The Weatherman (7 page)

“These computers also access our public libraries, and the libraries of some of the leading newspapers and magazines in the country. When I worked at the Star Tribune I could write a lengthy feature without leaving my desk. Just a telephone and a computer. But this is television and we need pretty pictures, so follow me.”

Rick Beanblossom led the new intern to the front of a hustling, bustling television news-gathering operation in which Clancy Communications had recently invested a great deal of money. The silver carpeting was new and plush. The frosty paint on the walls was fresh. Big round clocks showing different time zones around the world had been fastened to an overhead beam, and nobody in the newsroom had the faintest idea if they were accurate-but boy, did they look good. New computers had been installed. Television monitors on every desk were top-of-the-line Sonys. Second-rate wages; first-rate hardware.

It was noisy. He talked into her ear. “These desks in front of the assignment desk are for the show producers. The directors work in that cube station next to them. The reporters and field producers are scattered along the walls. Management offices are back in that glassy comer that looks like a funeral parlor-and often is.” “Is that Andrea Labore over there?” “No. That’s Andrea the Bore. Every time she anchors we have to lose a story because she reads so damn slow.” An old man came their way, a sturdy old man with a proud gait and a bald head. His suit was crumpled and worn. In his arm was a file filled with papers. He had a friendly face, red and puffy. He stopped to chat, wheezing a little. “Hi, Rick-new friend?”

“Andy Mack,” Rick said, “this is Stephanie. She’s a new intern from some place called Des Moines.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of that place. Welcome to America.”

“Hi, Andy. Thank you.”

“Andy is the Arthur Godfrey of local television,” Rick told her.

“Who’s Arthur Godfrey?” she asked.

“Sorry, Andy. Speech comm major.”

“Say, Rick, I pulled this off the wire.” The old man rifled through his papers, softly huffing and puffing, early signs of a breathing problem. “Here it is. Police in Racine, Wisconsin, arrested a man for attempted child abduction. He’s heavyset and had a gun. The
FBI
is running a check on the gun to see if it could have fired the Wakefield bullet.”

Rick examined the report. “Thanks, Andy.” They moved along.

“He’s a nice man.”

“Yes, he is … until he gets a few drinks in him.”

“What does he do here?”

“Everything and nothing. He used to be the weatherman.”

“Are you still working on the Wakefield case?”

“Until he’s found. I don’t know what you read in Iowa, but in this state that boy’s kidnapping is as big as the Lindbergh kidnapping.” He moved her over to the wall. “This printer here is the script feed from the network. The network sends our tape room two ninety-minute feeds every day-stories from around the world complete with pictures and words. At the same time all the network affiliates are feeding stories to them in New York. That’s why it’s called a network. Understand?”

“I think so.”

They moved in front of a long desk high on a platform. An open box of Oreos lay atop the counter. “Have a cookie.” Rick handed one to Stephanie and popped another into his mouth. “Good morning, Gayle. Any white trash from overnight?”

Gayle had a telephone to her ear, a cookie to her mouth. She was on hold. “Just a fire and a stabbing.” “Did we get tape?”

“Nothing we can use. No flames, and the stabbing victim lived. You know me-no carnage, no coverage.”

“This is the assignment desk. And this is Gayle, our assignment editor. In this business, she’s the best. I brought her with me when I jumped ship. We call her the Ghoul. Gayle, this is Stephanie, a new intern. Do you have time for the two-minute tour?”

Gayle hung up the phone. She was a tall woman, twenty-seven years old, and not physically attractive; her beauty was her vibrant personality and her sharp wit. She balanced fashionable glasses on a beakish nose. “Hi, Stephanie. This is where stories start. That’s the dispatch shack behind me. You might want to work in there when your internship is over, but if you’ve got a weak stomach I wouldn’t suggest it. Every tragedy in the seven-county metropolitan area is beamed into your ears. The psychological damage can be irreversible, and you can make more money at Kentucky Fried Chicken. These phones ring off the hook all day long. Besides our own people calling in, people call in with news tips, most of which aren’t worth a piece of typing paper. Viewers call in with complaints, and at least two or three lunatics call the station every day. Sound concerned and get rid of them.” The phone on the desk rang. Gayle answered. “Assignment desk.

