What A Reporter Wants

This originally appeared on Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008

You readers might think that we in the news reporting dodge would fight like tigers over the chance to cover a story like a presidential candidate coming to a West Bradford youth athletic facility to deliver a rousing campaign speech -- at which the candidate stirred the passions of his audience by declaring, “I need your vote.”

You might think that such an assignment would rouse us from our normal “cops-‘n-councils” drudgery and motivate us with a sense of excitement and First Amendment-y awe to rival any scene in “All The President’s Men,” and that, in addition, we would actually look like Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman while covering it.

You might think that we would approach the task of reporting such an event with the same seriousness of purpose as would a firefighter at the scene of a burning schoolhouse, a policeman running down an armed bank robber, or a Republican National Committee staffer shopping at Saks Fifth Ave. for that “just-so” perfect Valentino pants suit to add to Sarah Palin’s soon-to-be-donated-to-charity wardrobe.

You might think that, but you would be wrong.

Reporters do not like covering campaign events. We do not like standing in big rooms with crowds of sweaty people, being herded around like sheep, forced to write down meaningless phrases that someone else wrote, all the time wondering how we were going to be able to keep our eyes open at the computer while we re-type those same meaningless phrases into a story.

Reporters secretly envy the people who go to the campaign rallies to actually rally, instead of transcribe. We envy them because for them, when the rally is over, it’s over. They can go home, heat up a burrito, turn on “Dancing With the Stars,” and if someone asks them how the rally went they can say, “fine,” just like that, and no crusty old editor is ever going to look at them and shout, “I send you out there for three and a half hours with two photographers to fill six columns and a 72-point headline and all you’ve got for me is ‘fine?’ ”

No, we reporters like news stories such as the one that hit the wires last week, dateline Jackson, Mo.:

“A man who left about $1,000 in $20 bills in an unzipped vinyl bag on a desk at his home is expected to be reimbursed after mice mutilated the cash. The man left the cash on the desk, but misplaced it during severe weather in March. He eventually found the bag, and in August took it to First Missouri State Bank in Jackson in hopes of covering his losses. Bank manager Michelle Johns said Wednesday she and two staffers picked through rodent droppings and bird feathers in the bag and reassembled the bills.”

Give a reporter an assignment that includes the phrases “$1,000 in $20 bills” and “rodent droppings” and you’ve given him the greatest Christmas present Santa ever conceived.

October marks my 26th anniversary covering current events for the Daily Local News. I’ve covered presidential campaign rallies, Ku Klux Klan marches, murder trials, open space referendums and Coatesville City Council before it became dysfunctional. My favorite story, however, is none of the above.

My favorite story is the one about the guy from Phoenixville who got mad at his neighbor for calling the police about a loud beer party he had at his apartment. The next day, the neighbor confronted his accuser in the backyard and pointedly took off the t-shirt he was wearing. Tattooed un-mistakenly across his chest were two words that are commonly used to describe, in vulgar terms, the act of human reproduction -- one a verb, one a pronoun.

He got 90 days probation, a $50 fine, and a reporters’ undying affection.

I Know Nothing...

This column originally appeared on Sunday, April 20, 2008

Behold the glory of spring in West Chester.

The sounds of birds chirping outside your window. The sights of mothers and father strollering their children down brick sidewalks in the warm evenings. The smell of flowers coming into bloom. The touch of insincere political candidates grabbing your hand and slapping your back as though you and he, or she, were as close as prison cell mates.

Unfortunately, all this vernal activity simply adds up to one more way of exposing one of my greatest failings in life: I cannot for the life of me tell what kind of trees are flowering down my block, what kind of birds are chirping outside my window, and what kind of flowers are blooming in my town.

You can call me stupid for not knowing the basic of flora and fauna around these parts. I've been called stupid before, and sometimes by people who actually know what they are talking about. I'm used to it.

I prefer to view myself as vastly uniformed.

It's the line of work I'm in, I suppose, that counts for my lack of knowledge in matters of day to day life.

You remember the story of how I got this job in the fist place, don't you? How back in 1982 Bill Dean, the saintly longtime editor of the Daily Local News, gave me the mynah bird test? That's where you get a set of facts abut a burglary that included the theft of a mynah bird, and are expected to write a story based on them. If you mention the bird in the lead paragraph, they make you a news reporter. If you don't, you get to be a sportswriter.

Just kidding. Advertising salesman, actually.

