not to change their form of government. Suzanne was, naturally, at the center of it all. She wrote countless articles in the lead-up to the referendum. She was constantly at work and put in a ton of hours, without any OT pay.

With two weeks left, Suzanne wrote another in a long string of stories about the referendum. She interviewed close to a dozen people for this piece, including a strong supporter of keeping the current form of municipal government and a strong supporter of complete overhaul. Both She wrote this story, on top of the four or five other articles she had bouncing on her plate. It ran.

And the guy she interviewed called our newspaper furious. He was quoted as saying he was in favor of changing the form of government. He wasn't and never said such a thing.
*****

It was an innocent mistake. The man's name in question was Tom J. Also interviewed in the article was Tom C. Both had divergent views. Suzanne accidentally confused their names.

However, amongst the braintrust at the paper, it became the Cuban Missle Crisis.

I had really grown to like Charlie a lot in the months I worked for him. He was a terrific writer. Not only that, he was a terrific teacher. In my career in journalism, he was the only person who took the time to make me a better writer. He also trusted me completely to take my beat and elevate it to a professional business section. We also shared a very similar sense of humor. I loved everything about the guy.

However, Charlie sometimes did overlook the small details in stories. He had a great vision of the "big picture" of the paper, which was something no one at the paper had ever really shown before he arrived. But catching the really small errors... he wasn't perfect at that. And this was one that got away.

About two years before all of this went down, Jayson Blair was caught writing completely fictional stories at the New York Times. That paper wrote a laughably pompous and ridiculous front page article detailing their findings. The entire newspaper industry killed an entire Malaysian jungle's worth of trees writing about ways to prevent this kind of behavious and how to handle mistakes. It became an industry obsession.

The Dude must have read the issue of Editor and Publisher detailing the Jayson Blair case. He wanted to show our audience what would happen if a mistake occurred in our publication.

Nan lobbied strong for a big mea culpa from the newspaper. No one was ever completely sure of her reasons. She had a strong relationship with the guy who was erroneously quoted. (He called her after he read the mistake.) But she also, no doubt, recognized a chance to embarrass both the guy who replaced her and the guy who had her replaced.

The final decision of The Dude was to have a big mea culpa.

We would write an article detailing the mistake Suzanne made. It would go on the front page.

Suzanne was told of what the outcome was. And she put in her resignation on the spot.
*****

This decision was completely outrageous. This wasn't Jayson Blair writing false articles in the New York Times. This wasn't Steven Glass writing fiction for a magazine which boasted of being "required reading on Air Force One."

This was a small town newspaper where a 23-year-old reporter made a mistake. A 23-year-old reporter who was handed a very strenuous beat right out of college. A 23-year-old reporter making about $25,000 a year who had to write five or six articles a week with all kinds of people breathing down her neck. No one felt worse about the mistake than Suzanne did.

Mistakes happen at newspapers. Especially small ones, where resources are negligible, the hours are backbreaking, and the pay is nothing. Everyone tries their hardes to make sure things like this don't occur. They still do.

If you asked any of us what should have been done, the answer was simple. On the editorial page, it should have said: "A mistake was made in 'TITLE OF ARTICLE' published on such-and-such a date. A source was wrong attributed in the story. The source actually said 'blahblahblah.' We regret the error and will take necessery steps to prevent it from occurring again."

Instead, a front page article was written about this really talented reporter's mistake. This was our mea culpa?

No. This was the public humiliation of a very talented reporter who made a dumb mistake. How the hell could she ever cover another story after this crap appeared on the front page?

(Suzanne stayed for over a month after she placed her resignation. Our staff was down a few writers. She knew this and didn't want her colleagues to get swamped with work. This was the kind of person she was. After she quit, Suzanne became a teacher. She recently told me she doesn't miss reporting too much. This is a shame, because any newspaper in the world would be lucky to have her talent and charm. The next time some pretentious lord of journalism opines about the downfall of American newspapers, think of Suzanne.)

