Reporter’s Notebook -- June Casagrande

If I had a nickel for every person who called me insisting it was the

newspaper’s job to champion justice on his or her behalf, I’d have at

least enough money for a primal scream psychotherapy session.

In the six or so years since I started working in community news, from

Santa Monica to the San Gabriel Valley to Burbank, I’ve talked to lots of

readers. Most of them are quite sane, genuinely interested in the news

and their communities, and often they’re very well-informed and

insightful.

But everywhere I go, I find the other kind too. Their names and

circumstances vary, but they all have the same basic goal and suffer from

the same misperception.

Their goal is to leverage the fourth estate to right a wrong. Their

misperception is that articles are written not for the benefit of readers

but, inversely, that readers exist to benefit them: The man who was

turned down by the city when he asked to lease a plot of city-owned land.

The woman whose campaign signs keep disappearing from her yard. The man

who claims he is being falsely accused by police of being a sexual

predator as a way to silence him in a dispute over parking. The country

club member outraged that a redesign of the facility will mean a smaller

bar area. The half-dozen disgruntled cable subscribers demanding a small

community newspaper conduct a statewide investigative expose in order to

force the company to straighten up and fly right.

These callers all have three things in common. They all want justice.

They’ve all seen too many Julia Roberts movies. And they’ve all pegged me

as the closest thing to Julia that they can get.

The phone rings.

“Newsroom. This is June.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a story you need to do.”

“We’ll see.”

“I went to the city to lease a piece a land they own, and they told me

no.”

“OK --”

(Details about how and why this amounts to a horrible injustice.)

“So how do you see that as a story that fulfills our goal to serve our

readers?”

(Yelling) “Isn’t it obvious? The city is denying taxpayers revenue

from leasing the land to me.”

“And, to your knowledge, are they obligated to use this land for this

purpose? I mean, are you saying this is a situation where they don’t have

the right, under city land-use rules, to act on their own discretion?”

(Furious) “When and how can it possibly ever be right to turn away

money that should go to the people?”

Once upon a time, I lacked the wisdom to handle this inevitable moment

in each such conversation -- the moment when I’m being drawn into a

debate. I finally -- finally -- got wise.

“We get a lot of calls suggesting stories. I’ll put this with the ones

I plan to look into.”

This usually marks the beginning of the end of the conversation. Just

a little more impassioned venting about why the situation is a profound

injustice that needs to be exposed, then it’s over. But with Mr.

Idemandalot (not his real name), I wasn’t so lucky.

“No,” he told me in tones an outraged parent uses to speak to a

naughty child. “You need to do a story.”

“I will look into the possibility that there’s a story here that would

interest readers.”

“No. I want you to call me back tomorrow and tell me when you’re going

to do a story,” he barked, on a Friday, no less.

“No, I won’t. If I need more information, I may try to contact you.”

“Listen, either you call me tomorrow and tell me exactly when you’re

going to write about this or I’m going to call the competition.”

“I always discourage people in your situation from counting on our

readers as an audience to help you get something you want. So, that said,

I encourage you to do what you have to in order to resolve your problem

on your own.”

“I mean it. Call me tomorrow, or I’ll call the competition.”

“I understand.”

That’s the conversation as best I can remember it, but at one point I

heard fellow reporter Young Chang burst out laughing when I barked at the

caller, “Don’t interrupt me.”

As it became clear I had no intention of calling him on Saturday to

tell him what I would do for him, he demanded to speak to my boss, so I

transferred him.

As frustrating as such calls are, what’s even more frustrating is that

I can’t dismiss the message just because I want so desperately to tar and

feather the messenger. I’ve gotten some very important stories just by

reading between the lines of such rants, asking whether there is

potentially any news to report.

A little more than a month ago, for example, a reader called to scold

me for not including in a story about Adelphia cable the amount of money

the city of Newport Beach earns through its contract with the company. He

seemed to be implying that if such information ever came to light,

everyone would see there was a huge conspiracy.

I really doubted this second point, but the first one, I had to

swallow my pride and admit, was right. I should have included the dollar

figures. In my next article on the subject, I added the information. He

called to thank me, but I said the thanks go to him.

Mr. Idemandalot was a different story, but nonetheless I had to find

out whether there was a story there. Later that day, I contacted the city

official who oversees leases on the land in question. He explained the

rules that govern such leases -- rules that basically mean the city was

acting not just within its rights, but in what it sees as residents’ best

interests.

“Yeah, that guy called here too,” the city official said.

“Belligerent and threatening?”

“Yup, that’s the guy.”

Once you’ve been yelled at, bullied and bossed around by someone who’s

completely out of line, the only potential salve is commiseration with

people who can share your pain. In the average newsroom, this means just

about anybody. So, about once a week, we reporters vent to each other

about the demanding caller du jour.

“One of these days, we should all write a column about them,” Costa

Mesa reporter Lolita Harper mused one day.

“I’d love to,” I said. “But I’m afraid we’d end up doing the same

thing they want to do: using our readers as a captive audience to whine

to about our own gripes.”

Of course, that was before my chat with Mr. Idemandalot.

Thanks for listening.

* June Casagrande covers Newport Beach. She may be reached at (949)

574-4232 or by e-mail at o7 [email protected] .