Jeff Zeleny, 1996 graduate of UNL’s journalism program, was the featured speaker at the Friday, April 19, banquet during the Nebraska Press Association’s annual convention in Lincoln. His remarks are reprinted below.
It’s terrific to be back in Nebraska and to be in the good company of so many editors and publishers whose newspapers I grew up reading. And it’s particularly heartening to see a few of you in the audience who graciously published my first stories, giving a small-town kid whose heart was set on being a journalist his first byline.
Seriously, though, I’m very honored to be here tonight for the Nebraska Press Association annual convention. And I’m not joking at all when I tell you that the journalism I was fortunate enough to do in this state laid the foundation for covering a president and national politics during one of the most fascinating times in our history.
Moving to Washington as the national political correspondent for the Chicago Tribune was an adventure in itself. But before I go any further, I think I should extend a small amount of gratitude to the manufacturers of the voting machines in Florida. Without their help — and the assistance of scores of voters from Pensacola to Palm Beach — I wouldn’t have the good fortune of doing what I am doing today.
Speaking of Al Gore, I bumped into him the other day in Florida. He was walking into a hotel just outside of Orlando. And I can report to you: He was carrying his own suitcase. The former vice president had returned to the scene of the historic election upheaval to deliver a speech to still-angry Florida Democrats.
It’s hard to imagine that another presidential election will soon be around the corner. A year from now, a parade of Democratic candidates will descend upon Iowa and New Hampshire, trying to make their case that President Bush is beatable. It sounds premature. But, selfishly for me , it’s what I call job security.
When I moved to Washington late last summer from Chicago, I knew I had a lot to learn about the nation’s capital. Thankfully, though, I did have some experience with President Bush.
Spilling coffee on a guy’s shoes is a fairly good icebreaker.
That embarrassing incident happened on the early morning of Dec. 13, 1999. George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, was in Iowa campaigning. He had an early-morning appointment with the editorial board at the Des Moines Register, where I was working at the time.
As the likeable and charming politician walked into the room, he turned to me and said: “Son, I’d like a cup of coffee.” One of his aides rushed over, explaining that I was a political reporter, not a waiter. But I didn’t mind. He walked over, and we were having such an easy conversation, I forgot to turn off the coffee spigot. He laughed. And for the hour-long meeting, he sat in soggy shoes.
One year later, on the night of that historic presidential election, I had already joined the Chicago Tribune. As the results slowly trickled into the newsroom, I was frantically trying to finish a story about an Illinois congressional race. Shortly before midnight, I heard the newspaper’s national editor screaming: “Zeleny, find out what the hell is going on in Iowa.”
In presidential politics, that’s always a curious question. But on Nov. 7, 2000, Iowa was one of a handful of states with too-close-to-call election results. I made a few telephone calls. The state’s returns, it seemed, had been stalled by a computer glitch in Allamakee County. I reported my findings. And one of the newspaper’s top editors looked at me in disbelief.
“Are you saying that the country’s presidential election hinges on a place called Allamakee County?” she asked.
Of course, as it later turned out, I was wrong. The results actually hinged on a place called Tallahassee. It’s a place where I spent several weeks chronicling the twists and turns of the 36-day drama.
At the time, I was a reporter on the newspaper’s city desk. But I was sent down to Florida as a relief pitcher, if you will, for my colleagues who had spent the last grueling weeks of the campaign on the road. I packed my suitcase for only a couple of days. How long could a recount take, anyway?
My job in Tallahassee was to go to the courthouse every day to follow the legal arguments and the underlying politics. Strangely enough, it reminded me of one of the first stories I ever wrote for a newspaper — 10 years earlier.
I had recently graduated from Exeter High School. A sensational murder trial was underway in Fillmore County, where I grew up, and I wanted to be there. For as long as I could remember, I wanted to be a journalist. So day after day, I would sit in the courtroom and absorb everything around me.
There was one problem: I didn’t have a newspaper to work for. So I called the Fillmore County News, the late newspaper of my hometown of Exeter, and offered them the stories. Soon I started writing for the York News-Times. And later the Associated Press and the Lincoln Journal Star. And every single day I’m grateful to the string of editors who gave me an opportunity and taught me the rules of journalism that apply here, in Washington or anywhere around the world.
When I moved to Washington last August, newspaper editors were not clamoring to put political stories on the front page. I was told it was the perfect opportunity to meet sources and acquaint myself with the city. Those plans changed, of course, one month later.
On Sept. 11, as the president flew from Florida to Louisiana and ultimately landed in Nebraska before heading back to Washington, I was in my office. I watched on television — like everyone else in America — the horrifying scene from New York. My mother called me that morning, in fact, wondering if I was flying that day. I told her not to worry: I was safe in Washington at my newspaper’s office, two blocks from the White House.
Minutes later, I found myself running out of my building, hailing a taxi and speeding off to the Pentagon. For the rest of the day, I gathered facts and details and color from the scene. I stared at the light poles that had been sheared off by the plane. I smelled the fire, still raging from the jet fuel. And as frequently as I could — when my cell phone would connect — I would call in reports for two extra editions published that day by my newspaper.
On that day, I was new to the Washington bureau of the Tribune. And one of my editors seemed surprised that I knew how to give dictation from the field. In the age of Blackberries and laptops and satellite phones, it was a good point, I suppose. She said she didn’t think reporters of my generation were trained to do that. In Nebraska, I told her, we were trained to do everything. She’s a Kansas native, and I’m sure her eyes were rolling. Let me guess, she said, in one of the few light moments of the day — at a football game? No, I said, at a tornado in Beatrice in May 1996.
