I tell my students we never know when a story will hit us. One hit me today. Actually, many have hit me, but few, if any, resonate quite so personally. This one does.
As with so many of our own stories, this one has its origin in the similarity to someone else’s story.
I was reading about several photographers, now each in their nineties, and the great, though largely unheralded, in our time, contributions they made to history—both to their field and to our culture.
The article was in Berkshire magazine. It profiled four photographers—two women—who, in a pre-digital, pre-cell, pre-device era, was a craft everyone couldn’t “just do.”
Sure, there were those who “snapped” photos, but there were others who learned the process of how to do it right.
They cared that the outcome was accomplished in a certain “way,” that it reflected the pride of the person behind the lens.That required imagination. It took care. The major lesson it can teach us is how to reflect.
It recognized that the work wasn’t only for this time. It might, just might, be for all time.
Imagine.
There once were those who not only knew the process, but thought about it. They had a vision. They could see the story before others saw it as a story.
They imagined it in their heads.
I knew one of them. I was privileged to work with and learn from him.
His name was Paul Pappas. He was my mentor, in journalism and in life.
I thought of him today because my father passed away, recently, at age 94.
Paul was like a second father to me. He passed away the first year I began university teaching.
He could be an unpleasant man. But he taught me that wasn’t the measure of a man.
Care
Like my father, Paul cared about the work he did. It was never enough for either of them to leave the job behind at the end of a long day. They took it with them.
There is such a thing as caring too much. There’s also such a thing as not caring enough.
Paul could have had it easier. First, he didn’t need a wet-behind- the ears, fresh from radio twenty-something who knew next to nothing about the medium Paul helped create when film was king and video hadn’t even been imagined.
In radio, I worked to master words. Pictures were never a consideration. In television, I had to learn it the other way around. It was like learning a new language (and high school French was not my forte.)
In my first television job, the station management thought it would be a great idea to pair me with Paul.
It didn’t seem so to me.
For one, I truly disliked this man, much the way any child, at some point, dislikes a parent who tells him or her that he or she isn’t doing things the right way.
Paul did that. Repeatedly.
To start, some days he would refuse to shoot my “standup,” the part of the story where I appeared on-camera, until I knew where and why it “fit” into the story I was trying to tell.
That, of course, meant I needed to know the story I was trying to tell. And, often, I did not.
More than once, when we were on-location, he stopped shooting, packed the camera in the news car’s trunk, and announced “we’re done.”
When I’d argue, he’d say something like “learn to get it right,” offering some abrupt advice, and then, still insisting that, for this day, I was done.
I thought, at the time, it was because he disliked me.
I was wrong.
He cared.
After weeks of being reminded by Paul that I knew nothing about television news, I whined, complained, and made it clear to my station’s management that I didn’t want to work with him.
Their response: you need to work with him. They were right. They might have added “and he needs to work with you.”
I needed to learn. And in ways he didn’t realize, he needed to teach.
Teach
We tend to think of teachers as those who occupy a classroom. It’s easy to overlook that the most effective teachers don’t have that occupation listed on their tax returns.
Paul was a teacher.
And I had a lot to learn, both about journalism and about my teacher.
For starters, I didn’t know that this gruff, inconsiderate, and angry man was also a big part of journalism history.
He never told me. I never asked.
I could have had no way of knowing that one day in the future I would tell his story in front of hundreds of students—the story that was in the textbooks I used for my courses. Little did I know then how little the textbooks knew, even now.
Paul Pappas, I learned in time, had gone to jail. He called it, modestly, his “case.” He only talked about it when someone brought it up, albeit reluctantly. Even then, he would minimize his role in the historic Branzburg v. Hayes case that worked its way all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The issue was reporter’s privilege—the right to withhold from authorities confidential information that is revealed during the process of news gathering. It eventually took the form of “shield laws” in some, though not all, of the United States. Sadly, it’s still not a federal law.
In Paul’s instance, he was granted access to a Black Panther headquarters in New Bedford, MA in 1972, on the condition that he wouldn’t reveal its location.
When authorities learned that he knew the location, Paul was brought into court and told to reveal his sources, as well as the exact location of the Panthers’ headquarters.
He refused.
Paul was unaware, at the time, that there were two other journalists—Paul Branzburg and Earl Caldwell—who had taken a similar stand, different circumstances, same principle.
Frankly, knowing Paul as I came to know him, if he had, it wouldn’t have made a difference.
He made his own choice.
Journalism wasn’t free. It came with a price, one way or another.
