Tag: The Charlotte News

A Lesson Learned

I don’t remember what Bill Veeder, the Charlotte city manager, had done, but he shouldn’t have and I needed to get a city attorney to say so.

At that time I was a young reporter, in my 20’s, working for The Charlotte News.  I started off in Charlotte covering county government and the courts and I had been promoted to the city government beat.

Veeder was an excellent city manager.  But this time he had slipped up.  I don’t remember the details but I do remember that I needed to get one of the city’s attorneys to say so.  That wasn’t going to happen, of course, they worked for Veeder.

Or was it.

I decided to present one of the city’s attorneys with a “hypothetical” situation.  And then  I described exactly what Veeder had done, without mentioning his name, of course.

The attorney commented and I had my story.

Late that afternoon when I returned to my office, in the basement of City Hall, the attorney I had tricked was waiting for me.  He was sitting in my chair, reading, or rereading, the story I had written.

“You’re a cheap son of a bitch,” he said, and then he stood up and left without another word.  I didn’t have to think about that very long before deciding he was right.

That’s not the kind of reporter I wanted to be, a trickster, and I never did anything like that again.   

NOTE: 2 Timothy 2:15 urges us to be like “…a workman that needeth not to be ashamed…”

Coming Friday: The Surefire Bet

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