Letters to a Young Journalist (2 of 2 free samples)

---

COPYRIGHT
Letters to a Young Journalist by Samuel Freedman. Copyright 2006 by Samuel Freedman
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

---

Previous

INTRODUCTION (CONT'D)

Toward the end of the summer, I was subbing for the beat reporter in South Bound Brook, a blue-collar town that was uneventful even by our sleepy standards. Somebody called me with a tip, the only bona fide tip of my entire summer, that there was a suspicious pile of debris on a canal towpath that fell within the town boundary. I drove out there, probably in my leisure suit, and indeed found a pile of dirt about fifteen feet high. On closer inspection, I noticed the dirt was covering spongy, whitish material. That set off alarms for me. The asbestos manufacturer Johns Manville had its main factory a few miles away, and hundreds of its current or former employees had developed an otherwise rare cancer as a result of inhaling the dust. I wrote an initial story about my curious discovery on the towpath, which in turn brought out a scientist from the state environmental protection agency to test the pile's content. It was, sure enough, asbestos. That became my second scoop.
The owner of the towpath property responded by hiring a college kid to guard the pile--by sitting on top of it in a chaise lounge. And that development, accompanied by a front-page photo, was scoop number three. Some nights, when I walked past Forrest in the newsroom, he would mutter at me, "Asbestos. You're the one. Yes, you are. With that asbestos." I was never sure whether he meant the nattering as a compliment or a condemnation. By the end of August, I'd learned it was safest to engage Forrest on the subject of Bob Marley, an improbable passion of his.

I cannot honestly say that I made up my mind to be a journalist when I wrote those asbestos articles, because I'd probably made it up as early as eighth grade, when I volunteered to be editor-in-chief of the school paper. But there was something so confirming in the experience. It made me feel that, trite as it sounds, my work could matter. It made me feel that I did belong with people like Jack Gill and Hollis Burke and Ann Devroy and Sam Meddis, that I wasn't just a pretender, a wannabe, a hanger-on.

My last shift of the summer ended much as my first one had, with filing some municipal-government story and then waiting to be released. Charlie Nutt, the night editor, was probably only seven or eight years older than me, but he had the practiced scowl of a septuagenarian. No reporter could leave the newsroom before two thirty unless Charlie gave a "good night," and it seemed to anguish him to do so, as if shaving a few minutes off our shift might lead to the sin of sloth, as if it might endanger our eternal souls. Whenever he said, "Good night," I noticed, he said it in a stern monotone and he said it without lifting his eyes from whatever story he was editing. We would scuttle out like cockroaches. When I got my last good night of the summer, though, I was sorry to hear it, sorry to have something magical end.

I tell you this story because it never hurts to start at the beginning, and I tell you it because you've asked me for advice, and you ought to know something about who is giving it. I cannot transfix you with war stories about dodging bullets and defying generals, because I have never covered a war. I cannot dazzle you with inside dope about the White House, because I have never been inside it except as a tourist. I have written investigative series on poverty, political corruption, and Medicaid fraud, but I cannot present myself as a career muckraker like Wayne Barrett or Lowell Bergman. Whether at article or book length, I have spent much of my career exploring subjects that are not considered the sexiest or the most prestigious--culture, religion, education, immigration. If you give me a choice, I will always prefer to write about someone obscure than someone famous.
And, as much as I savor the company of fellow journalists at a party or in a newsroom, I feel like I've done something wrong if I bump into any of them reporting the same story as I am.

In my idiosyncratic way, though, I have had the kind of career that you may have, or at least the kind that is common in our profession. I've moved from a small paper (Courier-News) to a medium-sized one (Suburban Trib) to a major one (The New York Times), and I've gone on to write six books, counting this one. Over the past fifteen years, I have taught journalism at Columbia University as well, and my students have gone on to write books of their own and to report or produce for such news organizations as National Public Radio, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, Rolling Stone, and BusinessWeek.

Previous