Stories That Have Broken You

I didn't realize you were that far along in your journalism career. My apologies.

 

Okay.

A few years ago I was on a decent roll professionally. I was kicking some pretty good ass at my regular job and getting some great freelance work.

I got a lead on what I thought was a hot story and pitched it for freelance. It got assigned to me. I had a lot riding on this professionally. If it turned out well, I put myself in a very good position.

The story was about a Division I football player who had gone back home to visit his best friend from high school. The guys went out drinking and partying one night. The friend got rip-roaring drunk. Then the friend decided to drive home. The football player tried to stop him. No luck. Things got dicey. The football player tried to grab the friend's keys. Things got ugly. From what I understand-- though, here's where stories diverge-- the football player, in his efforts to keep the kid from driving, threw a punch. The friend landed without catching his fall and hit his head on the pavement.

They got the friend home to his mom's. A few hours later he woke up with a headache. Mom took him to the ER. A few hours after that, he was dead.

Pretty good story, right?

The football player is charged with manslaughter in the death of his best friend. The school lets him continue to play "until the legal process plays out." (By the way, both kids were underage, of course.)

Anyway, I get in touch with the dead kid's mom. She's upset and very much wants to do the story. (Story to air on national TV.) I get a hold of the lawyer for the accused. He won't let the player talk, but the lawyer himself will grant an on-camera interview. I fly across the country. I interview the D.A. who didn't give me much of anything. I spend 2 days at the courthouse waiting for a hearing and getting transcripts of the preliminary hearing and other court records. I call to confirm the interview with the player's lawyer, and he acts like he's never spoken to me in his life. Totally bags the interview.

Because of some availability issues, I couldn't get the family of the boy who died on that trip, but I had it scheduled for a week later.

So I fly home and begin trying to put the story together. I start making calls to potential witnesses listed in the court records... but quickly realize have nothing without the kid's family.

Meanwhile, the people who assigned me the story are starting to put some pressure on me. I'm in a spot.

I call to confirm the interview with the dead kid's family. I get the mom on the phone. She says she wants to do it, but the kid's dad does not want anyone from the family to do it-- and he's not budging.

2 days of back-and-forth.

I tell her we'll do the story anyway, with our without her cooperation. That makes her very upset.

No luck.

Folks are getting antsy. "What's going on with that story?" I'm supposed to have a producer flying out there with me.

Finally at 9 o'clock the night before the scheduled interview, I give it one more chance.

I get the mom on the phone. We argue. She starts breaking down. Within a few minutes, she's sobbing.

What the fuck is my problem, I think to myself. You just made a mom who lost her child break down. Could anything be worse than a mother losing her son? An asshole reporter pestering her for an interview, perhaps?

Mr. Lugs arrives home to find me sitting on the floor shaking and crying.

"I'm not cut out for this shit," I told him.

The story obviously never happened.

And frankly, I haven't done a story that's worth half a crap ever since.

 

That quote and these stories have brought Linkin Park's "Bleed It Out" to my mind. Every time.

 

Thanks. Not that he was a bad guy, but he had a habit of pissing on the sports department. He had been a metro editor for years before becoming the ME at that paper and his heart was definitely still in news. No way he was going to stand up for a couple of guys in the toy department.

Also, as I mentioned, the assistant editor who gutted my story had just been passed over for the metro editor's job for the second time. I guess they figured they couldn't afford to have him take another hit to his ego.

But yes, a good ME would have stepped in and done something about it.

 

My “breaking point” story is a bit different, and maybe a bit off topic, but oh well.

It wasn’t a long story, or a particularly complicated story. It was a regular, run-of-the-mill gamer.

I remember it clearly: I sat in the press box, looked around and realized that I did not give a shit. Not about the story, not about the team I was covering, not about my job. I didn’t care anymore.

It wasn’t one story that did it to me. It was a series of “meaningless” stories that drained the life from me. It was one of those moments of clarity when it all came together for me. I was done as a writer. Six months later I quit.

I’m in a different industry now, still doing a bit of writing and relatively happier, but I have no regrets.

 

My first internship, and actually my first time writing news for an extended period of time, came in the summer between my sophomore and junior year in college. At the time it was safe to say I wasn't used to too much more than covering college sports for the student rag.

The internship starts off casually enough (to this day, I hope I don't have to cover too many festivals over the course of the summer), but as I man the desk alone on a Saturday I get the call from the big house (I was in a bureau for the internship). Big time chef/owner of a high end, local restaurant died. He was young too, if memory serves, and I am given the phone number of his wife.

Ugh...but I call her up and she couldn't have been more receptive. Tells me everything about the man (how he could just envision things...when he first visited the spot he bought for the restaurant he sat down and drew a rough draft of the place in about an hour) and I got my story. Write it, read it the next day (a Sunday spent at home) and feel pretty good about it.

