Traditionally, Sunday is a gift from TV news to people in my line of work, a “slow news day.” Barring catastrophic events, weekend assignment editors are amenable to covering stories that would never make the weeknight news, provided the event features action and color. The weekend folks back at the station have a news hole to fill on Sunday without much breaking news coming from business or government to fill the gaping news hole with.
Same thing goes for holidays. There’s less going on, but the same news hole needing to be filled.
Back in my old life–the one I was living before this all started out on Davey Wiggins Road–I would sift through clients’ cultures, traditions, recipe books and family trees for Sunday news feature possibilities to help weekend editors help me.
But never, until that Sunday when Louie Ferguson and his wife showed up at the House of the Lord, had two reporters from the same station competed to cover a Sunday “story” of mine.
The first was the veteran Louie Ferguson, who came out to the House of the Lord on his own time.
Then came Justin, an independent. With camera on his shoulder, in sweatshirt and cutoffs, he poked his head into the sanctuary as the strains of the closing hymn faded. I walked him out into the vestibule quickly, before he offended the worshippers with his inappropriate attire.
I called up my prissiest bearing. “How may I help you?”
“I read the Chronicle story about how this preacher was trashed at that school board meeting,” Justin said. “I called my desk and they said to see what I could do with the story for tonight. So I’m here to talk to the main preacher man.”
As Louie and Linda emerged from the sanctuary, Louie spotted Justin, but kept moving with the exiting throng.
I was still shadowing Justin when, moments later, the phone vibrated. Louie Ferguson was calling to tell me he was heading back to the station.
“That Justin is one warped ignoramus, Nina. Everything he touches is sarcastic. I think he’s going to screw up the story here, with his cheap brand of irony. That would be unconscionable, Nina, and you know it. I’m going to pull this story out from under him. A story like this doesn’t come along very often.”
I said I knew that; otherwise, would I be working pro bono, way out of my normal orbit? “Well, we’re on the same wavelength. I want to tell you something, Nina. I don’t know what’s going on here, but if you and Foster Adamson …”
“Foster …”
“Oh, come on, Nina. I saw Foster. That’s what tipped me that something big is going on.”
“Well, it is, Louie.”
“I believe you. He sure seems to be the real deal. The image that comes to my mind is that man standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square. I hope whatever his agenda is, or whoever’s agenda it in play, is worth the risk to that preacher. Got to go now. Here’s our exit.”
I snapped the phone closed; startled to realize that Louie was racing to the station, frantic mission to seize the Joshua Evans story.
What Louie implied about Joshua being in danger was ominous; after all, Louie knew about the dark side of politics and power. But knowing that Louie was getting involved personally, actually racing to the studio, was exhilarating because it was completely out of character.
Whatever happened back in the newsroom, I never found out. Louie’s face-off at the television station fell under the heading of things I wanted to know but was too busy to look into.
But I know the outcome. The station aired two segments that Sunday night, an odd lineup even for a slow Sunday.
One featured the Reverend Joshua Evans as a long-established community leader in an often-overlooked pocket in far northeast Houston. He was a hard-working city employee. Louie reported that segment.
Justin’s piece was about the state rep race in which there were two write-in candidates. Justin dubbed them “the trailer-park mogul and the preaching garbage man.”
He had footage of Joshua Evans in the pulpit, appar¬ently shot through the back door of the church sanctuary before I knew he was there. The footage was wonderful; the pastor looked and sounded authentic and fatherly.
The trailer-park mogul, that is to say Stan, could not be reached for comment and thus did not appear in Justin’s report. All we saw was the trailer park. Justin must have set his camera on a tripod in order to jump in front of the camera to report “live from the trailer-park home of Stan Deleon, the other write-in candidate vying to beat the odds in an election contest that’s weird, even for Houston.”
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