Court Reporter

As a reporter, one of the few aspects of the job I never really enjoyed was going to court to cover any type of legal proceeding.

I'm sure there are many journalists that, to this day, love roaming the hallways of archaic-looking court buildings in search of justice; chatting up lawyers to get the latest gossip; and pouring over volumes of legal filings to hopefully uncover that big scoop that no one else has found yet. And if they love doing that -- hey, more power to them! But for me, it was always just an awkward experience.

While covering the courts was never one of my primary responsibilities as a business reporter, I did find myself attending proceedings dozens of times over the years. For the most part, I found the constant delays, sidebars and endless discussions over procedure to be positively sleep-inducing.

Literally sleep-inducing. Many a time I caught my fair share of Zzzzzs while slumped over on the uncomfortable benches of 393 University Avenue.

For the life of me, I could never figure how Law & Order always managed to wrap up an entire trial up in roughly half an hour (including commercials!). Yet whenever Pasternak showed up to cover some legal matter, it would drag on for seemingly weeks at a time. Also, I never knew when the trial was over, because no one flashed "Executive Producer - Dick Wolf" up on the screen.

More than once, I found myself entering the wrong courtroom, only to discover a good 45 minutes later that the trial I was assigned to was being held in a DIFFERENT ROOM. Oh, and one time, I fell asleep, in the wrong courtroom, and one of the officers of the court decided to wake me up -- the trifecta of embarrassment!

But the story I want to focus on today happened a few years before I became a business reporter, probably the mid to late 1990s. While serving as Editor-In-Chief for a family of community newspapers, my publisher wandered into the newsroom and asked me to spend a day in bankruptcy court.

We never covered legal matters, so I was curious. Thankfully, our newspapers weren't the ones filing for bankruptcy (at least, not yet) - one of our advertisers, a local day camp, had filed for creditor protection. I strongly suspect my being there was related to the camp owing money in unpaid invoices to us and my publisher wanted updates, rather than him wanting me to actually cover the event for our newspapers... but I decided to do both.

I remember arriving at the courtroom early -- apparently way too early -- and because I hadn't perfected the art of falling asleep while sitting up just yet, I kept busy by taking notes of everyone who was attending that day. Over the course of the next few hours, I would ask a few of the creditors questions for my article, and many of them were reluctant to say much of note.

In fairness to them, I was a pimply-faced teenager fresh out of journalism school and probably wasn't dressed appropriately as a reporter. Most of the creditors wouldn't have confused our tiny, small-circulation publication for The Wall Street Journal.

Eventually, I recognized the party that had filed for bankruptcy protection. Given we still had lots of time to kill, I worked up the courage to ask the camp owner for a quote. He quickly declined to comment and I slunk back to my seat, thoroughly dejected.

In terms of the specifics of the court proceeding, I honestly don't remember exactly what happened (and if I did have the details of a 25-year-old case... would it really matter to anyone?). But I do remember one thing as the proceedings were wrapping up.

The camp owner who had earlier shunned me stopped by my seat and gave me something I could print for my publication. "The intention was always to run a camp," he said. I remember that quote verbatim, and having an exclusive comment for my story made the whole experience worthwhile.

An editor once told me that "90 percent of journalism is showing up," and on this day, it proved to be true. And it was something I kept in mind throughout my career as a reporter.

Even if 50 percent of that 90 percent featured me falling asleep.

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