Silencing Sam (2 page)

“When it's done, it airs,” Noreen had told us in a recent news meeting. Which introduced, in my opinion, an unhealthy—even desperate—speed-up factor to news investigations.

“I'm not interested in philosophy,” she responded when I tried to discuss the matter. “I'm interested in results.”

Not these results. How
many
people are watching the news isn't as important as
which
people are watching. And women viewers ages twenty-five to fifty-four are the prize demographic.

Under the new ratings system, Channel 3 had fallen from a normally close second in that coveted tier to a distant third. That audience drop made our newscasts less attractive to advertisers and meant our sales staff couldn't charge as much for the ads they did land. Barely six hundred people meters are used in the Minneapolis–St. Paul market to gauge the television habits of three million viewers. The station's owners cried foul over how the new Nielsen households were selected. But Nielsen didn't care.

Then Clay Burrel came along with tantalizing tidbits of murder and mayhem, and overnight, the numbers started shifting.

I was in the station green room, pulling a ceramic hot iron and styling brush out of my cubby for a quick touch-up before leaving to shoot a standup about identity theft. As I gazed in the mirror while I flipped my hair under, I appreciated the decades of history the green walls reflected.

Besides news talent, famous guests—presidents, athletes, even a rock star fond of the color purple—signed their names on these walls. I noticed a fresh addition, larger than the rest, as conspicuous as John Hancock's on the Declaration of Independence. The sweeping signature read “Clay Burrel.” I actually wasn't surprised, as I'd heard more than once over the last couple of days that everything was bigger in Texas.

As if on cue, Clay walked in to powder his nose and share with me the news that he was about to go on the air and inform viewers that “sources now tell” him the victim in the missing-head case was a natural blonde.

I congratulated him on his legwork. Then he started grumbling about how, when he accepted this job, he thought he was joining one of the top news teams in the market. Instead, by the look of things,
he
was the top.

“I guess what they say about Texans and bragging is true,” I replied, a little miffed he was acting like a star right out the gate.

“If you've done it, it ain't bragging, little lady.”

“Stop calling me that.” The moniker was as condescending as a pat on the head.

“Sure don't mean anything by it,” he said. “Just keep hearing what a hotshot investigator you are and so far I haven't seen much investigating. Makes me wonder if you're all hat and no cattle.”

I threw him a much-practiced If Looks Could Kill glare but instead of shutting up, he told me I was about as “cute as a possum.”

That was when I vowed to steal the headless murder story from him and make it mine.

The next morning I got a news tip of my own and was on my way in the station helicopter to the Minnesota-Iowa border with Malik Rahman, my favorite cameraman. I'm not crazy about flying, but for this story, aerials were a big bonus.

An hour later, we were over an unusual crime scene.

The corn in the farm field below us was flattened into an odd shape, but unlike crop circles (the first of which discovered in the United States was actually found in Minnesota thirty years ago), there was nothing graceful or mysterious about what had caused this crop damage.

A giant wind turbine, part of a recently developed wind farm, lay flat on the ground, its trio of propellers spread wide. Dozens of other turbines stood in straight rows, spinning with no concern for their deceased comrade.

Minnesota ranks fourth in wind power production, following Texas, Iowa, and California. As the national debate over energy becomes more urgent, wind has become a valuable and controversial crop.

Malik zoomed the camera lens to the base of the turbine. Charred and mangled, it appeared to have been blasted from its cement foundation.

The chopper landed on a gravel road where a group of local farmers, including my father (who had called me when he heard the breaking news), stood around, uncharacteristically unsettled by the sabotage. A young boy in bib overalls clutched the hand of one of the men.

While wind turbines have attracted organized opposition in other parts of the country, for the most part, folks living here have taken to the idea of “farming the wind” and leased chunks of their land to energy companies. This part of the state hasn't seen so much economic growth since Hormel invented Spam. And the money is welcome insurance against cyclical catastrophes familiar to rural America such as floods or locusts. Besides, the lofty turbines don't seem that big a leap from their own agricultural ancestors, the windmills that not too long ago ground corn and pumped water.

