True believer - Nicholas Sparks [9]
Editors. He’d long ago concluded that most of them were hypocrites. But, as in most professions, he supposed, hypocrites tended to be both passionate and politically savvy—in other words, corporate survivors—which meant they were the ones who not only doled out assignments but ended up paying the expenses.
But maybe, as Nate had suggested, he’d be out of that racket soon. Well, not completely out of it. Alvin was probably right in saying that television producers were no different from editors, but television paid a living wage, which meant he’d be able to pick and choose his projects, instead of having to hustle all the time. Maria had been right to challenge his workload so long ago. In fifteen years, his workload hadn’t changed a bit. Oh, the stories might be higher profile, or he might have an easier time placing his freelance pieces because of the relationships he’d built over the years, but neither of those things changed the essential challenge of always coming up with something new and original. He still had to produce a dozen columns for Scientific American, at least one or two major investigations, and another fifteen or so smaller articles a year, some in keeping with the theme of the season. Is Christmas coming? Write a story about the real St. Nicholas, who was born in Turkey, became bishop of Myra, and was known for his generosity, love of children, and concern for sailors. Is it summer? How about a story about either (a) global warming and the undeniable 0.8-degree rise in temperature over the last one hundred years, which foretold Sahara-like consequences throughout the United States, or (b) how global warming might cause the next ice age and turn the United States into an icy tundra. Thanksgiving, on the other hand, was good for the truth about the Pilgrims’ lives, which wasn’t only about friendly dinners with Native Americans, but instead included the Salem witch hunts, smallpox epidemics, and a nasty tendency toward incest.
Interviews with famous scientists and articles about various satellites or NASA projects were always respected and easy to place no matter what time of year, as were exposés about drugs (legal and illegal), sex, prostitution, gambling, liquor, court cases involving massive settlements, and anything, absolutely anything whatsoever, about the supernatural, most of which had little or nothing to do with science and more to do with quacks like Clausen.
He had to admit the process wasn’t anything like he’d imagined a career in journalism would be. At Columbia—he was the only one of his brothers to attend college and became the first in his family ever to graduate, a fact his mother never ceased to point out to strangers—he’d double-majored in physics and chemistry, with the intention of becoming a professor. But a girlfriend who worked at the university paper convinced him to write a story—which relied heavily on the use of statistics—about the bias in SAT scores used in admission. When his article led to a number of student demonstrations, Jeremy realized he had a knack for writing. Still, his career choice didn’t change until his father was swindled by a bogus financial planner out of some $40,000, right before Jeremy graduated. With the family home in jeopardy—his father was a bus driver and worked for the Port Authority until retirement—Jeremy bypassed his graduation ceremony to track down the con man. Like a man possessed, he searched court and public records, interviewed associates of the swindler, and produced detailed notes.
As fate would have it, the New York D.A.’s office had bigger fish to fry than a small-time scam artist, so Jeremy double-checked his sources, condensed his notes, and wrote the first exposé of his life. In the end, the house was saved, and New York magazine picked up the piece. The editor there convinced him that life in academia would lead nowhere and, with a subtle blend of flattery and rhetoric about chasing the big dream, suggested that Jeremy write a piece about Leffertex, an antidepressant that