“We’ll call them right away. Thank you.” Gayle hung up. “The mail is brought here in buckets every day. That’s part of your job. Every organization and corporation in the Midwest, every clown with a gripe wants us to come and do a story on them. Interns open the mail and sort it, usually by date. Then it goes into a daybook so we know what’s going on every day of the week. Here’s today’s book.” She held up a yellow folder two inches thick. “Slow news day,” she said. ‘That’s the assignment board behind me. Think of it as a company picnic and that’s the list of what everybody has to bring. Stories in red ink are live shots.” The phone rang again. Gayle was back at it.

Rick Beanblossom took over, pointing up at the assignments. “Reading down the board … Beth is doing a story on illegal contractors trying to make a quick buck off homeowners hit by the tornado … I see Andrea has found some puppy dogs that survived the storm … the

National Weather Service is holding another press conference to further explain their ineptitude … and a photog is shooting the billboard story.”

“What’s the billboard story?”

“Some joker is running around town defacing billboards with a splat gun.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I think it’s his not-so-subtle way of protesting the uglification of Minnesota. He hit a Channel 7 billboard last week. Personally, I thought our anchors looked better with fluorescent orange hair.”

“And what are you doing today?”

“Among other things, I’m writing a follow-up on the parking-ramp murder. We’ll use existing tape and one of the anchors will read it.”

“Do you like working on a murder story?”

“When I first started in news, murder here was a big deal. Not anymore.”

“What changed things?”

“Guns and drugs, mostly. I wrote a story once about how we rented prison space to other states. We were smarter, not tougher. Now we have a homicide every other day and I’m writing stories about overcrowded jails.”

“Why is this murder getting so much attention?”

“The victim was a white woman. A middle-class professional just going about her business. Murdered in the middle of the day in the middle of downtown on the way to her car. Police suspect it’s a stranger-to-stranger homicide, and that’s still rare here. Most people are murdered by someone they know. The old this-type-of-thing-ain’t-supposed-to-happen-here story.”

“Is everybody in the newsroom so cynical?”

“Stephanie, if you really want to hear criticism of television news, listen to the people who work here. Every day someone sticks their finger down their throat over something they have to write. Follow me, I’ll show you the edit rooms.”

Andrea Kay Labore had the prettiest face in Minnesota, long and narrow, almost skeletal, with sharp features and soft skin that tanned well. But it was her eyes that made the face. They were big, brown, and outrageously beautiful-the kind of bedroom eyes that made men fell in love, even men who only saw her on television. Her hair was bold brunette, so rich in texture she could wear it long or short, or pull it behind her ears and put a rubber band in it-didn’t matter, it always fell from her head like on a television commercial.

At the same time Rick Beanblossom was showing a new intern the edit rooms, Andrea Labore found herself with her own intern to educate.

“Hi, I’m Jeff. I’m beginning my internship today and I was told I’d be going out with you-I mean, working with you-today. Sorry.” He was tall, boyish-looking. He’d need another ten years of aging before viewers would accept him as a reporter. He was nervous as hell. Andrea popped a pair of pills into her mouth and chased them with a Diet Coke. She choked on his introduction. “Oh, okay. My name is Andrea.” She stood and shook his hand. “I do have a story to shoot later, but I’ve been filling in at anchor. Charleen just had a baby.” “I’ve been watching you. On TV, I mean.” “That’s nice to hear. I’ll show you around a little before we go out on our shoot.”

Among the new hires Clancy Communications brought to Channel 7 had been Andrea Labore, a slender, athletic young woman, just a few pounds short of skinny. She escaped by an inch being tagged flat. It was the kind of figure fashion loved, and Andrea loved fashion. Every two weeks clothes ate up half her paycheck. Some weeks her wardrobe pocketed the whole thing. This was her one guilt trip. She tried to justify her spending the way other women in the business did: she had to dress for television. But she worried she was only trying to dress up a modest upbringing.

Andrea was born and raised on Minnesota’s Iron Range, where ice hockey rules, where people still talk about that strange Zimmerman boy who ran off to New York City and changed his name to Bob Dylan. Life on the range is rough, the future bleak. When America’s auto and steel industries went into decline, Northern Minnesota’s economy collapsed. Iron ore stayed in the ground. Iron men lost their jobs. A pit of despair in an otherwise prosperous state.

