Lions, Lambs, and Runts. 10-24-18
This excerpt is just one small snippet of a book written while I was caged inside a sex offender unit in the Commonwealth of Virginia. A blend of hard moments while incarcerated, and memories of nearly three decades spent as a journalist with NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox News.
PODER Y FUERZA. POWER AND STRENGTH.
I'd interviewed for a bilingual crime reporter gig at the local ABC affiliate in Austin, Texas.
Disney's "Aladdin" was the number one movie of the year, and my second child, Marisa, was born in the capital city where fields of bluebonnets, almost every day, exploded brilliantly and nearly everywhere.
After an hour-long interview with five managers in one room and at the same time, I got the gig.
In short and discriminate order, cops, criminals, and wannabes from both sides were speaking to me privately, and under only one serious stipulation; no sourcing - ever.
The job quickly put me in the middle of hard and deliberate conversations with newsroom bosses, who thought I was, "getting too close" to my sources and wanted to know who they were.
On several occasions, after the evenings last newscast, I would meet in the parking lot with the news director, Carole Kneeland, a petite, slender woman who'd become a journalism giant.
Bats jetted around the parking lot, casting speedy shadows and diving in and out of the lights that stood twenty-feet high.
Carole, in her deliberate tone and with an eye on the "flying rats", would ask without hesitation who was sharing information with me and why? And every time I told her that I'd made a deal to not reveal anything about those confidential sources.
Predictably, the station's general manager finally called me into their office and they sat behind a large mahogany desk with papers scattered strategically across the top. I was asked, among other things, why I refused to share my sources with news managers. "That is not an uncommon practice," they said, and then waited for my response. I'd sworn to keep those names private, I told her, and known only to me. She seemed frustrated and simply stared back.
Her office was large and exceptionally clean, and thanks to janitors, smelled perennially of sweet lavender. Custodians who scrubbed, polished, vacuumed, and collected trash several times a day, every day, from every single room and office on Steck Avenue.
The mostly Mexican crew spoke perfect Spanish, spotty English, and confided in me about their families, weddings, and funerals. They shared photos of Quinceaneras, the coming-of-age celebration for Latina's turning fifteen and being recognized for the first time, as young ladies.
"Somos fantasmas", one man told me. "We're ghosts", he explained who doubled as janitors that wandered unseen, unnoticed, and rarely, if ever, were recognized by the staff.
Fantasmas who'd found secrets.
"Encontramos documentos", they whispered. While collecting trash from the newsroom and management offices, they'd discovered sensitive documents and partially-shredded memos containing off-the-record, and potentially embarrassing, confidential information. Every page, tossed in the trash like an afterthought by reporters, staff, and managers.
Janitors that moved invisibly and said they could go days without a "Hello", or a "Thank you", or even "Excuse me." They pushed carts with bottles of bleach and Windex, trash bags, and rolls of super-soft, two-ply toilet paper.
They'd invite me into their homes on weekends and we shared cafe con leche, Latin coffee, where milk is used instead of water.
They also laid reams of station documents on the kitchen table. "Everyone needs seguro", they said in Spanglish. "Yes", I agreed, "everyone needs insurance."
Late one evening, Tomas told me about "el boton", located directly underneath the general managers highly polished desk. " A la izquierda", he said, on the left. He found the button late one evening while on his knees wiping down the magnificent desk. The mahogany, he said, when polished just right, "Se ve espectacular!" The father of six was proud of his work, saying the desk always looked spectacular when he was done, even if his shoulders were always sore.
Then Tomas told me about two chairs positioned directly across from the desk. "Son mas bajo", he said. Both were an inch shorter than the general managers. Whoever sat across from the GM had to elevate their eyes or turn their chin up, if only slightly, to make eye contact.
"Es poder y fuerza", Tomas said. Power and strength.
The GM was tall, blonde, and direct. She was at the top of the station's food chain after decades of outmaneuvering competitors in the hardscrabble world of newsroom politics. Her office, like those of most general managers, was located on the other side of the building, intentionally secluded, and away from the hectic newsroom.
Again, the GM insisted that it WAS her business to know who my confidential sources were. The conversation had flat lined, actually, it never took off and my six o'clock story was still scribbled horribly on my notepad, not typed into the stations Inews system.
Admittedly, and without much decorum I stated the obvious; our conversation, I said, had gone nowhere. I asked if there was anything else? Her silence and her stare said it all.
My next question caused her eyes to pop open as if I'd farted out a fish sandwich.
"Could you please", I asked, "push the button under your desk and open the door so I can leave?"
Her left hand slipped under the behemoth bureau, and a second later came the "CLICK". Immediately, the electronic signal released a lever and the latch unhinged. The door unlocked then partially opened. I stood up and said, 'Thank You" and walked out. We never spoke again.
Before I left Austin for another job in Cleveland, Carole met with me in the parking lot one last time. Her voice was softer and said she agreed with my decision to protect my sources. As a journalist, she added, "Your word is all you've got."
Carole Kent Kneeland continued nurturing young journalists while quietly fighting breast cancer and died three years after I left the Lone Star State.
Remember those people who clean your newsrooms. They're someone's parents and someone's son or daughter. They move unintentionally like phantoms you may never notice. Most are meek and work hard and know where the buttons are, and maybe, they quietly collect trash that could become insurance.
Be kind.
My book details what really happens inside a sex offender unit, the hard truth that most journalists will never know. I seek an honest and straightforward publisher who agrees that "News should be unfettered, unvarnished, and painfully transparent."
540 449 7253