(Or how I got Cty: by news stories) Bobbe Dabling NTS e . ! re my A A Po Confessions a vulture te SA ¢ Ta , - Ng 7 aSEN C PRE I LAIN ER wart a Ss ae medi oes aayrgen a aaa me hers nang PPM e E ¥ 3 + Pe ee of t hadn’t been easy, telling my folks. To my knowledge, it was the first time I had done, at least openly, something they told me not to do. “I want to be a writer,” I had said, “my heart isn’t in college. Time is running out on me.” I was almost 21, it was the ’60s, and there were rock stars and protestors who already had gained international fame who were much younger. It seemed as if being at Weber State College in 1967 would never end, and my grades showed it. I wanted to be a writer. More specifically, I wanted to be a reporter. My father, on hearing this declaration of freedom from his daughter, stood paralyzed, hands behind him, in front of the fireplace. “IT have a job offer at the Las Vegas SUN as a reporter,” I continued. Then I took a deep breath. “I’m taking it.” I prepared myself for the onslaught that never came. My dad, hands still clasped behind A good reporter can get good news anywhere. Although I’ve had my share of moving around place to place, few people — even those who have long since kissed me goodbye or made some other gesture as I was leaving — will say I’m not a good reporter. Take for instance the time I was late for a press conference involving Sen. William Proxmire, who has retired and returned to his home state of Wisconsin. I grabbed Proxmire as he was leaving and, mind you this was before the Roe vs. Wade decision, asked him what he would do about the abortion issue. I knew he was a pro-choice advocate — a good reporter always knows those things. Abortion then, as now, was a hot topic. Proxmire offered a really sound solution, it seems to me. “I don’t believe legislation legalizing abortions A scoop, whether it’s by four seconds or 24 hours, is a scoop. Incidentally, the really savvy reporters don’t say, “scoop.” They say “beat,” as in, “I had the beat on that story for four hours.” We were talking about’ scoops or beats or whatever they’re called. Take the time I was covering the culinary workers’ strike in Las Vegas. The union was one of the city’s biggest and, for the first time, the Strip went dark. For three days, the workers — cooks and other types in the culinary trade — picketed the hotels. It was a great story. I had a good friend on the same beat for the competing paper, most often called the R-J, which is short for the Review-Journal. Most of my good friends have been my competitors and why not? We spend all kinds of time ‘his back, looked at his shoes. “Reporters are cynical. Crude. I know. I’ve worked with them. You can’t trust them. They’re obnoxious beyond crude. I could count on two fingers the newsmen that J still consider human beings,” my Dad said, holding his two fingers up. “Reporters use people, they’re egomaniacs. They eschew our values. They’re scum.” Exactly. During my five years in Las Vegas, those great wonderful years in Las Vegas, I moved up from a cub reporter to assistant city editor — quite a feat for a woman in 1972. I must reiterate here that women had to work twice as hard, scum twice as often and be obnoxious twice as much to succeed in news, which was still a man’s game. Las Vegas — pah-leese, never call it Vegas — Las Vegas is a good news town. Politicians come in and out of there like clockwork to speak at conventions. Others are just there. You might want to ask yourself why. Why does a politician drop by almost like clockwork to visit his friends in Las Vegas? Bobbe Dabling, now a teacher, still considers herself a “newsman will ever be passed because too few women are in Congress,” he said. Instead, he proposed a referendum in which only women could vote regarding the issue. It made good news and it made the other reporters who had been on time for the press conference really mad. Somehow, that always made me feel better. emeritus.” together, sit through hours of boring council meetings and we work on deadlines and get hassled and try to outwit one another. In this case I did outwit my friend. In fact, it was a Saturday evening and he was on deadline. I, too, was on deadline because the SUN put out a street edition for Sunday that hit at the same time the R-J also hit the street. We were working on the early Sunday edition while the strike was in progress, when my competing friend at the R-J called me at the office, another very rare occurrence. 3 “Hi. It’s me.” My friend, I swear, was talking as if we were in a spy novel. His voice was low and he was whispering into the mouthpiece. “I’m up a creek. I can’t even find the negotiating teams.” “IT thought they were in Boulder City,” I said, smirking, knowing that he could not see the smirk. “If they are, I can’t find them.” “That’s too bad,” I said, “Well, I guess we'll both have to just go with what we have.” What my friend didn’t know was that the two teams were negotiating in the office of my publisher, the late Hank Greenspun, and the teams were: really close to a new contract. Mind you, I really did like my friend at the R-J, but a story is a story. As usual, we went out with an early edition for Sunday at 8 p.m., even though the negotiations weren’t completed. Our story said nothing of any worth regarding the strike. It wasn’t too different from the R-J’s, as I remember both our stories said the negotiation teams were believed to be meeting. Somewhere. The strike negotiations were completed about 11 p.m. that night and we I put on my trenchcoat — yes, some of us do wear them — and went out with a stack of 200 Sunday editions. I sold them on the corner of Sahara and the Strip. I was there, selling the papers announcing that the strike was over and telling the picketers it really was true, when the lights on the Strip came back up. Quite a stirring moment. The culinary workers were so excited they yelled and cheered and then sold the SUN’s EXTRAs for me. Motorists who had to stop at Sahara and the Strip would hand me a quarter or a dime and I’d tell them sorry, but it was the Sunday paper, one dollar please. They would throw a five at me or at least tip me