“Someone's making some kind of statement,” I said to Malik after we interviewed people at the scene. “But what does it mean?”

I gazed at the symmetrical rows of turbines, appearing smaller as they got nearer the horizon. Was some modern Don Quixote on a melodramatic quest to bring down these giants? Perhaps from a misguided sense of chivalry? While the entire world wants to boo bad guys, it's important to remember that every villain is the hero of his own story.

Some resistance to the wind industry has come from environmentalists who claim turbines harm birds. But so do airplanes, cars, and even patio windows, and no one's protesting them.

And there are plenty of complaints from people who claim wind turbines ruin their view. But at a time when America is challenged for energy, Not In My Backyard is not a particularly patriotic argument.

The only other time there'd ever been an explosion in this
county was some twenty years earlier, when a grain elevator accidentally blew. This was different. And the rural crowd wasn't sure what to make of the toppled turbine. I tried to get some reaction on camera, but Minnesotans are generally not an excitable bunch and are more comfortable expressing pessimism than optimism.

“It could be worse,” one farmer said.

“You betcha,” another responded.

And because things can always be worse, the rest all nodded in agreement and didn't have much else to say about the situation, except for “Whatever.”

Malik, an outsider to this manner of conversation, gave a little growl of exasperation, because he knew we had little usable audio and even less chance of getting any.

“You can figure out what it means later,” he said. “Let's shoot your standup and head back.”

I noticed a monarch butterfly paused on a milkweed plant. Most monarchs are almost in Mexico by now. A late bloomer, apparently. I closed my eyes and imagined the magnificent migration of orange and black wings against green jungle.

“Come on, Riley, let's roll.”

The monarch still sat there. “You better head south,” I advised it, snapping my fingers. The butterfly scattered.

Malik positioned me about forty feet to the left with the broken turbine in the background centered between a row of spinning blades while I practiced my scribbled standup.

((RILEY, STANDUP))

AUTHORITIES HAVE NO

MOTIVE IN THE DESTRUCTION

OF THIS WIND TURBINE IN

RURAL MINNESOTA … BUT THE

INVESTIGATION CONTINUES.

With a thumbs-up, Malik signaled he was rolling.

((RILEY STANDUP))

AUTHORITIES HAVE NO

MOTIVE IN THE

DESTRUCTION—

Suddenly a blast shook the ground, almost knocking me over. I turned in time to see another wind turbine crash behind me. I wondered whether this was the way an earthquake felt.

“Malik?” I was glad he was shooting with a tripod and not off the shoulder.

“Yeah,” he answered, “we got it.”

Of course, when Noreen heard we had dramatic-explosion video, she sent the satellite truck so I could go live from the scene. Malik also got video of a crying child in the arms of his father, which helped visually emphasize the danger at stake.

The old bachelor farmer who owned the land where the blast had just happened was not crazy about being on TV, but I assured him it would only last a couple of minutes, and my dad, arguably one of the most popular men in the county, helped talk him into it.

Gil Halvorson was a bit of a rural survivalist, but in an adorable sort of way. He had a shy smile, a power generator, a propane tank, a private well, and a stash of ammo in the root cellar for when the end came near. No kids of his own, but lots of nieces and nephews.

Back at the station, Sophie Paulson sat at the anchor desk, reading a narrow column of print off the teleprompter. It's typed about two inches wide, so anchors can read it without their eyes darting back and forth. Producers like it because it times out to about a second a line, making it easy to estimate story length.

((SOPHIE CU LIVE))

RILEY SPARTZ GOT CAUGHT IN

THE MIDDLE OF SOME

BREAKING NEWS TODAY

DOWN IN SOUTHERN

MINNESOTA. TAKE A LOOK AT

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

News control rolled the video for viewers to watch the smash.

((RILEY REPLAY))

AUTHORITIES HAVE NO

MOTIVE IN THE

DESTRUCTION—

((BOOM, CRASH, SCREAMS))

((ANCHOR DOUBLE BOX))

RILEY JOINS US NOW FROM

THE SCENE WITH THE

LATEST.

