Chapter 18

Wednesday was addressing day at the Record-Herald, as usual. As far as Susan was concerned, this week's paper seemed dull and lifeless, knowing what could have been on the front page if they'd had the information they needed from Henry, but maybe next week would make up for it. At least the discussion wasn't as much about Susan's experiences at Riverside as it had been the previous week.

At least she didn't have the worry that Gingrich would do something to have her thrown out of Riverside – that much had been made clear from her discussion with Heidi the day before, but still some of the paranoia lingered. What would the joker try next?

Once the papers were on the way to the Post Office, Susan sat down at the junior reporter's desk and worked away at some of the other things that needed to be done. These included a couple things that she had thought of to try and search on the Internet about Gingrich. However, increasingly she was running into dry holes with that, and she didn't really turn up much in the way of new information.

It was after lunch when her father called her into his office, and asked her to close the door. "I heard from Henry," he told her. "He's still got a few leads to run down, but he pretty much came up with chapter and verse on the story on Gingrich. We still need to work on the best way to present it and make it comprehensible, but I think we're to the point where we can start putting it together."

"Wow," she said. "That's a relief. I was beginning to wonder."

"Don't ever doubt that your brother is a good reporter," Mike told her. "It's just that he's had other things on his plate, and this hasn't been first on his agenda."

"I realize that," she smiled. "But still, it's been hard to wait."

"I know it has, but sometimes you have to sit on a story until you can tell it. This has been one of those times. But this is also one of those times when we need to be really careful about what we say, especially in terms of the news story. This is going to be pretty complex, and we have to take the reader through it point by point, including the fact that this was in the news down in Springfield before his application showed up here. Since we don't know what was in the investigative report, if there even was one, we're going to have to make sure the dates are made clear but not point any fingers."

"So, how do we jump from the Gingrich story to the investigation?"

"Good question," Mike shrugged. "What I'm thinking right now is that we run what we have in all the detail we can get. Then once the story is out, I'll call up George Battle and get his reaction. Since he's the school board vice-president and since he's George, I suspect he'll point all the fingers needed, and all we have to do is quote him. Then we can see where the dust settles. But that means we're definitely going to have to run the story next week."

"Too bad we couldn't have run it this week," Susan sighed. "It's going to be hard to have to sit on it that much longer."

"Yes, but we're going to have to. I think it'll have more impact if it comes out of nowhere. That means we're going to have to be careful how we handle it around here. What I'm thinking is that we need to look like we're leading the paper with something else next week, right up to the last minute, and then make the switch. Fortunately, we can hold the front page until after the rest of the staff has gone for the day and make the change then."

"You really want to keep this close to your chest," she shook her head. "I don't ever remember you doing something like that before."

"There've been a couple times," Mike told her. "Not recently. One of my real big concerns is that the paper is printed at the Camden Press and they have had a habit of going over our front page and stealing the ideas on a main story before we can get it out to our readership. That doesn't look good. In this case, I wouldn't mind if the Press stole it since it would look more authoritative, but I would like to get it in front of our readers first. Now, assuming they know what the story is, do you think they can get enough online to knock out a story on it in a few hours?"

"If they know what it is, probably," Susan said. "I haven't seen what Henry has come up with, but I think I came up with enough online to be able to have been able to run the story this week."

"Well, Henry has been able to come up with a lot more detail," Mike said. "I'm thinking that if we run it as a copyrighted story under his name it might slow the Press down enough for us to get it to our readers first."

"Maybe I'm reading the politics of this wrong," Susan said. "But it seems like the important thing is to get the story in front of the readers and stir things up as much as possible. I could be wrong but worrying about the Press is secondary as I see it."

"That's the other side of the coin that I've been thinking about. I suppose if we run it like normal, but have the story copyrighted, well, if they steal something that isn't online, at least I have grounds to call down there and pitch a bitch. I have to do that every so often anyway. It might make a little more impact with them if we run it as a copyrighted story from Henry, as a special to the Record-Herald."

"Makes sense," Susan agreed. "Especially when Gingrich starts squealing."