But that's the point. All I knew was that the mynah was the lead, and I got the job. I didn't even know what a mynah bird was. I couldn't tell a mynah bird from a cockatiel if you spotted me the wings and the plumage. But there I was, writing about it nonetheless, with authority.

Here's how the job works. The editor tells you to write a story about why a gallon of gas costs more today than a bottle of Chateau-du-Pape 2005. You call someone at the AAA, write down whatever he or she tells you, get them to spell their name correctly, regurgitate it succinctly in 750 words or less by 5 p.m., get the mynah in the lead, file it, and forget it. I've done thousands of stories about subjects I knew nothing about, and still don't. And those are the ones that made Page One. Don't get me started on the inside pages.

I was reminded of this lack of knowledge recently when I mentioned in a column that one of my neighbors had been pruning the blossoms from her gladiolas. A few days after its publication, another neighbor stopped by and said, “Gladiolas don't have blossoms. You must have meant hydrangeas.” Who knows, maybe she said geraniums. But she gave me a look like you give the dog when he hasn't made it outside.

Look. I know I can't tell a crimson-rumped waxbill from a Madagascar periwinkle, but I do know what I like. And I do like the way that South Church Street in early May looks like a snow shower had greeted us out of season when the trees shed their white blossoms, and I like being awakened on a spring morning by the song birds who live next door.

As for the insincere politicians, don't worry. I learned their names long ago.

An Andy Moment

This column first appeared on Sunday, Nov. 18, 2007

There must be a category somewhere in the register of Chester County Citizenship Requirements that dictates that you have to have at least one Andrew Wyeth Moment.

That is, a time when you or someone close to you have a brush with the most famous painter ever to eat at Hank’s Place.

I thought about this when I saw him on the front page of Friday’s Daily Local. Andy – you get to call him Andy if you’ve lived here long enough and run into him once or twice -- was honored as a recipient of a 2007 National Medal of Arts at a White House ceremony Thursday morning.

Wyeth, now 90, is no stranger to White House honors. In 1963, President Kennedy gave him a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and he got the first Congressional Gold Medal given to an artist from Bush One is 1990.

But it was still good to see him up there next to the president – smiling what must be a trademark smile and wearing what must be the only lapel-less, collarless suit jacket in America. It’s the “local boy makes good” story on a grand scale.

And Andy remains a local boy at heart. He was raised here in the land around Chadds Ford and Birmingham and Pennsbury, and if you pick up the West Chester telephone book today and page through to the “W’s,” you’ll find a listing for an “A. Wyeth” on Route 100. It’s his business office mind you, but you still can call him up if you’d like.

It was just that kind of neighborliness that marked the two encounters I’ve had with him. In November 1986, as a major exhibition of the works of Andy, his father N.C. Wyeth, and Andy’s son Jamie Wyeth was about to open in the then-Soviet Union, I picked up the phone and dialed his number. The phone rang a couple of times, then someone answered and I asked to speak to Andrew Wyeth. A moment later, he came on the line.

I probably didn’t ask him any questions that could have been considered probing or thoughtful, but he was jovial and responsive during the interview and seemed pleased when I told him of an evening a few nights before that we’d spent together – and by together I mean we both occupied space in the same large auditorium at the Metropolitan Life Building – in New York City.

The occasion was a preview of the hour-long documentary, “The Wyeths: A Father and His Family.” After the viewing, I approached Andy for a few words and a quick photograph. He was sitting with his older bother Nathaniel and his sisters Henriette Wyeth Hurd and Ann Wyeth McCoy. When I mentioned I was from the Daily Local News, Andy turned to his siblings and said, “It’s the man from the hometown paper!” I snapped off three or four shots and took my leave.

I was looking at one of those photographs recently and felt pleased. One, it’s in focus. Two, I didn’t cut anybody out of the frame. But best, Andy is wearing that lapel-less suit, holding his sister Ann’s hand, and smiling a smile as big as the Brandywine.

Not bad for an Andrew Wyeth Moment.

Steal This Paper!

This column originally appeared in June , 2005. It re-appeared on June 17, 2007.


Our days begin with trouble here.

By here, I mean the normally placid sidewalks of South Church Street, which of course I have already identified as the greatest street in Chester County. And by trouble, I mean the sudden presence of a wicked, hidden figure who has disrupted our peaceful lives.

Someone, you see, is stealing our newspapers.

Well, OK, not my newspaper. My newspaper sits on my desk in this office, safe as can be, guarded not only by the crack early morning staff of Jane and Sue, but also by the simple fact of supply. There are dozens of copies of today‘s daily in the building, so if you want one you don‘t really have to go to the length of appropriating one that belongs to somebody else. You probably have one sitting on your desk when you walk in anyway; why steal what you already have?