Then news control went full-screen with Malik's close-up shot of me as I recapped what little information had been released about the explosions. Because of the immediacy of the situation, neither law enforcement nor Wide Open Spaces, the energy company that owned the wind farm, had given an official statement.

On my cue, as I introduced Gil Halvorson as the landowner, my cameraman pulled wide to include him for a live interview.

((RILEY/GUEST/TWOSHOT))

WHAT DID YOU THINK WHEN

YOU HEARD THE BLAST, GIL?

((GIL/LIVE))

SOUNDED LIKE A FREIGHT

TRAIN.

Those first words out of his mouth are the ultimate cliché in broadcast interviews:
It sounded like a freight train.
The sound tech back at the station marked the audio booth wall with a check each time the “freight train” phrase aired. The tradition dated back years and the marks covered an entire wall.

((RILEY/GUEST/TWOSHOT))

THEN WHAT, GIL?

Though I expected him to give me the inevitable
It could have been worse,
I pressed him for something a little more original and he sure gave it to me.

((GIL/LIVE))

THEN I SAW IT CRASH AND

THOUGHT, FUCK, THERE GOES

THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

Suddenly news control voices were screaming in my ear as I tried to wrap my guest.

“Fuck” is a word stations aren't allowed to broadcast because the airwaves are owned by the public. Radio has a seven-second delay, but not local TV news. The Federal Communications Commission is prone to levying big fines for such indecent utterances. And in the current economic turmoil facing the news business, Channel 3 can't afford potty-mouth talk.

Because I was reporting live from the field, I couldn't see the ensuing chaos in the news control booth. Later I learned the station had gone black. That's one of the worst things that can happen during a television newscast. Someone, maybe a producer, maybe a director, decides they can't risk staying live and utters the command, “Go black.” That sends the station off the air and into a commercial break. Or even worse, puts a slate on the air that reads “Technical Difficulties.” The fear is that viewers are
immediately switching channels, especially when this transpires during the first minute of a newscast.

“Do you have any idea how much the station might have to pay?” Noreen yelled at me when I got back to the newsroom. “And even if we challenge the FCC and win, the attorney costs could be staggering.” Noreen hollered some more; the rest of the staff could hear as well as see the fireworks through her glass-walled office. What she sacrificed in privacy she made up for in sending a message to the rest of the troops.

“This wasn't my fault, Noreen,” I insisted. “The guy never said the F-word once during our preinterview.”

“Well, Riley, we need stories that will get ratings but won't get us in trouble with the FCC. Sure the explosion video was cool, but who really cares about windmills anyway? What else have you got?”

I remembered the monarch butterfly and suggested going to Mexico and covering the migration. As cold weather approaches, our audience enjoys warm-weather tales.

“Minnesotans love nature news,” I said. “And the video is guaranteed to be spectacular.”

Noreen was especially fond of stories about animals—even fish. But that affection apparently didn't apply to bugs. She nixed the butterfly idea in about two seconds flat.

Too much money.

“Not in today's economy.” She shook her head. “We need more close-to-home scoops like that headless murder.” She pointed through her glass office at Clay Burrel, typing away at his desk. “That's what people are talking about. The police chief even called up screaming about our coverage.”

I smiled, imagining the chief's fury—having lived through it during a story or two myself. “But, Noreen, I thought our station image was warm and fuzzy. Channel 7 is the blood-and-guts station.”

A look of regret passed over Noreen's normally Corporate America face. “Riley, we can't afford warm and fuzzy.”

I saw an unattractive close-up photo of myself with my mouth open when I paged through the newspaper early the next morning.

Sam Pierce had frozen a shot of me from yesterday's wind story for his gossip column, apparently just as I'd realized that my guest had uttered the F-word. No surprise, Sam made a big deal out of how much trouble I was in for the gaffe.

Then he took a cheap shot and wrote how some local TV reporters had made a better transition to high-definition TV than others, while I was starting to look my age. After our confrontation the other day, I expected some kind of dig like that.