THE JOURNALIST

A year into my career as a sportswriter Barry invited me to the Palm for a beer and burger. "Larry is leaving for the Caller next week and Sally gave me her two-week notice," he said. "Larry was a pain in the ass, but I'm going to miss Sally. That's great she went to San Antonio. Was she hired on first sight." "There's substance beneath that sterling surface. She has a future. And speaking of futures, I want you to join me on the news side. You're a natural. You have what it takes." "I love sports, Barry. I'm not envious of the beat reporters submitting their boring stories about ridiculous meetings where a bunch of bloated nobodies decide nothing. The world of objectivity is a drag. I write breaking stories, features and columns. I'm having a blast without a frustrated editor cramping my style." Barry nodded. "I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse. I'm adding fifty cents to your hourly wage and giving you five overtime hours a week. More importantly, I'm going to teach you all the tricks of the trade by exposing you to every aspect of the news gathering business. I will make a first-class journalist out of you. I'll be disappointed if you don't accept. If you want to return to sports after a trial run, fine, but at a minimum you'll have skills that will make you ten times the sportswriter you are now. I'm extending you an opportunity that I've never offered anyone." "But the boring life of a beat reporter...it's no fun. I'm not going to miss Larry's pained face. You would have thought he was wrestling with life-and-death issues when they were only zoning controversies. Nobody needs that crap. I would never read his shit and now you're asking me to write that shit." "I'm starting you at the top. There will be jealously, but these sourpusses know that you have talents they will never possess. I'm creating the position of general assignments reporter. You will focus on investigations and features. But you're going to have to pay your dues, too. When your colleagues leave on vacation, you're covering their beats, which will give you the necessary experience in every news area. You know as well as I do that there are few places more fertile for news than the South Texas border. You give me one year and with your Spanish you'll be able to punch your ticket anywhere. I can see you writing for Newsweek as a foreign correspondent in Latin America. The big boys are looking for minorities who can strut their stuff. I wish I were black or brown. I wouldn't be in Brownsville." Many beers later the thought of covering a revolution in South America appealed to my romantic spirit. Another football season seemed as exciting as an encounter with an ex-girlfriend. I was ready for an adventure. "When do I start?" "Take a long weekend and join me on Monday." Barry was true to his word. He gave me a wide berth. Whether it was wandering downtown to write about prostitution or crossing to Matamoros for a blood-and-guts piece on bullfighting, he imposed no restrictions on my selection of stories. He would give me an angle to explore if I couldn't find the hook to give the article its focus. He was open to my perspective, bullfighting an example of his broad-minded approach to a subject. "Shouldn't we touch on the cruelty to animals?" he posed. "That's not my intention. I want to recreate a Hemingway moment. I want to write about the art the gore inspires. I want to write about the aficionados and their love for toros as they take their seats on the sunny or shady side of the ring. I want to satisfy the true believers and stir the curiosity of those who have never attended a bullfight. Down the road I'll be more than happy to write about a bull's date with death although I will probably present the bull as a noble gladiator rather than a sacrificial lamb who would rather die on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of the arena instead of in the anonymity of a slaughterhouse where a hungover peon cuts his throat." "Sounds reasonable. When can I have it?" "I'm going Sunday and Brett said he would love to photograph the pageantry. I can have it ready for the following Sunday. I hate to see it run on any other day." "Great. What do you have planned for the rest of the week?" "There's the Hernandez murder in Garza's court, which will go to the jury Thursday or Friday. By mid-week I'll have the feature on the Vietnam vet who is the college's new student body president. Those assignments should keep me sufficiently busy." "Next week Joel begins his vacation. You'll have the port for two weeks." "No problem. They only meet once a month. Maybe my timing will be right and I won't have to sit through a session." "Have you toured the facility?" "Never." "It's a fascinating place. You need to have a better handle on the operation. I want you to interview the director. I'll call him and tell him that I want him to personally show you around the docks. Before you talk to him, though, you need to study the archives. The port opened in the thirties, but there was interest at the turn of the century when the railroad arrived in the Valley. I want a comprehensive article, maybe a three-part series. When you finish, you'll have a deeper understanding of the entity than the sitting board. How many port commissioners are there?" "Three? Five? Seven?" "At least you know that it's an odd number. Five." "Most the officials visit with my father before the elections." "I keep forgetting that you know everything except that you don't know that you know everything." With Barry as my mentor I honed my craft as both a reporter and a writer. For two years I worked learning my trade. I mastered such skills as reading a 500-page budget and sitting through immigration hearings that lasted a week. But those mundane duties were a minute part of my education. I tackled more than my share of riveting events--murders, hurricanes, bitter elections, breaking a story with a one-hour deadline that would appear in the afternoon on the front page under a banner head to compiling a five-part series investigating the gangs that controlled the different neighborhoods to taking a canoe down the Rio Grande from Laredo to the mouth of the river. This output, however, was a trickle compared to the steady stream of articles detailing the corruption and incompetence that were the rapids we negotiated on a daily basis. "For the sake of argument, let's accept that the bible is the final word," Barry would say. "It's the preachers and priests who destroy the message with their own misinterpretations for self-serving purposes. Likewise, there is nothing wrong with our democracy on paper. It's the damn politicians who are little more than two-bit actors violating our system by selling snake oil to an ignorant populace." "Hang 'em, high, Barry! Hang 'em, high!"