AFTER DEADLINE
Good journalism makes difference, word by word

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

Every day during the past few weeks I have known that each newspaper story I was writing was one of my last, after almost 41 years as a journalist.

And as I have written those stories, I have been struck by the feeling of what a privilege it is to be a reporter, and to have been a reporter in Hawai'i for more than 26 years, at the largest and oldest of the state's newspapers.

There has been frustration, as in any job. Danger, too. Getting shot at. Carrying dynamite from a terrorist's cache.

But from my first day at The Walnut Creek Sun in 1962, to this, my last month at The Advertiser, I have loved the stories I was writing, and been fascinated by the people and events in them.

As I get ready to retire, I realize even more how much I enjoy the work, and how rich it is in variety, curiosity and excitement.

It is richer still in people. There is no place like a newspaper to find so many bright, articulate, dedicated people, dealing with exciting issues every day.

There's the daily challenge of a news assignment, to follow an emperor or an elephant through the town, to make a silk purse out of a city council meeting, to gather your own perception of reality and hold it, mull it over, find the lead, the first sentence of the story, and then lay it out, word by word.

There are only a few hundred of us in Hawai'i, entitled by luck and skill to go out and get the facts for hundreds of thousands of readers. What a profound and humbling responsibility: to be entrusted with writing about the lives, and sometimes the deaths, of other people.

And how many "real" writers are guaranteed publication, every day?

Thanks to a good union, the Newspaper Guild, and a successful owner, Gannett, we are certainly better paid, on a per-word basis, than most novelists.

The other day, as usual, I got up early and read my own story in the newspaper, read it over and over again, put it down and picked it up and read it again, like a mother cuddling her baby.

An editor had changed one word (bruised my baby), but there was a phrase intact deep in the story that made the whole thing worthwhile. The old soldiers of the 442nd/100th Battalion were remembering comrades "who were forever young," who died on the battlefield at ages 20 and 22, and never came back from war to get old and remember things.

"Forever young."

One phrase turned, that was all it took, to make the day worthwhile. Sort of like golf: one 30-foot putt curling down the green and into the cup, or a single 270-yard drive clearing the crest of the fairway ahead of everyone else's, was enough to make you forget the other 100 strokes.

And when I was at the top of my game, shooting high 60s on the journalistic links, I got Michael Christie released from prison, got the crippled son of a migrant worker into a hospital, got horrible jail conditions changed by going behind bars undercover.

In Hawai'i, I crawled through Puna's marijuana patches, climbed Mauna Kea, hurtled onto the deck of an aircraft carrier. We dug out politicians' markers in Las Vegas, THC Financial's insider deals, strong-arm union tactics. We quizzed Marcos about his millions, and tracked swindler Ronald Rewald from boardroom to bedroom.

How many stories? The electronic archives show 1,724 bylines since April 1995, or about 215 stories a year, almost one every work day. In a career? Some 215 stories times 41 years, at maybe 500 words per story: more than 4 million words.

I feel like I'm in a train racing along at 80 mph, and I've suddenly run out of track. Or like the dog that chased the car. I've caught the darned thing. What do I do with it?

Well, I think I've got a million words or so left, and I suspect they'll show up somewhere. My writing days are not over.

I've also got an architect's ruler on my desk, software in the computer, and plans to design, build or renovate some more Hawai'i houses, work that for me rivals writing for that sweet sense of being "in the zone."

"Did all that reporting make a difference?" another reporter asked me the other day.

Well, I still cherish a first-place State of California medal I won when I was 24 for writing about the Legislature.

And the other day, on the verge of 64, I got something else I cherish, from the students at Portable 16 at Waipahu Elementary School. I had done a story about their Earth Day activities.

They sent me 30 pieces of recycled paper they had made, each one with a note from a different student. "Dear Mr. Wright," one of them wrote, "thank you for coming by and writing a good, good article." (See example in Letters to the Editor).

Did it all make a difference? Yes, I think so. Every word.

Walter Wright, who is from the Big Island, has been a reporter at The Advertiser since 1976. After May 14, you may reach him at wrightw001@hawaii.rr.com or 375-8184.