a third and the suburban malls boosted advertising revenues. We’ve been languishing lately—nobody under forty reads newspapers and everybody in America is unfortunately under forty, or so it seems—but the corporate gurus in St. Paul have plans for changing that. They’ve sent us Tinker, a thirty-two-year-old wunderkind from our paper in Baton Rouge.
At the time of his appointment the company newsletter said Tinker would make reading the
Herald-Union
“Not only irresistible but imperative.” So far he’s done that by running shorter stories and larger photographs, though he has promised to initiate what he calls “a synergistic blend of in-your-face and in-your-mind journalism.” Talk about bullshit.
Tinker’s arrival at the
Herald-Union
was anything but good news to veteran reporters like Dale Marabout. Knudsen-Hartpence sent Tinker here to get the paper’s circulation up, which meant shaking the town up, which meant shaking the editorial staff up.
Dale is certain, and I’m sure he’s right, that Tinker’s marching orders were to fill as many of the paper’s major beats as possible with as many indefatigable kids as possible. So the arrival of Tinker was a godsend to Aubrey McGinty. She’d been trying to get the
Herald-Union’s
attention since her freshman year at Kent State. She’d repeatedly applied for stringer work—to cover boring suburban school board meetings and the like—but she never got a call. Nor was she ever chosen for a summer internship. During her senior years she lobbied every department editor except sports for a job after graduation. Her stories in the college paper were good enough to get her a couple of interviews, but not good enough to get her a job. And if I know Aubrey, all the time she was trying to get our attention, she was trying just as hard to get the attention of every big-city newspaper in the Midwest. Like most journalism grads, she ended up on a small paper in a small town, covering small stories, trying to survive on a pitifully small paycheck, plotting her escape.
The way young reporters escape small papers is through the stories they write. They clip them out and stick them in manila folders. As soon as they’ve got six months or a year under their belt, they start sending those
clips
to bigger papers. The better their clips, the bigger the paper they’ll land on. So they joyfully work their brains out at those small papers, praying that the good-clip gods let something horrible happen on their beats, like the murder of the local football coach, so they can cover the hell out of it.
Tinker liked Aubrey’s clips on the football coach murder. He liked how she didn’t accept the Rush City Police Department’s verdict. He liked how she pursued the rumors of the coach’s affair with the cheerleading advisor. He liked how her relentless pursuit led to the arrest of the cuckolded husband. Aubrey McGinty was just the kind of reporter he wanted covering the cops in Hannawa, Ohio.
From what I gather, Tinker and Aubrey started wooing each other a good year before she was actually hired. Aubrey sent him her clips and he took her to lunch. There were letters and phone calls and then finally a firm commitment that she’d be hired just as soon as there was an opening.
Dale did a wonderful job covering the Buddy Wing murder in November. Everyone in the newsroom praised him to high heaven. But Tinker had already made up his mind and when Wally Kearns announced in January he was taking advantage of the paper’s early retirement program to write that novel he’d been putting off, there was suddenly a copy editing slot on the metro desk for someone with an experienced eye. For Dale Marabout.
Aubrey, as you know, showed up the first week of March, full of vinegar.
***
Wednesday, March 22
On Wednesday I took Dale to lunch at Speckley’s.
I was expecting him to be pissed off by Tinker’s decision. Instead, he was concerned only about Aubrey’s safety.
At the time of his appointment the company newsletter said Tinker would make reading the
Herald-Union
“Not only irresistible but imperative.” So far he’s done that by running shorter stories and larger photographs, though he has promised to initiate what he calls “a synergistic blend of in-your-face and in-your-mind journalism.” Talk about bullshit.
Tinker’s arrival at the
Herald-Union
was anything but good news to veteran reporters like Dale Marabout. Knudsen-Hartpence sent Tinker here to get the paper’s circulation up, which meant shaking the town up, which meant shaking the editorial staff up.
Dale is certain, and I’m sure he’s right, that Tinker’s marching orders were to fill as many of the paper’s major beats as possible with as many indefatigable kids as possible. So the arrival of Tinker was a godsend to Aubrey McGinty. She’d been trying to get the
Herald-Union’s
attention since her freshman year at Kent State. She’d repeatedly applied for stringer work—to cover boring suburban school board meetings and the like—but she never got a call. Nor was she ever chosen for a summer internship. During her senior years she lobbied every department editor except sports for a job after graduation. Her stories in the college paper were good enough to get her a couple of interviews, but not good enough to get her a job. And if I know Aubrey, all the time she was trying to get our attention, she was trying just as hard to get the attention of every big-city newspaper in the Midwest. Like most journalism grads, she ended up on a small paper in a small town, covering small stories, trying to survive on a pitifully small paycheck, plotting her escape.
The way young reporters escape small papers is through the stories they write. They clip them out and stick them in manila folders. As soon as they’ve got six months or a year under their belt, they start sending those
clips
to bigger papers. The better their clips, the bigger the paper they’ll land on. So they joyfully work their brains out at those small papers, praying that the good-clip gods let something horrible happen on their beats, like the murder of the local football coach, so they can cover the hell out of it.
Tinker liked Aubrey’s clips on the football coach murder. He liked how she didn’t accept the Rush City Police Department’s verdict. He liked how she pursued the rumors of the coach’s affair with the cheerleading advisor. He liked how her relentless pursuit led to the arrest of the cuckolded husband. Aubrey McGinty was just the kind of reporter he wanted covering the cops in Hannawa, Ohio.
From what I gather, Tinker and Aubrey started wooing each other a good year before she was actually hired. Aubrey sent him her clips and he took her to lunch. There were letters and phone calls and then finally a firm commitment that she’d be hired just as soon as there was an opening.
Dale did a wonderful job covering the Buddy Wing murder in November. Everyone in the newsroom praised him to high heaven. But Tinker had already made up his mind and when Wally Kearns announced in January he was taking advantage of the paper’s early retirement program to write that novel he’d been putting off, there was suddenly a copy editing slot on the metro desk for someone with an experienced eye. For Dale Marabout.
Aubrey, as you know, showed up the first week of March, full of vinegar.
***
Wednesday, March 22
On Wednesday I took Dale to lunch at Speckley’s.
I was expecting him to be pissed off by Tinker’s decision. Instead, he was concerned only about Aubrey’s safety.
Similar Books