The decision to shame the most gifted, well-liked person on the staff came because of ego. One moron thought it was a good idea to create needless tension at a newspaper. And ito settle the turf war he started, The Dude decided to act like our paper was The New York Times as opposed to what we actually were. He wanted everyone to see how "responsible" we were about reporting accurate stories so he could be held in esteem by his colleagues.

Instead, he showed to his entire staff his pure arrogance. If they could do this to the best reporter on the staff, they would do this to absolutely anyone. He didn't give one shit about the people who worked incredibly hard for no money. And we all recognized this.

I kept on thinking to myself about how many bills I had to pay. About how I had no savings whatsoever. And I felt like a total piece-of-shit, like I lost all my integrity.

Because what I wanted to do... what I should have done... was put my resignation in right along with Suzanne's.

I didn't. And it's the biggest regret I ever had working at a newspaper.

Newsroom Confidential: Fortunate Son

My very first week of work, I was introduced to the wonderful world of direct deposit. Paychecks came out that Friday. Everyone who had direct deposit was about to explode. Their paychecks were not deposited on time, meaning checks could not clear until the following Monday. Two of my co-workers had to cancel scheduled weekend trips because of a lack of funds.

This was the first week of my career. However, none of my family or any of my friends had ever had a problem with direct deposit. Who the fuck messed that up?

His name was Steven. He was in charge of payroll. And his dad owned the company.

And in a few weeks, he would become in charge of all of the weekly newspapers in the company.
*****

My first editor was Ellen. She was in her 50's, incredibly gifted at news and design and a very capable features writer. She was the absolute best case scenario for someone to start their career under. But she decided to retire. She never said so, but I imagine having to produce a newspaper for two weeks without the benefits of phone service (as detailed earlier) may have had something to do with her decision.

(One of the great honors of my career came the next day. Our managing editor gave me the assignment of writing a feature story about Ellen during her last issue. I had been reporting for about six months, but I was already trusted enough to handle this task.)

Shortly before Ellen departed, Steven started showing his head around our newsroom quite a bit. The newspaper I worked for was based in Ridgewood, one of the wealthiest towns in the entire nation. And he wanted our newspaper to become the "flagship" of the entire division.

(We probably could have moved to that direction on our own if the company had let us had phone service.)

Step one for the paper, naturally, was a redesign. (Although, for fairness' sake, the paper definitely needed a new look.) Then step two was to find Ellen's replacement.

I knew of at least two people in-house who applied for the position, both of them very knowledgeable and skilled. But instead, the company hired Jamie, the editor of the Fair Lawn paper.

"Oh shit," one of the more veteran reporters said.
*****

I knew who Jamie was from my first few weeks in the company, when we shared an office with our production staff. She wore very elegant, fancy "woman who wants it all" pantsuits. She would come in to finalize production, very loud and very bossy, followed by one or two of her staff workers, all of whom looked like they wanted to set their faces on fire.

A few of the reporters and editors on our staff had worked with Jamie before. When she entered the office, they ran like hell to avoid her wrath. But as soon as she left, the first thing they did was ran to pick up a copy of her paper.

It became a weekly game I called "Let's sit around and laugh at how awful the Fair Lawn newspaper is!"

My favorite moments in this delightful game: reading a headline which read "Menorah Erections On Display," the front page graphic which had a map of Florida which was misidentified as Cuba, and the sheer joy of finding any number of misspelled headlines.

And now she was my editor.
*****

Let's add up my first six months on the job.

1) My very first week on the job, people cannot go down to the Shore because the guy who handled payroll messed up direct deposit.

2) My office was supposed to move quarters. Our move coincided with a hurricane ravaging North Jersey, knocking out phone service. Our new office was damaged during the storm, meaning we had to stay in our old offices for some time. However, the company had turned off all of our phone extensions at the old office and, in order to save money, refused to turn the phone lines back on. Then after we move, another company error prevents us from having phone lines for another week or so. All told, we write, design and produce a total of eight newspapers without the benefit of phones. This was in 1999.

