Ken gently placed his hand on Jim’s shoulder. “I know this must have stirred up some powerful emotions. As long as you are sure you want to do this, then that’s what we’ll do.”
“I’m sure.”
Ken made a few corrections and passed the story along to Mike.
When Jim was finally ready to leave the office, he was emotionally drained. He carried his box under his left arm and said goodbye to a few people as he walked toward the back of the newsroom. As he left, reporters and editors alike rose from their desks and began applauding. Jim was somewhat surprised by the gesture and simply smiled as he gave a two-fingered salute and left the building.
The next morning, many of Jim Mitchell’s faithful readers were surprised when they turned to the editorial page of the Southern California Courier and read the following column:
MY LIFE ABOVE THE FOLD
By Jim Mitchell
I know many of you have wanted to ask me something that has been bugging you for months.
Why the change?
Why did I shift my cynical eye from scandal and corruption to ironic slice-of-life? Why do I write about getting stupid catalogs in the mail rather than skewer stupid politicians?
Why did I go from being a roaring lion to a de-clawed housecat? Many have asked me that very question, but I haven’t given them an answer.
I wish that answer was simple or easy, but it’s not. The reason I retired my muckraker’s hat for a court jester’s cap is because as a hard-nosed reporter I crossed the line, and for a while I forgot what it meant to be a real person. Let me explain.
By now you’ve heard about the death of Gerald Hartley, a.k.a. Jeremiah Harmon. It’s on the front page of today’s Courier, all over the Internet and every local and cable news channel covered his sensational death at Emerald Valley City Hall yesterday afternoon.
As you remember, the police considered him the main suspect in the New Creation Community cult mass murder last Christmas. The Courier’s coverage of the tragedy was extensive and I was intimately involved in the reporting on that event. Setting aside my columnist hat, I teamed up with my colleagues here at the Courier and became a regular reporter again. I talked to officials and family members and reported on every new detail. I was at the news conferences, the briefings, and the memorial service. I helped to bring it to you in vivid color and with sharp detail.
A spike in newspaper sales and web hits showed people consumed the coverage like ravenous wolves. Other reporters liked it too. My colleague, Melissa Jenkins, and I won award after award for our work together.
Then the big one came. When we won the Pulitzer, journalism’s biggest award, we were jumping for joy. We got the award people wait a lifetime to win. It was the best time of our lives.
But you know all that. Let me tell you what you don’t know. To earn all those awards and praise, I lost someone very close to me—Vince Salucci.
Some of you may recognize the name. He was one of the 28 people who ended their lives upon the orders of a crazed man.
Vince was also my cousin.
He was a good guy who got mixed up with the wrong crowd, and it cost him his life. When I went to the memorial service, I was a reporter and a mourner.
The reason I am so mad about his death is because it was preventable. I could have helped him leave the group, but I was more concerned about whether my story would be placed above the fold in your paper or on the front page of the Courier website than whether my cousin was safe or not. I thought I could give fair coverage to what was happening. And I chose to hide my connection to Vince so I could continue to ride the adrenaline high that comes with covering a breaking story.
A few of those who knew about this situation have accused me of violating my journalistic integrity. And this newspaper rightly admonished me for my breach of ethics.
But my other crime was far worse. I threw away my integrity as a human being. I let my cousin go to his death because I cared more about my reputation than his life. I wanted the fame and glory that comes with having people read my every word. Now, many of my colleagues have written plenty of stories that are placed above the fold in this and other papers. But my obsession with living life “above the fold” caused me, for a time, to forget what was important in this world. I let my ego blind me to the danger my cousin was in and the guilt that weighs down my soul is penance for this offense.
This is not the column I had intended to write for today. You see: I am leaving the Courier to go into teaching. I had planned to say good-bye and ride off into the proverbial sunset.
In a way, I am saying good-bye. I am bidding farewell to a man who made some mistakes in his short life, one of which was being too trusting. That error cost him his life.
He was good man, who, like more than two dozen other people, was a lost sheep who relied on a disguised wolf to lead him to safety.
I will always remember Vince as a happy soul with a crazy but harmless plan in his head and a gleam in his eye.
I miss that gleam.
Jim Mitchell leaves the Courier after nine years of dedicated service. We’ll miss you, Jim.
28
1:55 p.m. Tuesday, December 1
The transition from the newsroom to the lecture hall had not been as difficult as Jim had feared. He enjoyed working with the students both in the classroom and at the student paper, the Foothill Free-Press. And as he grew in his relationship with God, he discovered he needed to be honest with the students about his own mistakes and ego problems in the hope they could learn from the errors of his past. It had been nearly a year since Jeremiah Harmon had led those 28 people to an early grave, and he knew it was time to talk about the event that changed his life forever.
