Dead deadline

     Good evening, 919 Gang. It's past p.m., and I can't hold the presses any longer. We'll try again tomorrow.

Taxing

 

          Good evening, 919 Gang. It’s tax season, and because I worked one season doing taxes for H&R Block, perhaps I can give you some good advice.

          My advice? Don’t do something stupid like I did.

          Yesterday I received my federal income tax refund. My refund for 2022.

          My 2022 tax filing was perfect, except for one thing: For some reason I can’t explain I specified that the refund (about $2,400) should be mailed to my post office box instead of being paid by direct deposit.

          I waited several months, and when the check did not arrive, I contacted the IRS, which told me my refund had been mailed in October 2023.

          More correspondence ensued until the IRS determined my check had been stolen and cashed with a forged endorsement.  Some clever forger. The check was payable to Jack and Mary Reber, but the endorsement on the check said only “J.REBER” in printed capitals.

          So, I have waited almost 18 months for my refund, and I’ve learned a lesson: Always direct deposit after this.

 

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          REBER: We close the month by wishing Scott Linnet a Happy Birthday on March 31.

Good work, Sandy

 

          Good evening, 919 Gang. Many thanks to Sandy Young, who launched us on a path that continues to produce great reading.

 

DON BARTLETTI writes:

Former U-T photojournalist Tim Wilson’s story from March 28 about “staring death in the face” and “putting his camera down” struck a nerve with me.

Tim wrote about an assignment that brought him and his reporter into the hospital room of a gravely injured motorcycle accident victim. It was a story about the high incidence of bike crashes among young servicemen. The doctor told the reporting team, “This young man may not make it”.

Tim explained that - as the victim answered reporter’s questions - he raised his camera. The patient “…looked directly at me and stopped speaking in mid-sentence. I lowered my camera back down. Without saying a word, he had asked me to respect his right to die with dignity.”

With no photo of the victim, Wilson’s boss admonished him that “… it was not my job to decide what was right or wrong, that it was the reporter’s call.”

OMG! When I joined the U-T in 1977 it didn’t take long to realize that the Photo Department was in no small way a service department for the newsroom. It took decades for the U-T and papers across the nation to recognize that parity among visual and word journalists was a better way to communicate the news.

During my six years in Mission Valley and subsequent 32 years with the L.A. Times I stared death in the face as well. But there was one assignment that tested my obligation as a photojournalist and my right to decide what was right or wrong.

          It was July 12, 2014, in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, while on assignment with the L.A. Times. I wanted to visually translate why tens of thousands of unaccompanied Central American minors were showing up on the north bank of the Rio Grande in S. Texas. I already knew why: Honduras was in chaos and the city of San Pedro Sula was a killing field controlled by marauding street gangs amid a population that lived in fear. Desperate parents were paying smugglers to shepherd their children out of Honduras to the safely in the U.S. My interpretation of that diaspora was a single photograph of a 6-year-old girl who didn’t get out in time.

Early that morning I inched open the back door of a chapel at the city morgue. Seated among a half dozen people was a guy staring at two 5x7 color pictures of a little girl. In an adjacent pew, a man and woman who I later learned were the girl’s aunt and uncle, were sobbing uncontrollably. I nodded to the man with the photos and silently asked to sit with him.He whispered that he and his brother had come to pick up the little girl in the photos. The day before, his niece Stefani Nicole was gunned down in the crossfire of two armed gangsters.

Outside, when it came time for them to buy a coffin from one of the curbside vendors, the family listened as my reporter, my fixer and I explained why we were there. I asked if they would let me observe and photograph them. They were emphatic: Yes!!! Yes!!! You can stay with us. No one else cares – not the police, the government, the papers or anybody. Yes, tell the story of how we are suffering.

Over my 50- year career I thought I’d seen it all, but it didn’t prepare me for this. As the daylight faded, it was night by the time someone wheeled a steel cart out of the autopsy room to the open-air loading dock behind the morgue. We all gasped.

