Warrior Pose by Brad Willis

and move as close to the lodge as possible, ducking behind police cars and periodically poking my head up to film the action. The County Sheriff agreed to an interview, giving me about the same three minutes Don Michaels allowed me when I played reporter with him. Within a few hours, the sniper surrendered. I was the only TV journalist there, filming as he walked from the hotel into the parking lot, hands held high, and followed orders to lie facedown on the asphalt as officers swarmed in to make the arrest.
    I jumped into my van and blasted back down the highway. I rolled into the parking lot with my gas tank on empty, ran into the station, loaded the film in the processor, and grabbed some script paper. I furiously pecked away at my story and then, with Michaels’ help, recorded my report on a bulky eight-track cartridge, editing the film to go with my words. I finished less than two minutes before we went on the air and ran everything into the Control Room just in time. It was an initiation by fire, but I made my first real deadline. I was transfixed, and in that moment the news business became my whole life.
    I soon turned myself into an investigative reporter, using pictures and words to peel back the veneer of society and expose corrupt business and political practices. I caught drug detectives falsifying evidence, local council members taking bribes, timber companies illegally cutting down virgin timber in Redwood National Park. Covering the news was what I was born to do. I lived it, breathed it, ate it, and made it my way of crusading against the society from which I had felt so alienated in my earlier years. I was relentless, just as I’d promised Don Michaels I would be.
    Within two years, Michaels retired and soon I was named news director, running the small news department, filming and reporting stories throughout the day, anchoring the six and eleven o’clock nightly newscasts, and even cleaning up and taking out the trash before the long drive home to my cabin. It was around-the-clock, usually seven days a week. I made a whopping $600 per month. Far less than I took home from a weekend job painting a house, but I wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

CHAPTER 3
    Moving up
    A T THE END of my third year at KVIQ, I was beginning to understand something about the business of being a broadcast journalist. The market size of a television station was based on its audience size. I was working in one of the smallest markets in the country, something like number 198 out of 206. If I wanted broader horizons, bigger stories, and more opportunities, I’d need to land a job in a bigger city. But I had no idea how to go about it. Then one morning I received a call from a man introducing himself as Pete Langlois, the news director of KCRA-TV in Sacramento, the twentyfirst market, and the state capital to boot.
    â€œWe want you to fly down and discuss taking a job with us,” Langlois said in soft monotone of a voice.
    â€œSure, yes,” I said with surprise. “But how did you hear about me?” I couldn’t imagine anyone outside of Humboldt County even knowing about our little news operation.
    â€œYour competitors,” Langlois droned. “They want you out.”
    There was only one other station in town and they had always been number one in the news. My commitment to investigative reporting had helped turn that around, and after I became news director and anchor, we captured the number-one spot in the ratings and kept it. As Langlois would later explain, the general manager of our competitor station knew the owner of KCRA and had asked him for a favor—to get me out of town.
    The job that KCRA offered me wasn’t what I expected. I’d be in management as the executive producer of the station’s prime-time magazine show, Weeknight . It was a light, fluffy show that mixed feature stories from the news department with entertainment and show business reports. They