When Your Reporter Instincts Fail Spectacularly
One interaction early in my career changed everything
It helps when the gifts you have align with the work you do.
Some people have a knack for numbers, and thrive in finance or economics or other similar professions.
Some people are born leaders and can guide large companies to great success.
Journalists (I was one for 26 years) need to have a nose for news.
My nose for news may have had a deviated septum.
On one hand, a “nose for news” may mean the ability to see a story when no one else does. I had that. I could take a mundane matter such as a resident battling the city about overgrown weeds in the neighbor’s yard and turn that into a big-picture story about where individual rights end and governance begins. All of a sudden, it wasn’t about knee-high weeds. It was about freedom itself.
On the other hand, a nose for news may mean the ability to dig for the right information at the right time to make a story truly great.
It wasn’t long into my journalism journey I realized I may not have that.
I wasn’t an ambulance chaser, but there was this one time …
My first job out of college was as a general assignment reporter for the Cullman Times, a 5-days-per-week newspaper in the city of Cullman, located halfway on I-65 between Birmingham and Huntsville. We covered all of Cullman County including the nearby town of Hanceville, about 10 miles south of Cullman.
I remember driving back from Hanceville one evening after covering a routine water board meeting, when an ambulance zoomed south toward Hanceville.
Even at a small daily, a passing ambulance is not story-worthy, unless …
So I followed it. I wasn’t pushing a hard deadline so I had time.
I whipped around and followed the ambulance into the parking lot of a well-trafficked strip mall. When I arrived, medics were tending to a patient in a vehicle in the middle of the parking lot.
A crowd of about 10-15 people were circled around the car as medics did their work.
This is not a story, unless the person in the vehicle is the mayor, or some other elected official or well-known person. So my job was to find out what was happening and who it was happening to so I could quickly determine this was not a story and be on my way.
As I began to look at the assembled crowd, I began to seek out the person who looked like he/she knew what was going on. I had two simple questions. What’s happening? Who is it happening to?
Quick. Easy. Out.
This one man was eyeballing me. As I scanned the crowd, I kept coming back to him because he looked like he had something to say.
“That’s the guy,” I said to myself, trusting my nose for news.
I tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, but I was a guy with a reporter’s notebook in hand. I casually walked over to the man and talked in a quiet tone as medics did their work.
“Did you get a chance to see what happened or do you know who this is?” I asked.
His answer made me doubt my whole career choice.
Noise — loud noise — began to come out of his mouth but no syllable was intelligible. He kept going for a few seconds at higher and higher volume with nothing but gutteral sounds coming from him.
Then it hit me.
This man has no tongue.
I can’t begin to tell you how deflating it is for a 22-year-old fresh college graduate who thinks he knows everything about the news reporting business to pick the one guy out of a crowd who is missing the one tool it takes to provide a reporter with information.
Fifteen people. Fourteen tongues. The odds were definitely in my favor and I failed miserably.
First, the wave of deflation. Next, how am I going to move on from this very awkward situation?
By this time, more people are interested in my conversation with the man with no tongue than the poor person in medical distress in the vehicle nearby.
I can’t just turn and walk away. That would be rude and disrespectful.
The man is continuing to utter sounds as I process a handful of possible responses. I probably chose the wrong one.
I wanted him to know I appreciated the effort. But how do I show that and move on? So, I picked up my pen and started writing in my reporter’s notebook as he prattled away.
I nodded dutifully and made a few movements with my pen. I nodded dutifully again and made a few more movements and started to walk away.
But he kept on … uh … talking.
More than likely, he was saying something like “I have no tongue, you embicile. Of all people, why would you try to get information from me?”
But I’m stuck. I can’t just walk away. So I went to my trusty reporter’s notebook with my pen again and said thank you.
There is no way to salvage this moment. Maybe it was the mayor in medical distress, but I wasn’t going to stick around to find out. I just walked back to my car and left.
I made it back to the newsroom. I had choices the next morning when all of my coworkers were present.
Share the story or tell no one?
I shared. People laughed until their lungs collapsed and that’s when I realized that reporters always — always — need to share their stories.
Over the course of the next 26 years I shared and heard stories that belong in the Comedy Hall of Fame. I learned that self-deprecation is the best form of humor. I learned not to take myself too seriously. I learned I didn’t know everything about everything, especially about my nose for news.
Those stories kept us going, because we saw a lot of stuff we had rather not see. Laughing at ourselves and each other was the best medicine.