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If, after completing your journey through this edition of the Niagara Falls Reporter, you find that it doesn't quite measure up to the lofty standards readers have come to expect from the city's only locally owned newspaper, don't point the finger at us.
Blame CNN.
You see, Reporter Editor-in-Chief Mike Hudson and I spent the working hours of Thursday -- normally prime information-gathering time in our rigid weekly schedule -- waiting for a promised call from a CNN reporter.
A call that never came.
The saga of the Reporter's near-brush with national television started Tuesday, when a producer for the nation's first 24-hour cable news channel left a message for Mike at the office.
With his characteristic promptness, Mike calls the producer, Ted Winter, back. On Wednesday. Seems ABC's "Good Morning America" had run a piece on Niagara County's infamous misuse of its tobacco settlement money, first chronicled nationally in the October, 2001 edition of the "Reader's Digest," and CNN now wanted to do one too.
Lacking a recent terrorist threat, missing Congressional intern or celebrity murder case to speculate endlessly upon, thereby filling its broadcast day cheaply and easily, CNN had apparently decided to lumber back out into the field and perform some journalism for a segment to air on "NewsNight with Aaron Brown."
Initial research had led them to the Reporter's Web site. Winter's conversation with Mike leads him to ask if he'll do an on-camera interview, "just like we're talking now."
Mike agrees.
Since the process will involve meeting the CNN crew in Lockport and taking them to the county-owned golf course to see the $700,000 sprinkler system purchased with tobacco settlement money, Mike asks me to come along. Theoretically, this is because I'm the Reporter's sports editor. In reality, I think he's afraid of getting lost and winding up in Hartland. I agree to put off the other work slated for Thursday.
After all, this is CNN.
A few hours later, a CNN reporter calls Mike and asks him most of the same questions Winter had. After that, she says she's interviewing some county officials in Lockport in the morning, and will call Mike when she's done -- probably by 11 a.m.
Mike offers to put her in touch with some people who can provide additional insight on the tobacco fiasco, like County Legislator Renae Kimble and state Sen. George Maziarz.
"That'll be great," she says. "I'm really looking forward to it."
So are we.
After turning in early and getting a good night's sleep, I arrive at Mike's luxurious apartment at 10 a.m., just in case things are running ahead of schedule. Foolish notion, as it turns out.
And the waiting begins.
10-11:15 a.m.: Giddy as a couple of schoolgirls, we review the history of the tobacco settlement. There's the County Legislature's decision to grab $42 million up front, rather than receive more than $100 million over 25 years. The bizarre legal interpretation that helps legislators convince themselves that they have to spend all the money as fast as possible (but supposedly forbids them from spending a dime on anything related to health care).
And, of course, the decision to completely exclude the city of Niagara Falls from the windfall, save for a few, in Kimble's words, "raggedy old trucks."
11:15-11:21 a.m.: We chuckle over the prospect of certain management types at the daily newspaper in town seeing one or both of us interviewed on CNN.
11:21 a.m.: "What time is it, anyway?" Mike asks, his face showing early-stage consternation.
I tell him, then using my cell phone to keep Mike's line free, call the office to check for messages.
No messages from CNN.
"They're probably just running late," I offer.
11:31 a.m.: Reporter Senior Editor Rebecca Day departs for a series of errands, and wishes us luck.
11:44 a.m.: We decide maybe we should call Winter in New York and make sure there was no confusion over times, dates or who should call whom. Mike leaves voice mail messages on Winter's work and cell phones.
11:52 a.m.: "If this were anybody but CNN, I'd say 'To hell with it,' and go have lunch," Mike says, the first trace of annoyance slipping into his voice. "But we told our moms."
It's true. We had. No blowing it off now.
11:53 a.m.: Mike's fridge is all but empty, save for a six-pack of beer. He offers one. Being the superstitious type, I figure that opening one will trigger an immediate phone call.
It doesn't.
12 noon: We watch CNN's coverage of the trapped miners in Pennsylvania. Maybe the reporter was diverted to cover the breaking story, and forgot to call us.
12:14 p.m.: I call the office again. Reporter Publisher Bruce Battaglia answers and says there are no messages.
Bruce then offers some motherly advice.
"Don't get your hopes up," he says. "You'll just get disappointed."
"Our hopes aren't up," I lie, and snap my cell phone shut.
12:25 p.m.: Another brainstorm. Let's call the office of county Treasurer David Broderick, one of the reporter's scheduled morning interviews. At least we'll know if the CNN crew made it or not.
Mike makes the call, and a secretary tells him, "They just left."
Surely, The Call is only moments away.
12:54 p.m.: "Maybe they broke for lunch," Mike says, handing me another Icehouse. "Seems like they would have at least called, though."