3) The guy who messed up direct deposit ends up not being punished for his job but instead becomes the director of a few dozen weekly newspapers.

4) He decides to "transform" our newspaper. His first major decision was to hire the person who regularly produced what was arguably the worst newspaper printed in the English language, a woman who somehow once misidentified a major U.S. state as a communist nation.
*****

Jamie's reputation for awfulness was as advertised. The week before her grand arrival, I covered my first really big breaking news story. The Bergen County SWAT team was in a standoff with a gun-toting maniac holed up in his attic. For the next issue, I wrote a follow-up piece about how the local high school (located right next door to where the incident ocurred) handled the situation.

My proposed headline: "Midland Park High School Fares Well During Crisis"
My lead paragraph: Police officials say Midland Park High School administrators handled school security extremely well during a police stand-off which occurred only yards from their building."

Jamie's proposed headline: "Dairy Street High School Under Crisis"
Her re-written lead paragraph: A stand-off occurred near Dairy Street High School and Midland Park police were pleased with their efforts.

After seeing the rewrite, I immediately vomited through my eye sockets.
*****

My first beat was to cover the communities of Waldwick and Midland Park. However, it came down from "up above" that my beat had changed, and I would now cover the town of Glen Rock.

This was fine with me. But no one could answer the question for me: who was now covering Waldwick and Midland Park? Which is something to consider, since a rival newspaper has publications serving both of those communities.

It came down from "up above" that they would eventually come to a decision.

This decision changed hourly. I was covering Glen Rock alone. Then I was covering Midland Park and Waldwick alone. Then I was covering all three. Then none. Then back to all three.

(Having your job duties changed daily would make any person insane. But for a cub newspaper reporter, especially one with very little experience, this was very daunting. These towns, combined, maybe have 10,000 residents. There isn't a lot of news happening in these places. Most of the news came from covering town council and school board hearings. Many nights, I was out four nights a week, sitting in uncomfortable chairs listening to town officials blab on and on about God knows what.)

There were two possible reasons for this to happen. The first was nefarious. I'm not paticularly good at biting my lip. At the age of 22, I was incredibly awful at that skill. I was outspoken and openly criticized the company in front of people who were "up above." I thought that, maybe, this was punishment.

But that would give those people too much credit.
*****
Eventually, a decision was made. I would cover Glen Rock and Glen Rock alone.

Steven was in the newsroom a few times a week. Usually with him was Doug, his Joey Buttafuoco-ish assistant. Doug spent a lot of time doing a lot of important work.

"Hey, do you think you guys want white or off-white blinds?"
"Not a problem, we'll get someone to change that flourescent light for you!"
"Oooh, we need to get a new door for the photo department! I'm on it!"

Steven decided one day to treat us all to a pizza party. Doug was going to pick up the food order. He needed a volunteer.

"Hey, you there, come along with me, okay?"

I went outside and hopped in his pickup truck, naturally parked in a fire lane. We then drove to the other side of Ridgewood.

"So, how do you like your job," he asked me.

I had no idea where to even begin. So I stayed silent the entire car ride.
*****
The reason why my beat was consistently changing from town to town was because management wanted the paper to become more Ridgewood-centric. This makes sense on some level.

One of Jamie's first decisions was to start to include articles in our paper about attractions in New York City.

The person writing these articles was Ed. He was an editor in the company before I was hired. And he and Jamie were allegedly very "close," according to newsroom gossip.
*****

One day, we had a staff meeting. Steven and Doug were there. Jamie was leading the efforts.

Our paper was going to start to develop a website. They were just starting to hammer out ideas about how to get the website to work. It was a little while away, but we would introduce The Ridgewood News into the new millenium.

Eight years later, the paper still does not have a web page.
*****

Jamie was intolerable to work for.

