Tom Carter saw him in Missouri, one stupid report on some two-bit fire. He really beefed it up that night, wearing his yellow fireman’s jacket, holding the puppy they carried from the tenement.
“This little fellow made it,” he said as the puppy tried to lick his face. “He was the lucky one.”
Two people died in the fire, another was rushed screaming to the county burn unit. Three days before Christmas and thirty people were out in the street. The phones at the station rang all night with people who wanted to take the puppy.
“Nineteen-five,” Carter said. “Everybody wants to work here, Kowalski.”
It was one thousand more than he was making in Missouri. He made the move with his brown-haired wife and their boy. Their girl came later.
That was three years ago and he still had a chance at anchor work and goddamn it, it was a long way from Wilkes-Barre, PA. Shit yes. He patted his crotch.
Maybe Paige Allen bleached her pussy. Hell, maybe it was even bald. God, would he love that. God, would he love to anchor.
*
They all came from somewhere else, Des Moines, Topeka, Bismarck, Fresno. Bakersfield was a big feeder for the station because Tom Carter often stopped in Bakersfield on his driving vacations in his big Chrysler. He made a point of watching the news coming out of that city. He never had a problem getting a reporter to leave Bakersfield.
Sure, his station might be number two but they loved them in New York. The reporters did the kind of hard-hitting, in-depth reporting that was often picked up by the network for the national newscasts. Across the Street it was all flash and trash, that’s what they told each other. That they happened to be number one was answered with a shrug and a no-accounting-for-taste eye roll.
Once Carter brought you in, you did what you were told to do. You were the ingénue, the new kid. In the morning you would find your two assignments on your desk, usually combined with articles clipped from the morning newspaper with notes attached from George Harding, the assignment editor, or from his assistant Kim Palmeri. You could get a news conference in the morning about yet another delay on a forever-being-built freeway and an afternoon story on illegal dumping in the desert.
You might pick up some spot news, a fire or accident, on the way back to the station. That was the low-rung work, two stories a day and whatever you were passing.
Second rung up and you were on a beat. Jack Benton handled cop shop and the courts and the legislature, when in session. Richard Ferguson covered medical and science. Paige Allen, who knew nothing about them, worked energy and environment. Harold Lewis was on arts and entertainment. That didn’t mean those were their only stories.
If they didn’t turn up their own beat stories, they too would find themselves out on the street, at lunches and press conferences. They fought those assignments, usually at the top of their lungs.
*
“What the hell is this?” Richard Ferguson demanded from his three-sided cubicle. “What the hell is this, George?”
George Harding hunched over his silent black phone, the receiver held to his ear.
“I said, what the hell is this, George?” Ferguson yelled.
“It’s a story.”
“A story? A story? How the hell am I supposed to do this? I have a series I am supposed to be working on. Do you know that? Do you, George?”
“I know. I know.”
“What?”
“I said I know,” George yelled in exasperation. “I haven’t got anyone else. Nobody else is here. I got three people out sick and two photographers out of town. I need that story.”
“Not from me, George, not from me,” came the taunt.
“Yeah, yeah,” George turned to the cards of his middle Rolodex.
“Do you hear me?” Richard Ferguson was now standing on his chair so he could see over the cubicles to the assignment editor’s desk.
“I hear you.”
“I said I am not doing it, dickhead,” Ferguson yelled.
A snicker came up from Jack Benton’s cubicle.
“Do you hear me?” Ferguson demanded.
“I hear you.” George stood up, now shouting as well. “And you will do it. You will. I can’t run a goddamn newsroom with no reporters. Shut up and do it.” He stomped out of the room.
“Sure, sure,” Richard Ferguson said, and then broke into a wide grin.
“What a schmuck,” he proclaimed for the benefit of all those who were listening.
*
What the beat reporters were protecting was their sweet little niche that made them almost as important as the anchors. They were semi-stars. People would stop them in checkout lines, would hover over their tables in restaurants.
“Oh,” they would say. “I watch you on the news.”
The beat reporter was guaranteed a seat on-set at least once a week, maybe more. They introduced their stories and answered a question or two from the anchor team. It gave them a chance to talk directly to the big cameras, to the audience. They had time for a friendly nod or a knowing wink. It was that precious gift of time that would make them remembered and, when pushed, they scrambled and kicked and screamed for every second of it.
“Don’t I see you on television?” was the puzzled query the street reporters heard.
“I watch you all the time,” was what the beat reporters heard and those people knew their names.
Oh, they knew the names of the sportscasters and the weathermen but, for most reporters, what those guys did was hardly worth the effort. How many weathermen actually got to New York or LA or even Miami? The only way to break into sports was to be some old jock twenty years away from a college bowl game, or some kid with manicured hair. Even then, you had to wait around for some old sports fart to die.
As for any new guys moving into weather, even if they wanted to, you might