No, the purloined copies belong to my neighbors. For several days now, they emerge from their twin homes expecting to begin their day with a taste of community, nation and world goings on, only an empty delivery. Calls to circulation managers confirm that the paper was thrown; deduction proves that the papers were stolen.

We know things about the thief, and intend to find out more until apprehension is made.

• The thief is a morning person: the papers are gone before the clock strikes seven. Strange, because it is daylight at that time of morning now, so there is not even the cover of darkness to aid the crime.

• The thief has broad tastes: Not only does he/she take the Daily Local News — of which I am secretly proud — but then stops to pick up a copy of the New York Times as well. I am sure he/she dives into the Local first, getting a fix on the hometown community first, then runs off to the larger world.

• The thief may be reading this right now: Of course, it could be that he/she skips the news pages completely and goes right to the sports pages to check on the latest boy‘s lacrosse tilt, but I‘d prefer to think otherwise. If you are going to go to the trouble of stealing something, you might as well make the best use of it.

The situation has left a bad taste in our mouths. We‘ve largely avoided such problems here. I‘ve lived on the block for better than 20 years — my neighbors longer — and can‘t remember more than one break-in. I had a backpack lifted from my car once, but I admit to having left the window rolled down, more or less inviting the theft.

We don‘t have a lot of rowdiness or car-scratching or vandalism, and the trash that is left on the doorsteps tends to get disposed of rather quickly. As I said, it‘s pretty much a perfect world.

So what are we doing to stop this? Sorry, I can‘t give out that information. Rest assured, however, we are narrowing our suspects.

But just as an aside, I‘d like to offer a token of redemption to the thief: 610-430-1172. That‘s the Daily Local's circulation department‘s phone number. They‘ll be happy to help.

Paying a Debt to Pippin

This appeared on Sunday, Feb. 25, 2007

I cannot remember how cold it was, or if there was snow on the ground.

But I do remember the intense scene of a group of men and women standing in a half circle around a gravestone at the Chestnut Grove Annex Cemetery.

The date was Feb. 22, 1988 – 19 years ago last Thursday – and the occasion was a remembrance ceremony for Horace Pippin, the respected and acclaimed artist who was born in West Chester 100 years ago to that date, and who made his home here after the seeing the end of World War I, returning back to the nation that enslaved his grandparents and treated those of his race with distain.

I was not attending as participant in the ceremony, anymore than I would have for any event that I covered for the Daily Local News in my quarter century here. I was there as an observer, with pen and reporter’s notebook in hand. But the moment has stayed with me for all this time.

The event had been organized by the Chester County Historical Society and some of Pippin’s peers as a way to atone for the neglect that had been shown him during this life, and at the time of his death from a heart attack in 1946. A man named John Halstead, president of the historical society at the time, noted how a contemporary of Pippin’s had noticed the lack of representation by the West Chester community at his funeral. Halstead spoke of a redressing of that grievance.

Here’s part of what I wrote:

“To the Rev. Earl D. Trent Jr. of West Chester, the event served as “a tax, a debt of respect and honor to Horace Pippin.

“ ‘The fact that it came on the centennial of his birth is merely coincidence,’ said Trent, pastor of St. Paul’s Baptist Church, where Pippin worshipped and taught choir. ‘The age does not matter. It is due him.’ ”

Pippin was a self-taught artist whose work showed the lives of black men and women in their daily lives in the flat, linear style that became known as primitive. He also painted scenes from the Bible and American history that cast a forceful light on the racial injustice that his country allowed at the time. His paintings toured the country as part of a Museum of Modern Art traveling show. He sold dozens of paintings to collectors and museums across the country.

And he was a good man, working within the black community of West Chester to better young lives.

But the larger community in his home town apparently did not pay him the respect he earned elsewhere. Two days after he died at his home on West Gay Street, the Daily Local News seemed more interested in noting that Charles Lukens Huston, “Steel Pioneer,” had his 90th birthday.

I went looking for his gravesite on Thursday but the frozen snow kept me from finding it, even though in my mind’s eye I could see it clearly. And I remembered, too, what one of Pippin’s contemporaries, Warren H. Burton, told me.

“In his quiet and gentle manner, he was an integral part of this community,” concluded Burton.

Chestnut Grove Annex Cemetery is just north of West Chester on Route 100. Maybe when the snow clears, we might stop by and put down another payment on our debt to him.