Question is can you write
By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman
I’ve never been much on titles. Occasionally, I’ll slip up and call myself by the prissy word, journalist, but deep down I’m just a reporter. I’ve been higher up in the newspaper ranks, even once was a publisher. And I have held the title of editor on several daily newspapers.
I am told on judgement day I will not be judged by for my degrees, diplomas, honors and awards, but rather by my scars. Since I have more than my share, I guess I am home free.
I’ve got the degrees, the honors and awards, but they aren’t displayed on any walls in my house. They are stacked inside a closet collecting dust.
I got my comeuppance early in my newspaper career while applying for a job. I tried to impress an old editor named Hank Burmeister with my college degree. He stopped me mid-sentence by saying: “I don’t care if you have a wall filled with sheep skins. Can you write?”
Little did I know that one day I would be confronted by a new reporter over her Master’s degree in journalism from Stanford University. All new reporters, I assigned to pick up the vital statistics from the courthouse – the marriages, divorces, births etc. It was a good testing ground for their accuracy.
That reporter, flaming with her new found feminism, challenged me by saying the assignment was beneath her, that she had been trained to expose Standard Oil.
“Oh, that’s different,” I said. “We only have one Chevron station and it has the dirtiest restrooms in town. Get over there a do an expose.”
“But in the meantime,” I told her, “get across the street to the courthouse and bring me those vitals and this afternoon you go to the historic cemetery midtown and copy 30 names off the headstones.”
She turned out to be a good reporter despite her Master’s degree.
Titles just don’t do much for me. I was the manager of the American Red Cross chapter in Douglas County for 15 years. The board chairman trying to impress some dignitary, introduced me as the executive director. I corrected him, by saying executive directors don’t do restrooms.
Probably my greatest accomplishment as a reporter came when I was aboard the Queen Mary for its last voyage. I was fully credentialed as a reporter covering the last voyage. My steward tipped me off after we sailed from the Canary Islands headed for Rio that a stowaway had slipped aboard. Trying to be responsible I ask the ship’s captain about the incident.
His pompous British reply was: “This is a British ship. On British ships were carry passengers not journalists. It is not my habit to discuss ship’s business with passengers.”
My revolutionary reply was to remind him the ship was now owned by an American city and in America we are reporters, not journalists and that within the hour this reporter will have interviewed your stowaway and if he tried to block the radio message reporting the story to my newspaper, he would quickly discover the First Amendment of the Constitution.
I interviewed the stowaway and was back in the radio room filing my story in less than a hour. That’s what a reporter does.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)
August 22nd, 2010 at 10:54 am
Hi Bill, I am the stowaway you interviewed. I’m presently writing a book titled: The Last Stowaway – RMS Queen Mary. I mentioned our interview in the book but not your name. Good to know you’re still around and writing. Drop me a line sometimes. Stacy.