A Lesson Learned the Hard Way

Being a “rookie” reporter, and a freelancer at that there are a couple of things I’ve learned already.

First of all being a writer in a small community such as this one, is not going to make me rich!

As a freelancer, I get paid per article, and as the “City Stringer” I get paid a little extra.

My point though is not that I’m poor, but that one needs to realize if this is a path they intend to follow, they must be doing it for the love of the job, and not the bank account.

I do love the job, and I particularly enjoy the “one on one” interviews I do with folks.

The stories on Wally Kautz, Bill Martin, and Paul Gleason were published as part of the papers weekly series called “Personality of the Week”.

The premise behind the series is that we locate folks in the community who are exceptional for what they have done to serve the public.

Wally Kautz was my first POW, and I fell in love with this sweet little old man in just a matter of seconds. I think that a portion of that came from a reminder of my favorite uncle. Wally is a life long bachelor, like my uncle, he lived on the family farm, like my uncle, and he took care of his ill and aging mother until her passing, like my uncle.

Now actually that is where the similarity stops, but it was enough for me.

I spent 2 hours with Wally, and we talked about everything that had ever happened in his life.

He’s above 70 years old, has seen a lot of things, done a lot of things, and I couldn’t put even half of it in the story.

And even though I did leave out a lot of details about the man, the piece ended up being 1800 words, and resulted in a “friendly” battle of wills between my editor and I.

My editor is a good man, an excellent writer, and has an understanding of what a story should be in order to it make a “good read”.

I knew that I had written the piece with my heart, and after a few emails between my editor and myself, I also knew that what I had written was not what he had expected from me.

Begrudgingly I took the electronic scissors to the piece, and effectively cut the heart out of it, and submitted it back to the editor. I more or less told him I wasn’t happy to do it, but if that was what he wanted, that was what I would give him.

He emailed me back and said that my cuts had taken away from the story, and that he was going to let the publisher decide. He sent her I believe three versions of the piece; the original 1800 words, then 1500 words, and the last one of about a thousand.

In the end, the largest piece was the one that got printed, and when he emailed me about it, he said that while we had broken most of the rules of a good reporter, he was not unhappy that it happened that way.

But I learned a lesson; beware of getting emotionally involved with your subjects. Writing with Heart, and writing with your heart are really two different things.

And, even after having said that, with a tweak of a smile on my face, I sit here and write to you, that I am not sorry the Wally story went the direction it did. He’s a sweet little man, and I feel like he deserved to have his life and memories memorialized.