I’m sure folks at the Beatrice Sun and people throughout southeast Nebraska remember that day well. The movie “Twister” was playing at the downtown theater, if I recall. And I was on the scene around-the-clock for a couple days, reporting for the Associated Press.
As I reported those tragic events in the days after Sept. 11, I harkened back to several skills that I learned here. Whether it was dictating that story from Beatrice or reporting from the scene of the airplane crash of Brook Berringer or writing about the Nebraska Legislature, I felt more prepared than most of my friends in the Washington media — many of whom were trained in the halls of Ivy League schools but with little practical experience.
My point is this: I learned every tool I now need to do my job by watching and working alongside journalists in Nebraska. As a high school and college student, I followed politics by going to events. Then, the next day, I would carefully study the stories of Don Walton in the Journal Star and David Kotok in the World-Herald.
Political reporters are not unlike sports reporters. We cover who’s up, who’s down, who’s playing at the top of his game, who’s not. The best political reporters often are not the ones shouting the loudest questions. They are the ones listening with an open ear and watching with a keen eye.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, I began to see a president — whose legitimacy was openly questioned only days before — begin to transform into a leader. The instant rush of patriotism — the flags, the “United We Stand” billboards — soon gave way to a measurable change in how Americans of all stripes viewed the president. After giving his speech to Congress the week after the attacks, a staunch Democrat I know who had rarely — if ever — uttered a kind word about George W. Bush, referred to him for the first time as “Mr. President.”
On Oct. 11, a sun-splashed, glorious day in Washington, the president traveled to the Pentagon to commemorate the one-month anniversary of the attacks. It was a moving memorial service for the Pentagon victims. It was my turn to ride along in the motorcade that day. And as we zipped through the streets of downtown Washington, across the Potomac River, a giant American flag, draped over the mammoth Pentagon, came into view. I watched the president weep as a list of names slowly scrolled on giant screens, a tapestry of Americans from A to Z, only missing two letters of the alphabet.
That same night, the president held his first prime-time news conference in the East Room of the White House. He answered questions and signaled — without saying so directly — that the nation was headed to war. From my seat in the second row, I thought the president was already more skilled at addressing foreign policy questions than I had seen him at any other point in his campaign or young presidency. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t get to test that theory directly. In the sea of raised hands, he didn’t tap mine.
I should have followed my mother’s advice and taken a seat beside Helen Thomas. Then, perhaps, he would have called on me.
Whether your work is published in the New York Times or the York News-Times, we have the unbelievable privilege of writing about history as it happens. No matter where one practices the incredible craft of journalism, the same principles apply.
We need to tell more stories. Stories of triumph and loss. Stories of accomplishment and defeat. We have an amazing opportunity to chronicle the life and the times in which we are living. But too many of our stories, in fact, aren’t stories at all. They are reports or articles — absent the characters and the drama that fill our lives every day.
One of the finest writers in our business, Ken Fuson, works across the river in Iowa at the Des Moines Register. Last weekend in Washington, he was presented with a national writing award named after Ernie Pyle, the legendary war correspondent who told stories better than anyone of his era.
I can’t say it — and certainly can’t write it — nearly as well as Fuson. So I’ll share with you what he said:
“Ernie Pyle was killed 57 years ago this week, during World War II, and people still remember him and miss him. I think the explanation goes back to that sign the GIs posted where he died, the one that said, ‘At this spot, the 77th Infantry Division Lost a Buddy.’
“Those soldiers, and his readers, thought Ernie Pyle was on their side.
“I wonder if readers think we’re on their side? Sometimes we’re so busy chasing the news that we miss the story of how people actually live. We give readers the facts — that’s our job — but we don’t often tell them about the joys and dreams and tiny triumphs of their neighbors. And so the world we portray feels cold and mean and full of despair.
“Maybe that’s right — especially this year. But if you look for them, you can find stories that give readers something important — a small sense of hope. Ernie Pyle understood that. He didn’t just think everyone had a story. He thought everyone had a story that mattered.”
We all have deadline pressures, bottom-line financial pressures and far too many other pressures to go into here on a Friday night. But we should all challenge ourselves to tell stories. I think that is one way newspapers will succeed.
It’s long been talked about how the future of newspapers is in doubt. Focus groups say young readers are simply tuning out. As a consequence, many editors across America are scrambling, retooling their newspapers, trying to be become something they are not.
I’m convinced that young readers don’t want anything different than readers in any other demographic group. They don’t want to be pandered to. Or have their news presented in lighter portions.
I’ve always been bullish about the future of newspapers. And I think that in the last seven months, our jobs have become more relevant than ever. On the morning of Sept. 12, as I returned to work after very little sleep, I saw an amazing sight that no focus group, no newspaper marketing committee or public relations campaign could ever achieve.
Everywhere I went that day, people were reading newspapers. On the subway. In the coffee line. On the street corner. Young people. Old people. Homeless people. People were turning to newspapers for information they knew that they could count on. Single-copy sales soared. Subscriptions increased.
In closing, my point is this: We can tell great stories wherever we work — in Wahoo, Neb., or Washington, D.C. The newspapers represented here tonight are among the most important in the craft. These are the papers that are sitting on coffee tables and kitchen tables — in Nebraska and across America — that uniquely matter to people’s lives. As a child, I remember running to the mailbox every Thursday to fetch the Nebraska Signal. I couldn’t wait to tear into my hometown newspaper. I suspect I wasn’t alone.
It is the stories on the pages of these newspapers that are clipped and saved — on refrigerators and in scrapbooks — that chronicle the history of our times.
And in the end, those yellowed clippings last far longer than a ride on Air Force One.
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