' Take Barbara Bernstein. ory. ly we | to our sources again. ares ry id When I first returned to Ogden I began working as a stringer for The Associated Press. Barbara was working as correspondent for the Deseret News. One night as I worked on a story in what we laughingly call a newsroom in Ogden’s City-County Building, a young police officer stopped at the door. “Barbara, right?” I looked up. A lot of people called me Barbara. “Right.” “T have that information you needed.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the most amazing list of figures and statistics. It was one, good story in this pretty, great state. He had done his homework. “Thanks.” I said. “We’ll see you later.” What the young officer didn’t understand was that Barbara and I looked a lot like one another. We have the same build with big hearts to match our busts, the same color of hair and, of course, we-are beautiful, bright, intelligent and witty. But we have our differences, too. For instance, Barbara would have taken the material, but then she would have left it for me — or if the stuff was extremely sensitive — she would have hand-delivered it to me even if she had had to walk 10 miles in the dark to do it. But, she would not have used it in her news story. She is also kinder and more sensitive toward people. But after I returned she noticed people began treating her differently. Where they had been warm, they were cold. When they had been chummy, they were aloof. It took Barbara some time while we worked the trenches together to realize that I was antagonizing her news sources who mistook me for her. About the same time she gave me _the first of many presents. It was a T-shirt with the words, The Associated Press, printed across the front. She was wearing a T-shirt with the words, Deseret News, printed across its front. That way, she explained in good humor, we wouldn’t get mixed up by Not too much later that T-shirt came in handy for Barbara. A train had jumped the tracks and at least 100 cars had overturned. Being a great photog- rapher as well as a writer, she recognized the importance of getting some shots of the jumbled box cars. Carrying her camera across her neck, her camera bag across one shoulder and something over the other — Barbara never travels lightly — she charged across the bridge. “Hold it right there,” said some officious fellow in a deputy’s uniform wearing the standard dark glasses. “No one’s allowed on this bridge except police, railroad officials and the press.” “Oh, perfect!” she exclaimed. Barabara never says anything, she exclaims it. Barbara stopped and in one fell swoop displayed her rather buxom front covered with the Deseret News T-shirt. The deputy’s mouth dropped open and Barbara passed without another word. But I was talking about friends in the press. A true friend, like Barbara, remains your friend after you have beaten her on her own story with her own sources and her own information. Fortunately, most of the friends I’ve made in the news business are that way. Take Howard Noel. At the time I was working for the AP, he was working for United Press International or hearing quickly to get to the phones in the City-County newsroom. Each of us picked up a phone at the same time and each began dictating at the same time. We gave the information we had,as quietly as possible, of course, just in case the other reporter hadn’t already picked up that little tidbit in court. Tidbits count too, you know. As Howard and I continued to talk with our bureau chiefs by phone neither of us really became aware that both of us had stopped dictating and were instead jotting down notes. As we compare our stories today, it becomes obvious that we were writing information down. Not tidbits, mind you, but information, like names, addresses and other such things. “Well,” Howard said in a rather laconic fashion. “I’ve had it. [’m going home to my wife and family.” “Me, too,” I said. Having no wife and family, I added, “I have a lot of studying to do.” By this time in my life it had occurred to me that graduating from college was something that professionals really may be an ugly profession, but it sometimes does good things, too. I think that’s what our forefathers intended. Even though I am now teaching ~ school and pretty much out of the news business, I still consider myself a newsman emeritus, so to speak. I find myself constantly defending this band of crude, offensive bores that a free society must put up with. Reporters are supposed to ask the questions that the rest of us were taught not to ask out of politeness. Reporters are supposed to be the eyes and the ears for others who can’t get there. And while people may abhor the fact that newsmen ask insensitive questions the public would resent reporters even more if they didn’t ask all those questions that the public really wants, and sometimes needs, to know. Linda 4 and be on their way. The workers were so excited they insisted on giving me the money they had made, including tips. We had the scoop to beat all scoops and the R-J had nothing. Then from the side of my eye I saw a rather tall man, wearing yet another trenchcoat, leaning against the side of the Sahara and smiling, sort of. “Hi, Bobbe.” “All’s fair,” I said, choking a bit because I knew it would be our last civil conversation. “I’m sorry, but I was only doing my job.” Being the professional he was, he just never talked to me again. Most of my friends have come from this business because they understand how this type of work can warp a person’s mind. Besides they also keep strange hours and do strange things, and they are most often the only ones around. Another benefit: they are sometimes the only ones who aren’t after something. other news wire service. That put Howard and me in direct competition, competition that is counted in the seconds. Really. Later when I went to work as a staffer for the AP in Salt Lake City I remember running with my boss into the Deseret News wire room to see what time UPI and AP had logged off on some story. We had beaten UPI by four seconds. Our jobs were secure. At least his was. Getting the beat, even by four seconds, makes a difference because the larger dailies usually take the first piece to come off the wires. It has something to do with prestige, influence and money. If the large papers used our story rather than UPI’s, then they would be more likely. .. . You know, as I try to explain this to you I’m beginning to realize that I don’t know why the hell we try to scoop each other except that it’s fun and it keeps us sharp. For whatever reason we try to get the beat on each other, Howard and I were accutely aware that it counted. We both had our eye on the future. Good beats, good scoops, could make a correspondent. It made my work against Barbara look like fun and games. Howard and I had been covering the same court hearing, probably one of the many preliminary hearings way back then in 1975 for the three remaining Hi-Fi defendants. We left the to do. So I had returned to Weber State, this time much more contented. “We’ll see you around sometime, Howard,” I said, just as nonchalantly as possible. “Yeh, sometime,” he called back as he smooshed out to the parking lot. Funny how things work out. Twenty minutes later the two of us did see one another again, and I made a note to myself to never trust him again, never ever. He may act nice. He might even be a nice guy, but I had forgotten he was a newsman. How could I have forgotten? We were both together, at a down-and-out service station in Willard, Utah, and I knew immediately that Noel was looking for the same guy I was, some guy named Melvin Dummar who could just possibly have inherited the bulk of the late billionaire Howard Hughes’ fortune. In 1977, Barbara and I returned to Las Vegas to cover Dummar’s hearing on the validity of his will. I don’t think either Barbara nor Howard Noel nor I are really sure that Hughes did not leave his estate to Dummar. When I worked in Las Vegas I used to hear rumors about a man who picked up Hughes in the desert and I also heard rumors that Hughes had a long beardand long hair and long fingernails. So I’m not all that sure even now that Dummar’s story isn’t legitimate. That’s what makes the story fun, I guess, unless you’re Dummar. That’s probably why I still do a little reporting when I can. I like history, political science and people. Reporting Ellerbee, a journalist who instead of teaching is now selling coffee in TV commercials, defended what journalists do far better than I, and so I will end with her quote: “We at our end have to put in the best we have to offer because at the other end is a viewer [reader] who deserves the best — and knows the difference. That viewer is our audience, even if it’s an audience of one, which it’s not. “The viewer has an obligation, too. If the president says that South Africa has “eliminated the segregation that we once had in our country’ — as he did in the summer of 1985 — and the media report that this simply is not the case, then the viewer must understand that what’s going on is not a bunch of reporters being unfair and negative toward the president The viewer has to know it means the free press is on the job.” (Ellerbee, P.230) R= Dabling currently teaches journalism and English at Roy High School. She graduated from Weber State College, finally, in 1976 and plans to complete her master’s degree at Utah State University in writing theory. She insists that she is not an old maid or spinster at 44, but “just considering some very good offers” that hopefully are still valid. Shoe excerpts reprinted by permission: Tribune Media Services