Read Online The Weatherman by Steve Thayer - Free Book Online Page A

desk. And this is Gayle, our assignment editor. In this business, she’s the best. I brought her with me when I jumped ship. We call her the Ghoul. Gayle, this is Stephanie, a new intern. Do you have time for the two-minute tour?”
    Gayle hung up the phone. She was a tall woman, twenty-seven years old, and not physically attractive; her beauty was her vibrant personality and her sharp wit. She balanced fashionable glasses on a beakish nose. “Hi, Stephanie. This is where stories start. That’s the dispatch shack behind me. You might want to work in there when your internship is over, but if you’ve got a weak stomach I wouldn’t suggest it. Every tragedy in the seven-county metropolitan area is beamed into your ears. The psychological damage can be irreversible, and you can make more money at Kentucky Fried Chicken. These phones ring off the hook all day long. Besides our own people calling in, people call in with news tips, most of which aren’t worth a piece of typing paper. Viewers call in with complaints, and at least two or three lunatics call the station every day. Sound concerned and get rid of them.” The phone on the desk rang. Gayle answered. “Assignment desk.
    “We’ll call them right away. Thank you.” Gayle hung up. “The mail is brought here in buckets every day. That’s part of your job. Every organization and corporation in the Midwest, every clown with a gripe wants us to come and do a story on them. Interns open the mail and sort it, usually by date. Then it goes into a daybook so we know what’s going on every day of the week. Here’s today’s book.” She held up a yellow folder two inches thick. “Slow news day,” she said. ‘That’s the assignment board behind me. Think of it as a company picnic and that’s the list of what everybody has to bring. Stories in red ink are live shots.” The phone rang again. Gayle was back at it.
    Rick Beanblossom took over, pointing up at the assignments. “Reading down the board … Beth is doing a story on illegal contractors trying to make a quick buck off homeowners hit by the tornado … I see Andrea has found some puppy dogs that survived the storm … the
    National Weather Service is holding another press conference to further explain their ineptitude … and a photog is shooting the billboard story.”
    “What’s the billboard story?”
    “Some joker is running around town defacing billboards with a splat gun.”
    “Why would he do that?”
    “I think it’s his not-so-subtle way of protesting the uglification of Minnesota. He hit a Channel 7 billboard last week. Personally, I thought our anchors looked better with fluorescent orange hair.”
    “And what are you doing today?”
    “Among other things, I’m writing a follow-up on the parking-ramp murder. We’ll use existing tape and one of the anchors will read it.”
    “Do you like working on a murder story?”
    “When I first started in news, murder here was a big deal. Not anymore.”
    “What changed things?”
    “Guns and drugs, mostly. I wrote a story once about how we rented prison space to other states. We were smarter, not tougher. Now we have a homicide every other day and I’m writing stories about overcrowded jails.”
    “Why is this murder getting so much attention?”
    “The victim was a white woman. A middle-class professional just going about her business. Murdered in the middle of the day in the middle of downtown on the way to her car. Police suspect it’s a stranger-to-stranger homicide, and that’s still rare here. Most people are murdered by someone they know. The old this-type-of-thing-ain’t-supposed-to-happen-here story.”
    “Is everybody in the newsroom so cynical?”
    “Stephanie, if you really want to hear criticism of television news, listen to the people who work here. Every day someone sticks their finger down their throat over something they have to write. Follow me, I’ll show you the edit rooms.”
    Andrea Kay Labore had the prettiest face