Communication 273
Public Issues Reporting

November 3, 2001

Memo to the class:

In our last meetings, I've sensed that some of you think you've hit the wall. Perhaps you have. It's happened to others before you. We see it every year, which doesn't make it any less distressing to those who experience it.

This is a demanding program and often the claims on your attention and your time are not only insistent but conflicting. We don't give you an awful lot of help in sorting it out, but we have faith in your character. That's one of the things we pay attention to when we admit new students.

Like most journalists, I've felt myself drifting toward despair. F. Scott Fitzgerald described those times as the real dark midnight of the soul, when it's always 3 o'clock in the morning. When that happens, I've found, the way back to sanity lies through fundamentals. It isn't always easy, but if you do the basics, putting one slow step in front of you at a time and remembering what you've learned, you can make your way through some difficult territory.

Let me tell you about two instances when I was discouraged because things weren't coming together as I wanted them to and how fundamentals helped me stay together as a young journalist. Perhaps they'll cheer you up or give you some perspective that you're not alone.

One of these is about a little scoop. The other is about a story that didn't even get in the paper but was more important to me than any I ever wrote.

In 1961, Lyndon Johnson, then John F. Kennedy's vice president, came to Kansas City to give a speech on education. This was page one, and I longed to be among the reporters covering the story.

I wasn't. The ones who went off to the big hotel downtown where Johnson was staying and speaking were all veterans. I stayed in the office, working on press releases and obituaries and feeling sorry for myself.

Then from the police scanner came the electrifying news. The hotel was on fire! Every reporter in the office raced downtown. When I got to the hotel, there were police and firefighters everywhere. I looked around, picked my moment and nonchalantly walked inside. If I got arrested, so be it.

As I made my way through the smoky lobby, I saw two Secret Service agents carrying the big vice presidential seal, the one that goes on the lectern when he speaks. They went out the side door, and I said to myself, "If you follow the vice president's seal, you will come to the vice president." It was a long shot, but it was the only one I had.

From a distance, I trailed the agents for several blocks. Then my heart sank. A black sedan, escorted by police cars with flashing lights, pulled to the curb. The Secret Service men got in, and I watched them speed away. I'd had a good idea and I'd tried, and that was that, a failure.

But then another dark car pulled over and a familiar voice said, "Brother Woo?" It was the mayor, H. Roe Bartle, who knew me because I was the substitute City Hall reporter. Bartle was also a Southern Baptist preacher, and how he loved the press. "Brother Woo," he said. "Do you want to go to the airport?" Did I?

At the Municipal Airport, parked off to the side of the terminal, was the big blue and white Boeing 707 with the words, "The United States of America," on the side. I followed the mayor up and into the luxurious cabin. Inside, there was a tall man in a beautifully cut gray suit. "Mr. Vice President," the mayor said. "this is Bill Woo of the Kansas City Star."

I froze. I couldn't think of a single thing to say. Then I heard myself speak and nearly died of embarrassment. What I heard myself say was, "Sir, have you ever been run out of a hotel by a fire before?" Lyndon Johnson looked at me kindly. "Son," he said. "I've never been run out of any damned place in my life, and you can quote me."

We had a useful little conversation after that, and then it was over. I waited until the jet had taken off before I called the office. Mr Lyle got on the line and growled into the phone: "Where've you been?" And cooly, as if I'd rehearsed the line all my life, I said, "Interviewing the vice president."

The moral? Follow the seal. Stay with your story, even if it looks hopeless. Maybe you'll catch a break. You won't if you quit. That's for sure.

On a Friday in November, 1963, I left the Post-Dispatch early and stopped off at the bank. I was driving to Washington to see a girlfriend. As the teller was getting my money, someone shouted, "The president's been shot."

I drove across Illinois and Indiana in a steady rain. There were lots of stretches then where there were no interstate highways, and in the gathering dusk you saw soggy American flags tied to the parking meters on the main streets of the little towns. I had a radio propped on the dash, and through the static I got the news from Dallas. It was an awful gray day that turned into an awful black night. John F. Kennedy was the first president I had ever voted for, and like millions of other Americans I felt sick, through and through.

When I got to Pittsburgh, I called our bureau in Washington and introduced myself. I was coming to Washington, I said, and would do anything I could to help. That was the way I had learned it in Kansas City. If there's a big story, you pitch in. They were surprised to hear from me but said to show up early Monday morning.

So I would be covering the president's funeral. I was going to write my story onto page one, and it would be the best thing I ever wrote. I would help ordinary people in St. Louis would know what it was like in Washington, that historic day. I would give them detail, a sense of the tragic moment. It would happen because I would do the reporting the way Mr. Lyle taught me.

When I got to the office Monday, they had an assignment for me. No, of course they weren't giving me a story. What they needed was someone to run errands. I was crushed. |But if you're the junior hand on deck, it's bad form to complain about your job.

The Post-Dispatch had hired the historian Barbara Tuchman to write about the funeral procession and burial at Arlington National Cemetery. In the opening of her book, "The Guns of August," she had written a moving account of the funeral of Edward VII. The paper wanted her to do something similar for JFK. She needed a pass to get on the press bus to the Arlington National Cemetery, and my first task was to go to the White House and fetch it.

And thus it happened that I found myself walking up the great circular driveway of the White House that cold, clear morning. I was alone on the driveway and I stopped to take in the scene. Suddenly the doors of the White House opened and out into the sunlight walked the widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, all in black, and Robert Kennedy, who was holding her arm, and the children, John F. Kennedy Jr. and Caroline. I saw them come out, to bury a husband, a father, a brother, a president of the United States.

Barbara Tuchman was at the Mayflower Hotel, where the bureau chief, Marquis Childs, had taken a suite overlooking the procession route on Connecticut Avenue. I got off the elevator, and there in front of me, in a bulky gray overcoat and looking as if he needed a shave and evil as night itself, was Richard Nixon, the man Kennedy had defeated.

After I delivered the pass, I went out again, to prowl the funeral route, taking notes, writing down details, interviewing people, all on the chance that some of it might be used by the reporters writing the story. I saw Charles de Gaulle of France, the king of Belgium, the emperor of Ethiopia, the justices of the Supreme Court, the Cabinet. I saw ordinary people weeping. Not a word of mine got in the paper, but as long as I live, I shall never forget that day and what I saw.

The moral? If you're a reporter, go for the story. Volunteer. Be there. Even the humblest assignment can go into your memory forever. If you neglect the fundamentals, you will never learn the spiritual satisfaction of knowing you've done a good job right -- even if you never got to write the story.

Regards, Bill Woo