Page 92 of Cuts like a Knife
One Friday, I found myself having trouble sourcing one of the stories Rian had assigned for me to cut down from the wire service. It was nowhere. As loathe as I was to ask him about it, by 4:00 pm, I was getting anxious. I’d never missed a deadline before. My other four stories for the day had already been filed. I was ahead of the game for my weekend feature, but that one story was holding me back. As loathe as I was to talk to him, I had to message Rian directly.
We didn’t have a slack channel or anything. The office used MSN messenger, but it felt unprofessional to DM the news editor, so I sent him a quick email.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Quick question
Hi Rian,
Sorry to bother you, but I’m having trouble finding the Senator Hyanis piece on the wire. It’s just a cut-down right? You weren’t expecting original reporting?
I was polite, Deferential293. There was no way I could do any original reporting anyway. There wasn’t time.
Rian responded immediately.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Quick question
Yes. Deadline in 20 mins, so hurry up.
Classic Rian. Clear as mud. Luckily, he’d included a link. I clicked it and the was taken to a piece in Sentinel about Senator Hyanis. It was an uncharacteristically helpful move294.
I thought there must be an issue with the wire service. Or that I hadn’t really mastered the search function. No harm done.
I copy-pasted the text from the link into a document, and working at warp speed, cut the piece down to fit the allotted 650 word space, hit file, and signed out.
Another week done. Crushed it.
Kelsang, Adele, and a few others were meeting at a bar for Friday afternoon drinks. I grabbed my jacket and hurried out to join them.
The weekend edition published and I didn’t even look at it. Obsessively clipping my own pieces was something I’d only bothered with my first few months on the job. It was already old hat.
The next time I checked my work email was Monday morning. There was a strange message waiting for me.
From: [email protected]
Subject: No Subject
The next time you rip me off, put in a little more effort to disguise what you’re doing. FYI, I’ve contacted your boss.
Wait, what?
What?
It took me less than fifteen minutes to figure it out. The piece Rian send me on Friday wasn’t a wire story. It was an original story, properly reported, by Alan Segal from Sentinel.
It was a mistake, I thought. Fixable. With an apology, eminently fixable. Plus, I was sure our piece295 had published with a wire byline. We’d just made an honest mistake.
I found a copy of the Saturday edition and flipped to the Senator Hyanis piece, my heart pounding as my eye slipped down to the bottom of my hastily edited296 650 words.
There was no mention of the wire.
