Gary's StoryStack

The news business is serious. But for reporters and editors it's often fun . . .

Just the other day I attended, for the first time, a gathering of alumni and retirees from The Minneapolis Star Tribune, the newspaper where I got my first job in journalism. Most of them, now in their 70s and a bit older, worked there for 30 or 40 years. I worked there for only three years — very happy ones — until a classmate of mine from graduate school encouraged me to apply for a job at the New York City public TV station, where she was working.

I got the job, and that led to very fulfilling TV work there and in Los Angeles and, finally, here in the Twin Cities, producing segments for newsmagazine series, making documentaries, and hosting live programs.

When I was at the Minneapolis newspaper, I lived in an upstairs apartment in a weatherbeaten ancient farmhouse a few blocks from downtown with two roommates, both lawyers. Very convenient, not only because the rent was cheap, but because when I was covering the courthouse beat, I could pick my roommates’ brains about the law.

Two special memories about life in that old farmhouse:

First: One night we all got home from work at the same time, and to our surprise found our landlord, Dick Salisbury, who lived downstairs with his wife, Myrtle, cleaning our place. That service was not included in our lease.

So, we asked why he was doing it.

“Anything,” he said, “anything to get away from Myrtle.”

Second: What happens when you think you know all there is to know about a person?

Another night the phone rang and it was my journalism classmate Bill Nazzaro, who we all knew wanted more than anything to become the classical music critic of The New York Times or, at least, of The Boston Globe.

It was all he ever talked about.

As my father would have said to Bill, “Lots of luck to you and the Red Sox.”

Bill did not land either job. He puttered around in something called PR Newswire for a while, then vanished.

It was three years since I had seen or heard from Bill. He said he was passing through Minneapolis and asked if he could crash at my place, and if I would go with him that night to a Minnesota Twins baseball game.

A baseball game!?! Bill Nazzaro? The consummate aesthete? That did not compute.

Who knew that Bill Nazzaro loved baseball?

He told me he was traveling west from New York, looking for that elusive job as a music critic, and he had just passed through Milwaukee, where he took in a Braves game. We headed out to the Twins ballpark and, despite frigid April weather, Bill glowed.

I asked him what his next stop would be. Phoenix, he said, where he had a job interview with the Arizona Republic newspaper, to try to become its music critic.

Those were the days of U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, a powerful Republican, his party’s eventual presidential candidate, the spearhead of conservative politics in America. And the Arizona Republic’s editorial pages were deeply conservative.

I bade Bill farewell and good luck, but did not hear from him for a few years. When we did reconnect, I asked him what ever happened in Phoenix. He said, “The city editor asked me only one question: What did I think of Barry Goldwater? I said, I think he would make a very good city councilman.”

The editor said, “You are our new music critic.”

* * *

Some people like, even need, to know what their job will bring tomorrow. Most reporters I have known, including me, love not knowing what tomorrow will bring. Being assigned to something new all the time appeals to our curiosity and our loathing of the routine.

When Barry Goldwater was running against the sitting President, Lyndon Johnson, in 1964, the Republican Party’s national campaign prepared a TV commercial that showed a Cadillac careening down the banks of the Pedernales River, in Johnson’s home territory in Texas, with an unidentifiable passenger tossing beer cans out the window. The commercial — sponsored by a group calling itself Mothers for a Moral America— implied that the can tosser was Johnson himself, and it portrayed him as reckless, irresponsible, and unfit to lead this country.

Before the commercial ever got on the air, a copy of it was leaked to the Democrats, who instantly screamed, “Foul!” A deluge of news coverage ensued. The Republicans suddenly grew shy, and held off showing it.

That gave me time to call a former teacher of mine at Columbia Journalism, Wayne Phillips, a New York Times reporter who had left the paper to serve as PR director for the Democratic National Committee. I asked him if he had the copy of the TV spot and if he would let me put it on the air that night.

Wayne said he’d love to help a former student, but if anyone found out that he’d let the copy out of Democratic headquarters he’d lose his job. He advised me to start rummaging through various Republican organizations to try to find the commercial.

I started from the top and worked my way down; after a dozen calls I was getting nowhere fast. Then I stumbled upon a New York committee called Citizens for Goldwater-Miller. Representative William Miller, Goldwater’s vice presidential running mate, represented an obscure Congressional district in Upstate New York; he acted as the mouthpiece for the local felt-manufacturing industry.

A guy named Joe answered the phone. I asked him if he knew where I could find a group called Mothers for a Moral America. He said, ”Nah, Mac, never heard of ’em.” I asked if anyone one else in his office might know. He told me to hold on, and when he failed to put his phone on hold I could hear him asking a fellow worker named Frank if he’d ever heard of the group.

Frank said, “Hey, Joe . . . we’re Mothers for a Moral America.”

There was a long pause before Joe came back on the line. He said, “It’s like I told you, Mac, we never heard of ’em. Why don’t you call back next week when there are more people in the office? Maybe one of them will know.”

“So,” I said, “you’re Mothers for a Moral America, huh?”

“Yeah,” Joe said. “How do you like us?”

I said I liked them just fine, especially since I could go on the air that night and tell the story the way I just told you. And I did.

* * *

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Cheers,

Gary