Lying naked, face up, Estafani Nicole’s head rested to the side as if she was asleep. Dribbles the same color as her tiny crimson painted fingernails made streaks on the steel table. A single bullet hole darkened her left nipple. Tia Sonia dabbed at dots of blood along the grotesque sutures that closed the autopsy incisions from the collar bones to the pelvis.

I had to force myself to lift the camera. The anguished faces of the family stared in disbelief. They never turned from me, objected or reacted to the camera. With every frame the compositions blurred a little more in my viewfinder. Could have been the light rain. Maybe the collective anguish? But I could see enough through the tears to question if this would work after all. How could I possibly make a publishable photograph of a dead child that would reveal a cause and consequence of out-migration that didn’t come soon enough?

They clothed little Estefani Nicole in her First Communion Dress. Her doll-like body was carefully lowered into a coffin that was secured in the bed of a pickup truck. We ran that single photo on A-1.

“I’d been invited to watch the end of a very private journey. ”Tim Wilson – you did the right thing.

 

                                 The 6-year-old victim

                                    Into the coffin

 

          ERNIE COWAN writes:

Tim Wilson’s touching account of the dying young serviceman stirred deep memories of a similar incident I encountered.

          After leaving the Tribune, I was approached by a media friend wondering if I might be interested in being a stringer for a local television news station. Since I lived in North County, they gave me an old camera with hopes I could capture breaking news events such as major accidents, fires, major crimes, etc.

          One evening came a call of a hit-and-run crash in Fallbrook where a young boy was killed. It had happened on the street in front of the local Catholic Church.

          The injured child had been placed on the steps of the church, but he had died, and when I arrived, a priest was tending to him.

          As media reps waited for more information, the coroner arrived along with the child’s mother. As they prepared to remove the child, the priest brought the mother to the steps where she stood, sobbing over the covered body of her little son.

          I don’t think any of us watching this were dry-eyed. I know I was not, but I kept shooting as she knelt to grasp his lifeless hand.

          She would not let go.

          You could feel the profound emotion, and, for a moment, the world stopped.

          I kept shooting until the priest reached out and tugged the mother’s hand away from her lifeless son.

          My job was done, and for whatever reason, editors aired the video of this emotional scene.

          Phones lit up with calls demanding that the station be fined or prosecuted for showing such callous and irresponsible judgement.

          At the same time came hundreds of calls offering help and support for the family of the youngster killed by a hit-and-run driver of a black Mercedes Benz.

It taught me that we are not judges. While often very difficult, it’s the public that needs to decide and the job of the journalist is to present the information that will allow them to do that.

          That being said, I’m not sure I would have done anything different than Tim Wilson in his situation.

 

JONATHAN HELLER writes:

To Tim Wilson, thank you for that moving story about the young man in the hospital bed dying from injuries he suffered in a motorcycle accident. You were 100 percent justified in honoring his wish not to have his photo taken. You and the reporter were journalists, yes, but first and foremost you were human beings. Good for you for making the tough decision in the face of pressure from the reporter and the editor. It was the right call.

 

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          DANA WILKIE writes:

So what Miriam Rafferty did so well, and I did not, in our retellings of stories about our journalistic integrity being questioned, was giving credit to the editors who supported us.

So after breaking the convention center misuse of money issue, and after all that initial blowback from city officials out for my job, I was pretty much a mess.

In swooped Todd Merriman, who assured me I wouldn’t lose my job Aware that I was working 24/7 to stay on top of things and stay ahead, he and other editors called in reinforcements to cover other angles. Along came our cartoonist, who penned a hilarious cartoon of the convention center manager and his friends gorging on fine dinners at taxpayers’ expense.

Not only that, I had calls from veteran investigative journalists at our papers…both the Tribune and the Union… inspiring me to buck up against the city backlash, to hold firm, and to keep writing. These were reporters I’d never even spoken with before –I would have been too intimidated –so their support was invaluable.

Put the camera down

 

          Good evening, 919 Gang.

 

          TIM WILSON writes:

The last time I stared death in the face it pitted me against my obligations as a journalist and my own moral compass. It also almost got me fired.

          I was assigned to cover the high incidence of motorcycle accidents among young servicemen, who would buy the machines without any training or experience of how to handle them. There were crashes on a regular basis in San Diego, with these young men either hurting themselves badly or dying from their injuries.

