As the Wicked Watch(59)
“Maybe,” I responded. “In either case, I think my next move is to see what’s up with Masey’s cousin Yvonne.”
10
On the way downstairs to grab coffee, I ran into Grace, the intern, in the elevator.
“Oh, hi, Jordan!” she said. She studied me from head to toe. It was almost as though she were visualizing herself in a pair of designer stilettos, fantasizing what her career could be like one day.
“Everything turned out so well!” she said. “I’m really glad I got a chance to work with you last night.”
“Well, you didn’t actually work with me, but I understand what you mean. Thanks. You did great,” I said.
Her enthusiasm rose. “I just had one of my most exciting days since I’ve been here.”
“I assure you every day won’t be like that,” I said.
“The vigil was amazing!”
A vigil is not amazing. A child is dead!
Inevitably, every year a new string of interns dying to be reporters jump into this business with a skewed view of the job. No one values heart anymore. It’s the drama they’re after, the thirst for the high five from a colleague congratulating you for “owning someone” in an interview. I know I might sound like an old J-school dinosaur sometimes, but I think schools should require would-be reporters to take psychology classes, or at least some type of counseling curriculum to acquire the empathy they need for the day-to-day, so they’re forced to remember these are human beings, not just stories. I realize this is exactly what Thomas was trying to convey earlier, and this ticked me off. It was the equivalent of somebody else calling your baby unattractive. You can say that, but another person can’t.
I mask my annoyance, because I realize Grace didn’t mean any harm and because I could tell she immediately regretted it.
“It’s tragic, I know,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong. I grew up in Evanston, but it’s not the city-city.”
Therein lies her ignorance. Most of the time, the types of people reporters encounter at work are very different from the ones they grew up around. Like Grace, who has spent most of her life in the suburbs.
I changed the subject. “Who are you working for?” I asked. “Are you making the rounds or are you just supporting the camera crew?”
“Right now George, I guess. Or his boss. Honestly, it’s kind of been super low-key. I thought I’d be moving around more, working in different aspects of the newsroom. But so far I’ve spent the first couple weeks of my internship with the camera guys.”
I realized I’ve never been in Grace’s shoes, because she took a different path than I did, and now she was trying to break free of that path. So often people who graduate from prestigious universities take low-or no-paying internships believing they will get a chance to shadow a reporter their parents love on the news or someone they got a chance to meet once. If they’re really lucky, they will get help from that reporter or a nice camera guy to make their résumé tape. What they don’t know, and nobody tells them, before they get here is that between union rules and newsroom management, most of the time that doesn’t happen. They’re more likely to find themselves on a coffee or script printing errand with that $50,000-a-year journalism degree.
It’s a hard pill to swallow because they all want to be in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago, and in some cases, they think they can go straight to the network because once upon a time somebody they know or heard of actually did. Reporter legends are a form of urban legend. It happened to this person, so it can happen to me. I always tell recent grads that it’s better to work in a small market first instead of a major city. It doesn’t matter where; just throw a dart at a map and head toward the first small market it lands on. Newbies are far more likely to get some real experience, actually meet people and get out of the bubble, even if it’s just covering the state fair, a high school commencement, or the Fourth of July parade. I smiled to myself, thinking about my mentor back in Dallas, Lucy Hansfield, who successfully fought off a legion of “I’m smarter, prettier, and I graduated from a better college than you” contenders who mistook her for a has-been because she was in her late forties and Black. Lucy is a dyed-in-the-wool city hall reporter, and she kept her coveted spot because she practically lived there, stalking the mayor and council members and hunting for clues in the bowels of the city clerk’s office, digging through dusty files because she valued getting the scoop over her manicure.
“Let me look into it for you. Maybe you could shadow me,” I said.
Her eyes lit up. “Oh my God, Jordan, I’d love that! Thank you!” she said.
“So, uh, Grace, I’m going to be doing some investigative work on the Masey James case. Some of it will probably be off the clock, so you’ve got to be ready to roll with me,” I said. “Do you have an iPhone?”
“Yes, actually, I just got one,” she said.
By now Grace was undoubtedly envisioning herself doing her sign-off from a breaking news report: “This is Grace So-and-So reporting for blah-blah news.” There was nothing more to explain.
It occurred to me I don’t even know her last name.
“I’m going to be knocking on some doors this week, which can get a little tricky. I’d feel better knowing someone was recording just in case . . .” I trailed off, because I didn’t want to say, “just in case someone tries to jump me or something goes wrong,” and frighten her. “It’s just a good idea to have back up.”