He was afraid he could not tell the story without breaking down in tears. I have already cried my tears over Vince’s death. I’m not opening those wounds again. Not in front of a class filled with college students who barely know me. Having gone back and forth on the issue, Jim decided to tell the whole story during his Media Ethics class and live with the consequences. If he cried, then he cried. He had written about this in his last column for the Courier earlier in the year, but as far as these students knew, he was a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter who could do little wrong. He needed to warn them of the potential consequences pride and ego can have on one’s life.
As his 19 students entered the classroom on the Tuesday afternoon, Jim reflected on what they had learned over the course of the last four months. They had spent the semester doing much more than reading from textbooks. Along with a couple of field trips to local papers and some guest speakers, Jim highlighted many real-life case studies to help the students understand that journalistic ethics was not an oxymoron. And since it was a Christian college, he and the students often talked about what it was like to be a believer in an industry filled with critics and cynics.
For most of the starry-eyed students, visions of corruption and scandal filled their daydreams. It was their mission in life to catch the mayor in a bribery scandal, discover the local manufacturing plant was polluting the environment, or write a front-page story that would change the world. Jim had been trying to beat these notions out of them the entire semester. “For every Bob Woodward, there are a hundred Jimmy Olsens,” he said on the first day of class. Then he realized probably none of his students knew of the famous Washington Post reporter or the fictional character from the Superman movies and TV shows. He spent several minutes that day explaining how Woodward, along with partner Carl Bernstein, exposed the Watergate scandal and helped bring down the Nixon presidency.
“Oh yeah. I read about that in my U.S. history class last spring.”
I grew up with my father praising these two men for bravely exposing corruption in the halls of power. He called them heroes, Jim thought to himself. It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with journalism. I thought I could make the world better, too. I guess I was just as idealistic as these students here today.
For the final exam, he was thinking about
bringing in All The Presidents’ Men in for the class to watch. He warned them about the foul language, but he figured the dialogue wouldn’t faze the students very much. They’ll probably watch the movie like I look at a film from the 1930s and joke about the hairstyles and the clothes.
He realized his students viewed anything that happened in the 1970s like I had looked at the Kennedy assassination, Jim realized. JFK died before I was born so I thought it was ancient history. But right before their eyes, my parents watched Walter Cronkite fight back his emotions as he told them their president had just died. They were same way about watching the 37th President of the United States climb into Marine One and wave good-bye to the American people in August of 1974. To me, these are the stories of my childhood. To these kids, it’s just a couple of paragraphs in a textbook.
Jim hoped the film would make the students realize investigative journalism was more than what was mass-produced by the major TV newsmagazines. He prayed the message would leave an impression with most of the students.
Focusing his thoughts back on the present, the last couple of students sat down and began chatting with friends they had made over the last few months.
To get their attention, the 33-year-old assistant professor loosened his tie as he walked out from behind the lectern and perched himself on the front of a nearby desk. He looked almost like a parochial school boy sitting on a boat dock, but a few small wrinkles hinted at his real age.
“You all were assigned to read chapter 15 in the Gunderson text on making tough ethical decisions. Now, while I could give you a 5-point, decision-making model, I thought it might be more effective to make my case with a story.” Jim paused. “Don’t worry. This story will be entertaining, I promise.
“But don’t think for a moment what I have to say isn’t important, because it is. As a matter of fact, this will be the most important lecture I have ever given to you. If you forget everything I have said all year, remember what I say today.”
He began by passing around the framed Pulitzer Prize certificate. Many students stared at the award for several seconds, whispering to their neighbor before passing it along. When it reached Aaron Bentz, he raised his hand.
“Yes, Aaron?”
“Is this what I think it is, Professor Mitchell?” he asked. “I mean, is it the real thing?”
“Yes, it the ‘real thing’.” Jim was not surprised Aaron was the one to say something. He knew Aaron dreamed of receiving a Pulitzer himself someday.
“There must be an incredible story behind this.” The shock in Aaron’s voice was crystal clear. “Are we going to get to hear your ‘war story’?”
“Yes, actually. That’s what we’re going to be focusing on today. My ‘war story’. I suspect you will be at least mildly entertained by it. But when I’m finished I will want you to ask yourselves one question: ‘Was it worth it?’ Because in order for me to win that award, 28 people had to die. And I still wonder to this day if I helped to kill them.”
For the next hour and 15 minutes, the students sat transfixed as Jim shared with them what happened. As visual aids, he used his own stories and videotaped news coverage of the event. He also talked about his conversion to Christianity and departure from the paper to teach at the university. He spoke clearly and succinctly, pausing only for the occasional question and once to stifle back some tears.
When he ended the story, senior Jillian San Miguel asked the first question. “Professor Mitchell, are you glad you left the Courier?”
“Yes I am. I really enjoy what I am doing now. Melissa still writes for the paper so she keeps me in the loop with all the latest office news.”
“So, when’s the wedding?” Junior Gabby Anderson, news editor for the student paper, was always ready with a question.