          A San Diego Union reporter and I went to the Naval Hospital where the reporter started interviewing servicemen who had been injured in motorcycle accidents. After a few brief interviews we walked backed into the corridor and the reporter asked the physician who had arranged our visit to speak to someone who was severely injured. The doctor walked us down the hallway to a room where he told us before we went in that “This young man might not make it.”

We walked into the room, and the reporter parted the curtains surrounding the man’s bed. He slowly rolled his head towards us from the direction of the window and asked if he could help us. The reporter explained to him the reason for our visit and asked him if it would be OK to ask him a few questions. He agreed and she started to interview him.

          I knew instantly that this man, younger than me by a few years, was not going to live. You could sense his pain at speaking and his acceptance of death was in his eyes. As he spoke, the sadness of that realization came through in his gaze. His eyes were moist with tears that were suspended in time but never falling.

I waited a few moments and then as I started to raise my camera, he looked directly at me and stopped speaking in mid sentence. In that instant, he knew that I knew he wasn’t going to make it. I lowered my camera back down. I could see that he was embarrassed by his condition and hurt at a level much deeper than his physical injuries. Without saying a word, he had asked me to respect his right to die with dignity. I could not take that last bit of control away from him and was ashamed that I had even considered taking his picture.

I quietly packed up my gear as the reporter continued to ask him questions. Then I stood up and the room fell silent. He looked at me again, I said goodbye, wished him luck with his recovery and left, waiting in the hallway for the reporter to finish her interview. A few moments later she came out. She was upset and quietly insisted that I go back in and get a picture for the story. I refused and told her it just wasn’t right to do that.

          She said we were journalists and it was our obligation to tell the truth and sometimes it was very uncomfortable to do that. I told her some things were just too private and this was one of those times. I realized that in that particular instant, I wasn’t a journalist but I was instead an observer who had been invited to watch the end of a very private journey, that at some time we were all going to make. It was his moment, not ours and we had to respect that.

          We drove back to the newspaper in silence and about an hour later, Stan Griffin called me into his office. He told me that regardless of my feelings, we had an obligation to report the news, unbiased and as truthfully as possible. He was very understanding but told me that if I did that again, I could be fired. He said it was not my job to decide what was right or wrong, that it was the reporter’s call. I thanked him for being understanding and walked back over to the photo lab, thinking that if that happened again, I would risk being fired.

          Later that same afternoon, I was told that the young man I refused to photograph had died shortly after we had left the hospital. I remember feeling relieved that his suffering was over and also pleased that in those last moments of his life, there wasn’t a photographic record of his pain. I wanted him to die in peace and with the one thing left that mattered to him, his right to choose to live out the last moments of his life in private.

          To this day, I think I did the right thing refusing to take his picture, yet I can understand the other side of the issue and now believe that the world needs to see some of the horror that swirls around this planet. And the Internet has made sure of that as well as our changing values and policies regarding news reporting. But there is a fine line between the truth and the numbing of our souls. Show too much and soon the truth loses its impact and meaning; show too little and the truth can be hidden at the very instant that it’s most important that we reveal it. It’s a fine line and a choice all of us have had to make at one time or another in our careers.

          The reporter’s words were very powerful and the story had the intended impact. It was a great story and made the public aware of the problem. The story might have been stronger with a photo of the dying man or it may have diluted the story by crossing the line of decency and turning the reader away from the intent of the story. I will never know. And the choice to run the photo or not was the job of the editors, not mine. I knew that.

          But back then it was a different time, I was young and idealistic and I didn’t want to give that choice to anyone else. I was selfish. It was important to me to respect the sanctity of the connection I had with that dying young man. It was deeply personal and really got to me. I felt like I had to protect him. His last moments were something not to be shared with others but reflected on in private and away from the eyes of the public.

 

          REBER: I could not agree more. I read your post this morning. A couple of hours later I watched  film about the life of Gene Wilder. The end of the film spent a lot of time talking about his Alzheimer’s. Lengthy footage showed him sitting in a chair, his memory gone, and no reaction anything around him. That’s not the way I want to remember Gene Wilder, and I’m betting it is not the way he wanted to be remembered.