"Right, it gives us a degree of deniability, even though we already have most of the story from your online research. Now, I'm thinking that it might not even be a bad idea to include some links to the Springfield Democrat so people can see that it's the real deal."

"Again, not a bad idea," Susan said. "I printed out most of the stuff that I got online, just so there'd be a paper record of it."

"Damn good thinking," her father told her. "Now, what I'm proposing is that you go through Henry's stuff. I've read it already and think I know how I want to tell the story, but I want to have you check it over to see if I'm missing anything. What's more, I think we need to be able to document the sources of the charges as completely as we can, because it wouldn't surprise me if one of the things we hear very early from Gingrich is 'libel suit.' That's why we need to be pretty damn careful about what we write."

"You're saying we write it, but put Henry's name on it?"

"Pretty much, but if we can get it done fairly quickly I'll ship a copy down to Henry and let him go over it, making any changes that he thinks necessary. He already has a pretty good start on the story in his cover letter; we just need to file off some rough edges."

"OK, Dad," she smiled. "Sounds like a plan. What do you need me to do except check you over?"

"I need you to write two stories, and we'll have to coordinate the lengths so they're pretty much the same. Because it's an off week for city council with the holiday, I need you to head over to the county offices and get a story about their preparations for snow season. They're getting a couple of new snowplows, but it's strained their budget a bit. I know you don't know the background, but I'll help you with it. You'll have to write it so it can be seen as a lead news story or as a feature."

"That'll be the fake lead, right?"

"Right. But I also need you to write a feature on something, I don't know what, so that we can rip it up at the last minute to put the snow removal story in place of it. We can run the feature another week or something. I'm sorry I have to put you in a background role on this because I know you feel that you're the one who got burned by Gingrich. But with your position as a student, and still at least technically a high school student, I think it'd be best if we tried to keep you out of the direct line of fire."

"So we're still not going to say anything about Gingrich trying to keep me here an extra year, right?"

"Right – for now, anyway, and probably not ever. That would turn this deal to look as personal as it really is, and that's something we've got to avoid."

"All right, Dad," she said. "I guess my work is cut out for me. Let's get writing."

Susan got a good start on the snow removal story that afternoon – there had been previous stories in the Record-Herald on the topic, so she could pick up quite a bit from them – and at least thought about what she wanted to do about a relatively innocuous feature story. She was a little at a loss about that until she looked over the story idea whiteboard and saw a note about a guy who was getting in fifty to a hundred miles a day riding his bicycle around the area. That caught her fancy a little bit, mostly since she'd been thinking about the long bike trip across the Low Countries and France with Hans, Elke, Lothar, and Freya next summer. She had no idea if the trip was ever going to come off, but she also knew she'd never done any long-distance bike touring and figured that she might be able to learn something from the guy that would be helpful if the trip actually happened.

The guy proved to be easy to find. He was a retiree, but in awesome shape; Susan could only hope to be in half the shape when she was that age. He had a mound of stories to tell about riding his bike around the area. He also told her that he had plans to do a cross-country bike trip later that fall, starting in southern California and winding up in his winter home in Florida. That sounded pretty ambitious to Susan but she had little doubt that he would complete it. When she mentioned the possibility of her own European bike trip the next year, he really lit up. He gave her several important pieces of advice, the biggest one of which was to get in training for it – starting off cold with little or no time on a bike would bring big problems very quickly. An indoor exercise bike wouldn't quite fill the gap but would get her started in the winter months when riding a bicycle outside in the Spearfish Lake weather was a little beyond sensible.

While Susan knew that she had some more work to do on the snow removal story, the biking story was a snap to write, and she knocked it out Wednesday evening before turning to her studies to prepare her for class on Thursday.

At least Thursday was becoming normal to her. It was her long day again, and began before the sun came up when she headed down to Riverside. Again she spent her morning break and lunch break with Bianca and Mizuki, talking about various things, but when the evening break rolled around it was nice to talk with just Mizuki and not have to explain everything to Bianca.