Tag: A Sewer Named Sugar

The Debacle

The first series I wrote after I became a full-time investigative reporter, in 1969, was successful.  It was called “A Sewer Named Sugar” and it exposed polluters of a creek that ran though the most popular park in Charlotte and then south, through its wealthiest neighborhoods.

The Sugar Creek series won some prizes, including the top prize for Public Service from N.C. Press Association, and it got me my first invitation to speak about my work, at what was then known as Queens College.

I didn’t prepare a talk, no need to. It was just class of students and I knew that creek story pretty well — I had just finished reporting it. I’d wing it, answer a few questions, and go back to work.

Well, turns out, it wasn’t a just class of students, it was an auditorium full of students. It was a symposium, and I wasn’t the only speaker. I was just the only one who was not prepared.

I embarrassed myself. If someone had had a hook to pull me off the stage no doubt they would have used it. I was more than embarrassed, I was humiliated.

In the years that followed I got many more opportunities to talk about my work, at more than a dozen universities and a number of journalism conferences.  Each and every time I was invited to speak I thought about that Queens College debacle.  And I made up my mind –when I finished talking the worst thing anyone was ever going to say about me was this:

“Well, he won’t very good but he sure was prepared.”

Coming Monday: The Embezzler

Censored

The businessman, whose company was a polluter, asked me, “Is that your typewriter I hear? Are you typing down what I say?”

I said I was.

And he said, “That’s unethical!”

Huh?

Working late at The Charlotte News. Putting in extra hours became a lifelong habit, to my benefit and detriment.
Working late at The Charlotte News. Putting in extra hours became a lifelong habit, to my benefit and detriment.

I was working on a story we called “A Sewer Named Sugar,”  about companies that were polluting Sugar Creek, a creek that runs through the heart of Charlotte and through its most popular park.

I had waded and walked the creek for more than 15 miles, from its headwaters to a point south of Charlotte, along with some tributaries, and I had found a number of polluters. Now I was trying to interview them.

I said to the man, “I told you my name; I spelled my name; I told you I was a reporter, that I worked for The Charlotte News; I told you why I called you, that I was working on a story about polluters; and I told you I wanted to ask you some questions.”

But he said he was done talking and he hung up.  I waited, and I didn’t have to wait long.

The guy I was interviewing was the son-in-law  of a top executive at my paper.  A few minutes later I saw that executive get off the elevator and walked straight into the editor’s office.

I have no idea what he and Perry Morgan, the boss of The Charlotte News, talked about. I wasn’t there.

I do know Perry did not allow me to name that man’s business, or quote him. I could only identify it as a “heavy industry” and the general location.

That was bad, but it got worse.

The newspaper I worked for was also polluting the creek. The News dumped chemical solutions used to develop film into a storm drain that eventually drained into Sugar Creek.

I was not allowed to name my paper either.  Perry told me, “Now you’ve gone too far!”

Postscript: Nothing, and I mean nothing, like that ever happened to me in the 37 years I worked for The New & Observer in Raleigh.  If I could find it and prove it  The N&O would publish it.  No one and no thing was off limits.

Coming Friday: Navy Propaganda