Come winter on the range Andrea didn’t go outdoors for the freezing sports. Swimming was her thing. Swimming was the best exercise known to woman. Gliding unimpeded through water shaped her body and mind in a way that became near-spiritual to her, as if she had been baptized in a pool of chlorine. She won a combination academic/athletic scholarship to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and like many of its young people Andrea Labore left the Iron Range, never to return.

Unsure of what she wanted to do with her life, she considered majoring in journalism until a professor she trusted convinced her that journalism school was a waste of time. “Get a good liberal arts education,” he told her. “You’ll be much more valuable to a newsroom.” She graduated with honors, earning a bachelor’s degree in political science with a minor in English literature. She picked up a teaching certificate for good measure.

But it wasn’t a career in news, education, or politics Andrea chose upon graduating. About the time the brown-eyed beauty from the Iron Range was being handed her diploma, the city of Minneapolis hired a new and progressive police chief to upgrade its aging and conservative police force. This new chief made the recruitment of women and minorities a high priority. Andrea joined up, winning a top spot in the chief’s first graduating class. With a badge, a blue uniform, and a gun she went to work in a squad car patrolling the high-crime district of North Minneapolis.

One night in late autumn when the leaves are off the trees and the Minnesota air is bitter with frost, Andrea Labore shot and killed a man. She’d been a cop less than two years. On a routine burglary call she stepped from her squad, drew her service revolver, and ordered the suspect to freeze. He pointed a gun at her. She squeezed the trigger, just once. Once was all it took. The suspect collapsed in the sodden leaves along the gutter. He was pronounced dead on arrival at North Memorial Hospital.

Internal affairs ruled the shooting justified. The chief of police pinned a medal to her uniform. The local media made much of the beautiful and courageous policewoman. But the shooting wouldn’t go away, and four months later Andrea Labore resigned. With the money she’d saved she enrolled in Northwestern University’s prestigious Medill School of Journalism.

As a rule, large-market stations require small-market experience: Fargo, Duluth, Green Bay, places like that. Andrea was fortunate. She was exactly the type of reporter Clancy was looking for when they bought into the Upper Midwest market.

Andrea walked the nervous young intern up to the news set. It’s what all visitors want to see when they tour the newsroom. The studio lights being off gave the set a dull, shadowy appearance, unlike the bright, glitzy set viewers saw at home. “This is where I sit when I anchor.”

“It’s a different view from up here.”

“That’s the control room over there, and the weather center is behind those computer gadgets.”

As she spoke those words, the Weatherman passed in front of those gadgets. He stopped, charts in hand, and punched some pertinent numbers into a character generator. He kept his back to them. They said nothing. Then he disappeared behind the set, his head in a cloud.

“Was that him?” Jeff asked, knowing the answer.

“Yes, that was him. I’d introduce you, but he’s been kind of quiet since the tornado. The pilot and photographer killed were close friends of his.”

Jeff turned his attention back to the studio. “So all you have to do is look into the camera and read your script?”

“Each camera has a TelePrompTer,” Andrea explained. “The script is taped together into one long sheet, and as it rolls along a belt it’s projected onto a glass plate right in front of the camera lens, so you can read the script while staring right into the camera. The script is too close to the lens to come into focus, so people at home can’t see the lettering. There’s never more than four words per line. That’s to reduce eye movement. See this pedal on the floor? You push that to control how fast you want the script to roll by.”

“Is anchoring hard to do?”

“It is at first, but there are tricks you can learn. I’ve been told to pick up the pace a little, so I’m working with a consultant now. But my research is good.”

“You research your own stories, then?”

“Oh, no. Research is the surveys they do to see how much the audience likes you. It’s important because

Minneapolis-St. Paul is a major television market Our signal goes out to more than half of Minnesota, plus western Wisconsin. Some people with cable or satellite dishes even watch us in North and South Dakota and Iowa. We do four shows, plus updates. We have a noon show, then in the evening we go on at five o’clock, six, and the most important show is at ten o’clock.”