My stories were frequently rewritten. I am very knowledgeable about my strengths and weaknesses as a journalist. I'm not the most naturally gifted writer. (A few years back, my editor at the paper in Plymouth told me to go back into my story and rewrite as much of my copy in "active voice" as possible. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.) I understand the need for an editor to rewrite copy. But I've always been very willing to learn from someone who knows better.

However, when the person editing your work does not know how to use "their" or "there" correctly, a problem naturally occurs. Her headlines for our stories were usually completely wrong. This is different then misleading. Misleading implies you are intentionally decieving one of your readers. Wrong means you just don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Our staff came up with a plan to re-correct the newspaper. On our deadline day, someone from our staff would go to our production facility and would take direction from Jamie about her edits. That person would then ignore her directions and would edit the paper on their own. Most of the time, this worked, because Jamie had no clue except about good discounts at Ann Taylor Lofts. But sometimes, it wouldn't, and she would scream and belittle all of us.

I would frequently sulk (I'm also very well-aware of my maturity level at times. At this point in my life, I wasn't.) and whine about Jamie after I saw my finalized stories. I drove myself completely insane. I couldn't sleep. All I could do was complain about this woman.

Finally, one day, we had it out.

She asked me to come into her office. One of my co-workers told her how miserable I was. She asked me what the problem was.

I told her I wasn't happy with the publication. I told her I didn't like how my stories were rewritten.

"Do you know why I rewrite your stories," she asked me.

I told her no.

"Because your stories suck," she said.

I tried to bite my tongue. Honestly. Instead, I shreiked. (When I get upset, I have a very high pitched voice.) I told her that she had no fucking clue what she was doing. And then I asked for a transfer.
*****

Ellen recommended me to a longtime friend of her's by the name of Nancy. Nancy hated Jamie. And she found me a spot on another newspaper, where I would now cover the towns of Ringwood and Wanaque.

My going away party was in two weeks. It was one of the most bittersweet moments of my life. Even though I was a pain-in-the-ass a lot of times, I grew close with a lot of my co-workers. I still talk to a few people a couple of times a week.

One lady I worked with was Judy. She was a tiny lady in her 80's, a longtime typist for the paper. Every day, I fixed Judy's computer for her, as she somehow consistently reset her MS WORD settings.

For my going away present, Judy purchased me a very exquisite fountain pen.

"Keep writing. It's what you love," she wrote in the card.
*****
A few months after my departure, Jamie was stripped from her duties as editor of The Ridgewood News. There was no going away party for her.

This year, Steven was named the head of the entire company.

Newsroom Confidential: My annual review

Suburban Trends was pretty much a nightmare to work at. Work long hours! Make no money! See most of your co-workers half-ass it! See your boss not do her job! See her date a gross, older man who works a few levels above her in the corporate food chain! Listen to everyone bitch all day long! Write your ass off and get no appreciation whatsoever!

One day, I was told it was annual review time. Two days earlier, I was arguing with Maria, my editor, for the umpteenth time. I was suffering from a really dreadful colon/stomach problem, requiring me to miss work. Maria did not like this. (I had no idea using company-issued, worker-entitled sick days were such a problem. Especially when, during your sick days, you still tried to file stories from home)

I was called into our conference room. Maria had out the company annual review form. She explained to me what it was. On one end was a mark saying "DOES NOT MEET EXPECTATIONS." In the middle was a line reading "MEETS EXPECTATIONS." On the right it read "EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS."

A big "X" was marked halfway in between "DOES NOT MEET" and "MEETS."

Underneath it was Maria's commentary.

"Gregg is an excellent reporter who has broken many newsworthy stories. He also has excelled at feature writing, which is perhaps his best strength. However, he is very disorganized and has unopened mail on his desk dating back several months. As such, he does not meet expectations."

I saw this and laughed. I was then given space for my retort.

"My job at this newspaper is to report and write articles. I apparently do that very well. I did not know 'mail opening' was such an integral part of the newspaper reporter job. From now on, I will throw away old copies of newspapers after I have finished reading them."

I wish I had a copy of this.

