Day: June 23, 2002

The job so far

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

What I would like, ideally, is an internship (or a job) where I come in and am assigned a new story every morning. That is how I would learn the most, by having a beat and covering something every day. That’s how I would learn the most about writing on deadline, getting information, talking to sources and so on. Knight Ridder/Tribune isn’t working that way.

KRT does have its advantages, though. I can work on a mix of different kinds of stories. I’ve done some spot news, a couple of softer things, and am working on some less timely news features. My supervisor, Ray Walker, is probably one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. But he definitely exercises his editorial discretion. I will take a look at something in the daybook (a listing of Congressional hearings and news “events” in D.C.) and think, “I could write a story on this,” but he’ll say, “You can go to that, but don’t write a story on it.”

That’s a little frustrating. I’d like it if he (or someone else) came to me and said, “Do go to this and do write a story on it.” Whenever a story gets pitched to me, it’s always something lighter and less timely. And that’s OK, I guess. That’s their prerogative, especially since I’m not interning in the Washington bureau, just on the other side of the floor.

By the way, I’m working in the National Press Building, the top two floors of which house the National Press Club. You may have seen it on C-SPAN’s coverage of the National Press Club luncheons, where they have a newsmaker give a talk on some subject or another. Last week Ted Kennedy gave a speech on health care, which I wrote a story about. I thought I did a good job with it. I have no idea if it got picked up anywhere, of course, because I need to get my hands on Lexis-Nexis to search for it (and my other stories). KRT does not track which paper picks up which stories.

Well, they’re kicking me out of here again. Hasta luego.

You may have already won …

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Chuck Karczag of OneManGang’s World of Pain (Chuck, please get rid of the “World of Pain” part) has named me the winner of his “Educate the OneManGang” contest. See my winning entry. Yet I haven’t received any e-mail with instructions about the $15 Amazon.com gift certificate I’m supposed to get.

Seems a little fishy. I hope I didn’t just recommend a bunch of books for nothing more than the satisfaction of sharing good books with a friend. That would be a big rip-off. I’ll let him slide for now because he’s traveling the world (maybe that’s where the “world of pain” thing comes from).

In the Federal City, you’ve been blown and shown pity …

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

…  in secret for pieces of change.

Cato’s Ronald D. Rotunda does a fine job of showing how Dick Durbin and Richie Daley are trying to get Congress to sidestep the Constitution and give the go-ahead for Chicago to expand O’Hare Airport. Of course there are the pragmatic arguments against expanding O’Hare, which is largely a sweetheart deal for Daley and his political friends to make more money off big construction projects.

But the constitutional argument is one that hasn’t seen much light, just as it rarely does. Rotunda writes:

The Constitution gives Congress plenty of ways to deal with O’Hare, but they all cost money: Congress can use its spending power to expand the airport; it can give the state money on the condition that it expand the airport; it can order federal officials (the Army Corps of Engineers) to build the O’Hare expansion. But Congress may not simply order or authorize state or city officials to violate state law and act like federal employees.

The proposed federal law dealing with the expansion of O’Hare Airport subjects Illinois to special burdens that are not applicable to other states or to private parties. And it authorizes Chicago, a city created by the state, to do that which Illinois law prohibits.

The deal stinks in a classic Chicago way. And everybody yawns …

Bringing economics to life

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Though I already know much of the material, I’m really enjoying the economics class I’m taking as part of the Institute on Political Journalism, and a big reason for that is the professor, Tom Rustici of George Mason University’s famed economics department.

At times he comes off a little too preachy, repeating points and overstating things in a way that makes me wince. I guess I always get antsy when others are espousing points of view I basically agree with but doing so in a way I find … simplistic, I guess is the word, though I’m not sure. But there are moments when his windy lectures (three hours long, after a full day of work, in a room with uncomfortable chairs) really hit home.

For example, last Thursday night he talked about price controls, including the minimum wage. He told us how during the Great Depression his grandfather used to provide his family with a middle-class lifestyle as an outstanding manual laborer. Then he began to go blind. Once he was 90 percent blind he was laid off and his family was plunged into dire poverty. The family subsisted, in part, on piece work his grandfather used to do from home.

One day, federal bureaucrats showed up at the door to enforce the recently passed minimum wage that was part of the National Recovery Act. They told him he couldn’t do the piece work anymore, though there was no way he could produce enough to earn the minimum wage that had been set by the federal government.

Searching for the NRA link provided above, I found the lyrics to a folk song from the ’30s which, naturally, mourns the death of the “blue eagle,” the mascot of the legislation. Ah, those old lefties crack me up. I’m sure they cracked up Rustici’s granddad too.

Michael Jordan — exposed to the max

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

The last in Michael Leahy’s series on Michael Jordan’s season with the Washington Wizards is a humdinger. The series appeared in the Washington Post’s Style section and you can access all the earlier stories from the link provided above.

In this story, Leahy provides pretty strong evidence to show that the Wizards violated NBA rules to keep practices closed so they could cover up Jordan’s injury. He also shows how because he was injured, Jordan rarely practiced and the Wizards, consequently, rarely had a full scrimmage where they could, presumably, learn how to play with Jordan and improve as a team. Further, Leahy provides several examples of how Jordan distanced himself from his young teammates and humiliated them in many of his cutthroat gambling games.

Does that mean that the comeback was a bad idea and actually made the Wizards worse in the long run? I don’t think so, when you consider how much money Jordan made the Wizards and the NBA even in the aborted season he played. Sure, he worsened the Wizards draft spot, but he brought excitement to Washington basketball that hadn’t been seen since the late 1970s. Sure, there will be a dropoff of interest once Jordan retires (that’s assuming he returns next season), and it just may be that the the young punks didn’t learn much or get better playing with Jordan.

But that excitement will carry over into whomever takes over when Jordan’s gone, and that money will come in handy on the free agent market.

The Washington City Paper’s Erik Wemple writes that Leahy’s breaking this story is a perfect example of how the Post’s sportswriters, and sportswriters generally, suck up to big stars. Well, yes and no. It is obviously true that Michael Wilbon, in particular, has long been an uncritical fan of Jordan’s. And there are certain points when it’s in the interest of a sportswriter to be an adoring fan, especially when it comes to possible book deals — as Wilbon almost landed with Jordan. Why do you think the Tribune’s Bob Greene was picked to co-write a book with Jordan, and not Sam Smith?

But there are other factors here. Leahy had the luxury of not having to file stories every day or several times a week, as a beat writer or columnist does. Leahy had the luxury of time. He also didn’t need to stay on anybody’s good side. Jordan was the only story he was covering, and once he was done with this series he’d probably never write about the man or the team again. He could afford to burn bridges in order to expose the truth. You expect a daily stream of information from beat writers, and if they’re lucky they might break a big story, but it’s not a big secret that beat writers have a symbiotic relationship with their sources.

One cannot afford to piss off the other. The source has to give a certain amount of time to the writer and at least humor him, but the beat writer in turn must pick and choose what’s really crucial to write about. Is it worth writing that Jordan can be a prick toward his teammates when it means you won’t get another quote from him all year as the Wizards beat writer?

That’s precisely why you assign people like Leahy the job. That’s why newspapers and TV stations have investigative teams. They are given the resources (time and money) and the protection to expose what doesn’t get reported every day. That doesn’t mean the beat writer or columnist is falling down on the job. It just means that their job is different. Journalists understand that, and so do intelligent news consumers, I think. We don’t expect Peter Jennings to play exactly the same role as Bob Woodward.