She’ll make a great editor-in-chief for the Free-Press next year. “May 18th, which is just after the end of spring semester. We’re registered at Target and Bed, Bath and Beyond, if you want to get us something.”
As soon as their laugher died down, sophomore Eric Chang asked a question. “Do you ever plan to return to working at a newspaper?”
“Maybe, if Dr. MacKinnon ever lets me leave the department. I think he owns my soul for at least the next five years,” Jim joked.
There was a pause before junior Jordan Harrick spoke up. “So you won all around, didn’t you Professor Mitchell? I mean it was terrible all those people had to die, but you won the Pulitzer and are getting married and all that. Everything turned out pretty well, for the most part that is.”
Jim sighed. “You know, I thought that for awhile. Then I opened myself up to the truth. I had to come to terms with the fact I was justifying my lack of concern for my cousin because the articles had won so many awards. I thought that made it all right. One day God told me how wrong I was. And that’s when I wrote this.”
Jim handed out a reduced-sized copy of his last column for the Courier. The students sat silently as Jim read the article aloud.
“Wow,” Jordan said after he finished.
“You see none of the awards, even the Pulitzer, was worth trading in my integrity for a byline. It was so important to get the story first; I didn’t care who I hurt in the process. All that mattered was my name on the story.
“Now, admittedly I wasn’t a Christian at the time. And I don’t expect you will encounter a situation quite like mine. But it’s not hard to find yourself in a difficult situation. Do you try to console the confused and lonely person who wants to jump off the bridge? When critics are attacking a Christian group, do you report on both sides of the issue? When the pastor is accused of adultery, do you get his side? Do you cover the religious practices of others groups with the same reverence you give to Christians?
“Basically, you need to ask yourself this question. How am I being a living example of Christ’s love and compassion to this hurting world? If I am simply seeking my own glory, how can I do what God wants me to do? There is nothing wrong with being a good writer; it simply just can’t get in the way of being a good Christian. When you’re more concerned about your name being on the front page of the paper than what it says on the last page of Matthew’s gospel, then you’ve got a problem. And that’s where you need to make your stand for God. That’s what living the Christian life is all about whether you write for a paper or you recycle it for a living.”
“Have you done any writing since you left the Courier?” Jillian asked.
“Actually, I have. The last week I was at the paper, I made a laundry list of story ideas important to Christians that are not typically covered by the mainstream press. I took some of those ideas and turned them into stories I pitched to various Christian print and online magazines. I haven’t made a lot of money or fame, but that’s not the point any more.”
Jim looked at his watch and noticed the class time was almost up.
“If you’re walking in winter graduation in a couple weeks, it has been a pleasure having you in my class and I wish you all the best. If you’re not graduating, maybe I’ll see you next semester in one of my classes or at the paper.”
As Jim rose from the corner of the desk and was going to pick up his briefcase, Aaron spoke up. “One more question, Professor Mitchell. What does the T stand for in James T. Mitchell?”
“Trenton.”
“Trenton? You mean like the capital of New Jersey?”
Jim employed his best game-show host voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner in today’s geography quiz.” He paused. “Actually, I think something romantic happened between my Mom and Dad in the Garden State. But my mother says I was named after her rich great grandfather. And I’m not about to accuse my own mother of telling lies unless I have proof, which I don’t.” He chuckled at the joke along with the class.
He noticed the students were putting their folders into their backpacks and zipping them closed.
“OK. See you all next week for the final.”
Epilogue
(Four Years Later)
As Jim drove the 20-minute route from his house to the university, he found himself daydreaming while making the familiar turns and lane changes. Jim had spent much of his time in the last few months thinking about how his life had changed since he left the Courier. The biggest change was the fact he soon would be a father. With Melissa being nine months pregnant, who wouldn’t spend most waking hours thinking about car seats, changing diapers and 2 a.m. feedings? As an only child who never made a penny from baby-sitting, being around babies didn’t come naturally. But he was getting enough help from friends at church who had babies. Melissa insisted they offer some baby-sitting services for new parents so he would get some good training in the subject.
After a detour to Corner Bakery Café, where he picked up a corned beef Reuben on rye for lunch at the office, Jim arrived on campus. He entered the Communication Studies office, speaking with department secretary Monica Vessey as he emptied his mailbox of its contents. Then he walked across the courtyard to his office.
Jim’s office had a glass door and windows to either side. It was originally designed as a small faculty apartment, but was remodeled 30 years ago. Jim had three bookcases and a gray, three-drawer filing cabinet in his office. He put his diplomas and awards on the far wall. The Pulitzer certificate hung there, and a framed copy of the front page of the Courier’s “Tragedy at Crestline” edition, but they were not the center of attention. A calendar and an antique wall clock were the only items above his desk. His office wasn’t big, and he did not want to look at a cluttered wall when he was sitting at his desk and trying to concentrate.
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