Newsroom Confidential: Fabrications, Part One

The Wire this season looks like it's tackling the issue of a fabricator at the Baltimore Sun -- the entitled, favorite son of the upper-tier editors getting ahead by taking shortcuts and writing what they want to read as opposed to what actually happens.

(Also hilarious but very predictable: the media criticism of The Wire this season. This show went untouched by the media for its entire run. No work of art in any form has ever had the universal praise The Wire has had. I think this is largely because the media intelligensia elite type loved what David Simon was showing a bad light on in the first seasons -- the failures of the drug war, globalization, urban reform and No Child Left Behind. These are all the standard educated liberal media talking points. But now Simon's turned the light on the news media, and the wagons are circling. Simon has also shown himself as a true headcase lately, responding to every single piece of criticism said about the show. I'm predicting he leaves a comment.)

In my years in the industry, I don't think I've known one person who fabricated a story. I attribute this to the nature of the small town piece-of-shit weeklies I largely worked at. If you made something up, everyone in town would know about it immediately. Our phones would ring off the hook if a time was listed incorrectly in the church bulletin. I remember reading a quote from someone who was wrongly placed into a Jayson Blair article -- they knew it was made up, but who were they going to report this fact to? It's not like Gerald Boyd's phone number was listed in the paper.

The first newspapers I worked in belonged to the North Jersey Media Group -- a family-owned chain with two daily papers (The Record and The Herald-News) and an untold number of weeklies. In theory, this system would work well for a newspaper chain. The weekly papers would, ostensibly, get staffed by young reporters learning the ropes. Then the big daily papers would pull from the promising folks at the weeklies.

This was, of course, theory. In my half-decade working for that company, I know of only two reporters who ended up making the leap.

I did recieve one interview with one of the dailies, very early in my tenure. I wrote two try-out articles, had a cursory interview, and was turned down. It took me a few years to put it together; the dailies had to interview a certain amount of in-house candidates but were going to hire whomever the editor wanted, which was in most cases someone he had previously worked with.

Essentially, except for a few rare occassions, the game was completely rigged. There was no hope to move up in the company.

That, however, did not stop the daily papers from running my work in their newspapers. Now, my work did not appear in their publications verbatim. But here's how the game worked -- I busted my ass finding a story. And then, a few days later, the story would magically appear in the daily newspaper. If you were to line up the stories next to each other, there would be no difference between the two. The main difference is that I actually discovered the story and created it. And some big reporter from one of the dailies, who made probably close to double what I made, read my work, thought it was a good story, and then contacted the person I initially wrote about.

Heaven Is A Newsroom

Newspaper jobs have given me a lot of grief over the years. I've worked at crummy papers for slave wages. I've had some of the worst assignments a reporter could ever write about ("School board debates swimming pool depth") and I've worked for the absolute shittiest editors imaginable.

But sometimes, when you have a really good story, the job is worth it.

And ever so often, something transcedental happens, and you realize no better place of employment could possibly exist. Sure, some people have awesome jobs. A chef might cook the best meal of his life. A teacher might have a moment where every single student in the classroom truly gets it. But for most people at most jobs, they'll unfortunately never have a moment where absolutely everything comes together perfectly.

One night, in Plymouth, I was covering a planning board meeting. This was my normal beat, somewhat exciting for something so trivial. I returned to the office afterwards. It was completely empty, save for a few flickering flourescent lights. I turned on the newsroom television set, which was tuned to the Yankees/Red Sox game. I filed my stories from the meeting, and then turned to another story. A mammoth, feature-length piece on a local con artist. I spent hours researching, interviewing and detailing the story. Now I finally had a chance to write. The words from this story just started flowing. They poured out. Nothing was stopping me. I knew what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.

I finally had to stop. I turned to watch the ballgame. Two batters later, a member of the Red Sox hit a foul ball, only to have it caught by a diving Derek Jeter. Jeter bloodied his chin. I stayed and watched the rest of the game, working on my story a little more at a time, and then I drove home.