Paul never sought to be a teacher, but he became one, teaching by example.
1981. After what seemed to be an eternity of enduring his criticism, wrath, and condescension, I basically ignored him. On this day, Paul and I were in the waiting room of Providence RI’s then postmaster general, Harry Kazerian.
He was an old acquaintance of Paul’s. It was a large club, as Paul often reminded me.
We were waiting outside Harry’s office to interview him; Paul was reading a magazine.
I heard a voice.
“You know, Mister, you’re pretty good.” It was Paul.
“Excuse me,” I remarked, figuring he couldn’t be talking to me.
Without looking up, the great man, who I did not know to be the great man, repeated, “you’re pretty damned good.”
That was, as they say, the turning point. I didn’t know it then. I know it now.
Paul was giving me his approval and, not knowing it, his permission to keep doing this damned thing called journalism.
It was not based upon a single accomplishment, but perseverance and progress.
I, the pupil, had shown him, the teacher, that I cared to get it right, that I thought about how to do the story before forging ahead just to get it done.
Apparently, I had impressed “Paulie,” as I would later be allowed to call him (though few were), when he and I had covered Pope John Paul’s visit to Boston.
On that day, he had warned me that I had only one chance to get it right, meaning my standup as the Pope passed behind me during the papal procession.
Fuck it up, I recalled him saying, and you have nothing. You can’t do it over.
He taught. I learned.
One chance.
Don’t fuck it up.
Scared to disappoint the man who I had heretofore loathed, I did it.
Once.
Got it right.
One take.
I didn’t know I could do that. I still don’t know how I did it. The words I spoke escape me, but I remember this: I didn’t want our feud, mine and Paul’s, to go on.
He nodded, saying nothing.
Getting It Right
1982. The Claus von Bulow trial in Newport, R.I. It was the first nationally televised trial. The details are readily available: Danish socialite is accused of killing heiress wife for money and mistress.
Paul and I covered it together. By then, we were talking.
It wasn’t far from our house then, so Paul would pick me up in the news car on the way to the courthouse. We’d sometimes have breakfast first.
It was our routine, for months, that is, until it wasn’t.
Finally, the trial ended. The jurors began deliberating.
That’s when the “pool” system—the lottery that determined who would shoot that day’s court proceedings—decided who the one photographer shooting the verdict would be.
It was not a small decision. Whoever shot the verdict was recording history for millions of people. Even in the pre-Internet world, it would be broadcast and shared by hundreds of news organizations world-wide.
Paul got the nod.
He deliberated in our kitchen that morning of the verdict. Where should he focus? On the defendant? On the jury foreman? On the family of the victim?
He seemed, uncharacteristically, undecided.
We talked about it in the news car on the way to the courthouse.
He actually asked my advice. Me.
I mumbled something like “just get it right.” There are no second chances.
He had taught me and taught me well.
Paul focused on the defendant, Claus von Bulow’s, reaction, as the guilty verdict was delivered.
It resonated throughout the world. He got it right.
My piece, which he shot, did also. I got it right, the first time.
Teacher and student, united.
Years later, when I became a professor, Paul was generous with his time, talking to my students for their term papers in media law.
He was, uncharacteristically, talkative.
What he never told them was how much he cared about every story, not just the “big” ones. He never showed it, but he cared.
He cared. Big time.
Reflect
I remember the time when the wind chill was well below zero and a beached whale was at death’s door. After staying in the bone-chilling cold with Paul for an hour, I relented, retreating into the news car.
Paul stayed. He didn’t want to miss the story, especially the rescue, when rescuers arrived.
He caught the moment when the whale was pulled from the ocean, just as he had the sinking of the Andrea Doria in 1956. Yes, he caught that, on film, too. If you’ve ever seen it, you’ve seen Paul’s historic work.
On this day, I thought he might have pushed it too far. He was breathing hard and turning pale—not good for a man his age who had survived open heart surgery too few years before.
“Damn it, old man, you’re going to die with that camera on your shoulder,” I yelled in his face.
“That’s exactly the way I’m going to die,” he told me.
He did. Not on that day, but not long after.
He was photographing an everyday car accident, neither historic nor memorable.
It was at the end of his work day and he went out to shoot it before heading home.
Paul died of a heart attack, his video camera on his shoulder, just as he predicted.
His legacy did not.
It lives on in the hundreds of students he never met, the ones I’ve taught. The ones I will soon teach.
Thank you, Paulie.
I’d like to think they, too, will eventually get it right.
It takes time. But you knew that.