I was surprised how easy it was, with the start Swift provided, to tar the governor head to foot without identifying him. Swift said after I finished, “Good job, old fellow. With a little experience, I think you might go somewhere in this business.”
Of course, we were sued. The governor filed a libel action before the sun set on Tuesday. But also, of course, the suit was put on hold when the state Assembly voted to impeach the governor, and a special grand jury handed up an indictment as long as Wilt Chamberlain s arm against the Honorable A. Pinckney Schmid all in the same week.
We printed a small story about dismissal of the suit in the back of the same edition that was led by this full page of headlines:
PARDONGATE IMPEACHMENT! GOOD-BYE SCHMID
SENATE CONVICTS GOVERNOR LT. GOV. TAKES REINS
EX-GOV. BRIBE TRIAL SET NEXT MONTH
CAP R&P LAUDED BY SOLONS
And to think it all began with a dog crapping on the Capitol floor.
CHAPTER 7
Whine and I were newsroom heroes in the two months after our trip while the Schmid story was running its course. Shiu had us up to his office for pictures to be sent to Editor (? Publisher and said something about both of us seeing the paper’s appreciation in our paychecks. When that didn’t happen after a couple of weeks, I asked Swift.
“Bad timing, old man. I wrote up an increase order for thirty dollars more a week for both of you, but it got to his desk the same day as a memo from the auditor questioning the auto repair in Morrow. It was all I could do to keep the little beggar from docking your pay.
“As you doubtless have noticed, Shiu is no veteran of this business. He told me once he liked newspaper publishing because the raw material for the product is free, and it simply is beyond him that it costs money to gather news. He thinks it can be picked up on the street, like candy wrappers or cigarette ends.
“And by the way, he also got a touch huffy about your restaurant bills in the city. Said it appeared to him you two were trying to bring economic recovery to the brewing and sausage industries all by yourselves.”
With such an enlightened attitude, I let it drop. Besides, I got the equivalent of a fifteen- or twenty-dollar-a-week pay increase for the free dinners I was invited to by civic groups for several months.
There also was talk about entering our work for some big prizes, but it was becoming clear to me that the CR&P’s reputation in the industry was going down faster than any muckraking coup could boost it. We still were giving big play to the weirdest crime, sex, and mayhem stories that came over the wire and, within two months after we went tabloid, we could have gone head-to-headline with any of those London or New York papers that try to knock your socks off every morning with their front page.
Just a couple Swift came up with: A story about a judge who permitted identification of a police informant who was later shot—the headline was:
STOOLIE FINGERED BY JUDGE; SLAIN
A piece about a crazed man who stripped off his clothes in a city park and then shot a policeman who tried to subdue him:
NUDE NUT KILLS COP
The prize may have been the story about the jail inmate who tried to escape by sneaking into the back of a trash truck and found himself being pressed into a bale of “solid waste":
BREAKOUT FAILS, CON—PACTED
We didn’t get any prizes, but we did get some of what the management took to be flattering attention. Frank Sanders and his kids were one such manifestation of the respect—or maybe curiosity—that the new Capital Register & Press got.
Swift called me into his Cubicle one morning and, in the tones of a prosecuting attorney, demanded: “You know this Professor Frank Sanders?”
I didn’t have the foggiest notion what he was getting at, but I did know Sanders casually and said so.
“Well, you’ve got him. Shiu informs me this Sanders is bringing an entire bloody journalism class from the state university during the semester break to observe us, and that they are particularly interested in you and your work—so as of next week, old man, you are the nanny for Sanders and his brats.”
“How long is this going to be? I’ve got some pieces I’m working on that wont keep too long.”
“A week, maybe two. They’re making a short course out of us or some absurd thing. If you can do your work and shepherd them around as well, fine. But Shiu wants them attended to… thinks it will polish our image or something. That’s your primary assignment until you can pack them off.”
So it was, with a clean shirt and tie and a dirty hangover, I greeted Sanders and his flock in the newsroom the following Monday. There were five boys and three girls, whoops, women, including the prettiest young thing I have seen that early in the morning since I got lucky a couple years ago on a Club Med week.
My luck. The lady I liked was Sanders’ daughter. And Sanders, although going to flab, was football-sized, about six feet three and 230 pounds or more. He also was a shuffler and scratcher—constantly in motion while he talked in a Jimmy Stewart kind of drawl.
“Wall, it’s mighty fine of you to meet us… ah, here this morning, ah, Bob. We’re right happy for the chance to talk to you and maybe even watch you work if we won’t get in the way.
“Lemme introduce my kids. Here’s my l’il daughter, Lizbeth, and Lou Strazzi, Carl Swing, Abe Blunk, Mary Dear, Tyrone Flowers, Jennie Gaffney, and Jimmy Witt. My best students, Bob, and it was their choice to come down here to sit in at the Register & Press.”
I suggested we adjourn to Angelina’s coffee shop down the street for some warm sustenance and get acquainted. We pushed a couple of tables together and spent most of the morning talking. That is, I sucked up coffee and tried to give semi-intelligent and reasonably civil responses as Sanders talked and the kids peppered me with questions.
They were most interested in the Schmid story, and as I explained how it developed, Sanders added professorial footnotes.
“How did you know the governor was up to something crooked?” a runty kid already starting to show thinning hair (a natural desk man—city editor material, if he was mean enough) asked.
“We had no idea. We just were trying to find out why he suddenly was traveling around the state when before you couldn’t get him out of the capital with a nuclear blast.”
Sanders interjected: “Aberrant behavior. Look for something that is out of the ordinary and find out what caused it. That’s the way y’all find news—the kind some folks don’t want you to find.”
“Why didn’t you write a story about the trooper trying to scare you off when it happened? Why didn’t you scorch his ass?” This from as sweet-looking and petite a blonde as you could fantasize taking home to Mom.
“We weren’t after Moose. By that time we had an idea that Schmid was on the take, and we didn’t want to alert anyone we were on it.”
Sanders: “Establish your priorities. Don’t fire your ammunition at a little ole jaybird if you’ve got a chance to bring down a big buzzard.”
“What made you think of sending the photographer back to the city to get identifications on his pictures of the people waiting to see the governor?” From a tall, serious-looking red-headed guy. (He looked like a pipe-smoker and potential New York Times man.)
“Hell, I didn’t think of it. The managing editor sent Ian dee.”
Sanders: “The editor looks at the whole picture. The reporter may be looking at only one piece. You may not think so being as reporters are the glamour boys and gals, but the ole editor is usually far more important to the process than the reporter.”