I reported more than 100 stories for The News & Observer about state government mismanagement and waste and there was nothing special about this one. I’m not going to tell you about the mistakes I discovered, I’m not even going to say which government program I’m talking about for reasons that will be apparent in a moment.
None of that matters: this post is about what happened years later.
After I reported the story the administration changed and the program director was fired. A few months later, I ran into him at the Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh.
We stopped and said hello. We talked a few minutes about this and that and I decided to give him some information I knew he would want: his name had been on an “enemies list” created by the new administration. And that was that. I don’t think I ever saw him again.
Years later, I got a telephone call from a woman who told me her name and asked if I recognized it.
I didn’t.
Then she gave me the name of the man who had lost his job and asked if I remembered him and I said I did.
“He’s my husband, or was my husband,” she said. “We’re not together now. But you did him a favor once, and now I’m going to do you a favor.”
She gave me a good story, and she kept on giving.
This woman was a middle level manager in a state agency, high enough to meet from time to time with the boss. And what she didn’t hear directly she heard indirectly from friends who worked there. One way or another she was privy to almost every decision management made — and who benefited.
Over the next few years she tipped me on a dozen stories, to the public’s great benefit. To my benefit too.
Coming Friday: How Come It’s Still Dark?