I come back in on Monday and have a message from the wife. I call her back and she just wanted to tell me how she appreciated me doing things the right way. She says she understands it wasn't easy, but that I couldn't have been more respectful and written more accurately about the man. She said I have a free drink and an appetizer waiting for me if I ever come to the restaurant she is now running by herself. Could never make my way into the place though.

The second story also happened that summer. A county under sheriff died and I get to go to the service and funeral because it happens on a Saturday when I'm the only scheduled news reporter. And, man, was it a service. Police cars lined up about a mile down the road, and too many people to guess at the total who showed.

I meander around lost for a good 20 minutes just staring at people, who are probably wondering who the hell this kid is. Finally, as I walk around, I hear this guy telling a pretty detailed story of being on case with this under sheriff. When he stops, I move in and identify myself and he says he would like to speak about him.

About 15 minutes later and this man is basically in tears. I stand there with the recorder just taking it all in, he was remembering stuff from 10 years previous in great detail.

It ends up I have plenty from the memorial service to write a good article about the man that goes out front...good thing too because I got lost in the area trying to find the cemetery for the funeral and didn't even make it in time.

Maybe it was just the youth and inexperience of it all (I had never really dealt with death before), but those two stories still really stick out to me. I don't remember a lot of the work I did that summer, but I remember those stories. I think I always will.

 

Hey Jones, just a question, cause this is something we've been turning over at my paper ... has anyone been working with you on the story to this point? Cause to have you write 30,000 words with no clue if it's too long or what anyone thinks of it ... wow. I like working with the writer during the process so there's no huge surprises on either end when all is said and done.

Not a huge breaking point for me, but a story that always sticks out to me when I look back on my early years ... newsroom got wind that "the real" Ronald McDonald was coming to town for an appearance. ME assumes this means the guy who plays Ronald in commercials and shit. No. It's just some average Joe dressed up in a yellow jumper and a red wig. So I'm trying to interview him about how he got the job, etc., and he refuses to break character (cause the Mickey D. honchos would have frowned on that!). I tried to have fun with it, write it like the guy was a trip, but man, I sure felt like a freaking idiot writing down his quotes about how he was from McDonaldland and he was born knowing how to make balloon animals.

 

Unless you or a loved one is the victim, get over it please. If you feel some deep need "to speak for the dead" or "give a voice to the suffering" then simply do your job.

You wonder why news-siders look down their noses at sports? This kind of whining. Sorry, I'm saving my small supply of empathy for the more deserving.

Or as 21 so aptly quoted:

"It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great."

--Jimmy Dugan

Perhaps my wife is right. Maybe I've become a curmudgeon. One can only hope.

 

Mine was covering a house fire in which an 8-year old playing with a lighter started a fire that killed his 3-year-old sister.
I couldn't sleep or eat for two days, and I decided then and there I wanted to stay in sports. It takes a certain personality to cover tragedy and heartbreak every day, and I don't have it.

 

Not the word I would have used. Seriously, in what possible way is that post constructive at all?

A respected poster on here asked us about the rough spots we've been through and we obliged. For some of us, we are talking about why we got out. For others, and I'm sure this is more like Jones' case, we still love what we do, but we've had some rough spots.

Sometimes it is contructive just to get this stuff out there and maybe help each other a bit. Every job has its challenges and most of us have our difficult days.

Most of the news people who look down on sports do it because they are arrogant assholes. I respect what they do and they should damn well respect what I do. The jobs aren't harder or easier than one another. They are different and call on different skills.

This thread is doing exactly what it was meant to do from the initial post. If you don't like it, don't read the fucking thread. There's no need to be an asshole about it.

 

At the very beginning of this thread, Jones posted asking for people to share their stories. It's a cathartic exercise that relives bad memories, but it also gives people a chance to commiserate about shared experiences. It allows people to know that other folks have lived through some similar situations to their own or realize that other people have had it much worse than they did.

I can't look down on any part of our newspaper since it's such a small operation and we're all in this together. I can't thumb my nose at sports because I do sports. I can't thumb my nose at Production because they do the best they can. I don't thumb my nose at my photographer because she's too good for my shop.

Threads such as this one aren't for everyone. If this isn't what you want to see, do us all a favor and don't click on it.

 

The story that broke me is one that I spent a lot of time on gathering info and tracking down people for quotes. I was going to be the first to break this info, which I thought was pretty cool since I was a rookie. I finally finished it and turned it in. My editor sat on it for a week and then used it for himself as if it were his so he could get all the glory. He used all my info and quotes, changed some of the wording around a little and ended up getting it featured in multiple locations. It burned me so bad I questioned myself on whether or not I even wanted to write anymore.