 

          JIM O’CONNELL writes:

On the last weekday before the Union and Tribune merger I was working as a general assignment reporter for the Union when the cops got a report of a shooting at a defense plant. It turned out a worker allegedly brought a gun to a meeting with a supervisor and when the meeting grew contentious, the boss was shot dead.

While tragic for the families, the incident appeared to hold little mystery, so i'm not sure why I did what I did. Early the next morning I lined up with the mothers and wives and girlfriends of prisoners at the jail and filled out the paperwork to visit the man accused in the shooting the day before.

It would have been unethical and violated newspaper policies to lie about what I was doing there or conceal my connection to the newspaper. but I was never asked and I was under no ethical obligation to volunteer it. To my surprise I was eventually seated at a visitor's desk and the alleged shooter was led in and sat down of the other side o the thick glass and picked up the phone.

"Who the f--- are you?," he asked reasonably, I explained who I was and soon he was telling me that at the meeting with his boss he fell into a trance or dream and wasn't aware of or responsible for whatever happened.

RB Brenner's brilliant editing of the story got it splashed across the top of the metro section on the first Sunday of the merged paper. He had a lot to do with making it a hit. And it was a hit, except with prosecutors who noted that I interviewed the suspect before he talked to a lawyer. I recall a judge called me and the paper's lawyer in for a meeting The invitation suggested I bring my toothbrush in case I was sent to jail. I wasn't, but decades later I still remember the only statement my lawyer authorized me to say regardless of what I was asked: "It iis my pattern and practice to accurately report the news."

 

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          PETE ROWE writes:

News of the untimely deaths of Ray Kipp and Bryce Miller reached Lynn and me while we were visiting Seattle.

On the University of Washington campus, we were dazzled by a grove of cherry trees in full bloom. I was reminded that these blossoms symbolize life -- flourishing for an all-too-brief time but nonetheless beautiful.

Rest in peace Ray, Bryce and all the other departed 919ers, including Doug Hope, an alum of this lovely campus.

 

BARRY BLOOM writes:

I had a friend, Jim Kelley, who wrote his last hockey column, closed the laptop and died from pancreatic cancer that night. I covered the 2009 world series between chemo sessions. Bryce Miller wrote about Conner Joe's cancer battle. He left the Padres for good four days later. This is what we do. It was an honor to know Jim and a honor to know you, Bryce.

 

EMMET PIERCE writes;

Ray Kipp will be missed. He was a joy to work with at theNnewsroom at the Fair. As others have said, he wasn't shy about sticking up for the people he supervised. I always enjoyed our chats.

 

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CARL LARSEN forwards:

A U-T obit:

“Longtime San Diego Union-Tribune employee John Graham Rawlings (“JR”) passed away from cancer on February 28, 2025, at his home in Coronado, California.”

This leaves out what he did at the U-T, but notes his family owned a Colorado paper.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/obituaries/john-rawlings-coronado-ca/

Mystery solved perhaps — read bio at the end, our U-T guy’s Dad?

https://rawlingsfoundation.com/

 

REBER: Does anyone remember this fellow? I had more contact with people in other U-T departments than anyone in the newsroom, and I never heard of him

 

ROGER CONLEE writes:

I'm a couple of days late on this, Jack, but I well remember every name Bob Witty listed a few days ago, since I was on the Tribune back in the '60s before moving on to the Chicago Daily News.

In 1964 when Ronald Reagan was running for California governor, he stopped by the Trib on one of his campaign tours. Hearing that my father had played football with Reagan at Eureka College in Illinois in the 1930s, Larry Sisk let Reagan and me use his office for a private tete-a-tete. That was kind of Mr. Sisk.

The two had played side by side in the Eureka line, my dad as a tackle, Reagan a guard. During our little chat, Reagan said, "Ask your dad about Illinois Wesleyan. Man, they were dirty!"

 

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REBER: A big birthday coming up. Happy Birthday March 29 to Donna Fitts, Bob Laurence and Doug Williams.