I check the messages at the office again. Still nothing.
12:58 p.m.: I run out of smokes. Since I don't want to cause any further delay, should the reporter phone while I'm off to the store replenishing my supplies, I start smoking Mike's. Since we favor very different brands, this only adds to our mutual aggravation level.
1:03 p.m.: Unable to bear the constant reminder anymore, we flip away from CNN.
1:05-2 p.m.: We land on "The Ricki Lake Show." Today's topic: Women who refuse to wear a traditional female undergarment in public, despite the urging of family members and, in most cases, an obvious aesthetic need to do so.
Unfortunately, from the slobbering male perspective, Lake's exploration of this vital issue turns out to be more freak show than skin show.
Still, sadly, this will prove the highlight of our day.
2 p.m.: Again hoping to trigger a call with some form of distraction, I flip on Mike's computer to get in a few games of Strat-O-Matic Baseball.
(Warning: The sports-dork factor gets pretty intense here.)
I've had a team in a 24-team play-by-email league for the past four seasons. The Love Canal Possum, composed of major leaguers whose effectiveness is based on their real-life performance from the previous season, are muddling through the first non-contending season of their existence.
But it's better than sitting around, waiting for the damn phone to ring.
2:20 p.m.: The Icehouse is beginning to eat away at the lining of my still-empty stomach. How can he drink this stuff, I wonder. And I'm also out of Rolaids.
The cursing ratio, always fairly high when Reporter staffers gather, skyrockets.
2:28 p.m.: Normally reliable Possum closer Robb Nen blows a two-run lead in the ninth. Though Love Canal rallies for the win in the bottom of the inning, I excoriate Mike, the Possum's bullpen coach.
"Don't blame me," Mike responds. "Blame (expletive deleted) CNN."
I do.
2:31 p.m.: Day returns after a trip to the library and several stores.
"You guys are still here?" She queries with surprise.
Yes, Rebecca. Yes, we are.
2:42 p.m.: Mike leafs through the stack of books Rebecca brought from the library. One is a history of muckraking journalism, citing dozens of instances throughout American history when a media outlet righted a wrong or changed the course of events.
"Not one mention of CNN," I point out after examining the book's table of contents.
2:47 p.m.: We discuss proclaiming Fox News Network the official 24-hour cable news network of the Niagara Falls Reporter in this week's edition if somebody from CNN doesn't call us pretty quick.
Then we remember that Fox's lineup consists largely of right-wing nutjobs still blaming everything on Bill Clinton while shamelessly continuing to capitalize on Sept. 11. (Editor's note: This, of course, doesn't apply to Fox's local affiliates, which are staffed by the likes of our own Peabody Award winner, Bill Gallagher).
We briefly consider MSNBC, until recalling that the MS stands for Microsoft.
So we decide not to endorse at all.
3:13 p.m.: My stomach is a heaving pit of acid. The cell phone battery is dying. Thankfully, Rebecca picked up another six-pack on her rounds, but we've completed the trek from nervously eager to agitated to downright surly.
"If we don't get a call by 4, I'm taking the phone off the hook and taking a nap," Mike fairly spits.
3:40 p.m.: Mike again phones Winter, who hasn't returned either message. The alleged producer says the reporter left a message on our office machine "early in the morning," canceling our interview due to time constraints, or some such.
But, as mentioned above, we've been checking our messages. And she also had Mike's home number and my cell number.
At least she didn't say her dog ate the list of numbers.
On Friday, we took some solace after learning that on Thursday, while we were waiting, the stock of AOL/Time-Warner, CNN's parent company, hit an all-time low and the Securities and Exchange Commission launched an investigation into the company's accounting practices.
Maybe everybody at the CNN offices was too busy shredding documents to give us a call. As for the tobacco settlement story, the only interviews we know CNN conducted were with Broderick, and Kimble, whom Mike directed to barge into Broderick's office. CNN didn't talk to Maziarz, who has been the elected official most critical of the county's foolishness.
As irritated as we were with wasting a day sitting around at Mike's apartment when we could have been sitting around somewhere else, the biggest loss was to CNN and its viewers.
People wonder how the likes of the county Legislature thinks it can get away with blowing $42 million that was supposed to go toward health care, then jacking up taxes by 20 percent while bitching about the cost of health care. A big reason is because the decision-makers believe they operate in a vacuum, knowing that few people pay any attention to what goes on up here. If CNN only presented the county's bizarre spin on the topic, a huge opportunity to shed a little light on the cockroaches was missed.
The segment was scheduled to air Monday at 10 p.m., after this edition goes to press but before it hits the streets.
We hope it was good.
We'd like to think it could have been better.
Sorry, Mom. You too, Mrs. Hudson.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 30 2002 |