Editor’s Note: As I indicated Sunday four weeks ago in the introduction to a series on the importance of the press in making democracy work, there can be no doubt that experience matters. This is the fourth part of a series designed to show how experience matters when it comes to understanding media and politics — and how to make democracy work. It is a very rough first draft of what will eventually be a literary, non-fiction memoir published with ink on paper in book form, to be sold as a print-on-demand book and promoted on the Web.
In case you missed Chapter 1: Musical Chairs and the Summer of ‘79
Or Chapter 2: The Pioneer — To Print or Not to Print
Or Chapter 3: Chapter Three: The Crimson White
 |
| Rod Duren |
| My first mugshot in 1984 |
Chapter Four: The Baldwin Times in Bay Minette
by Glynn Wilson
In the final months of 1983, the Reagan administration authorized a series of military exercises in Honduras that some believed might lead to a full-blown armed conflict with Nicaragua, and then launched Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of the tiny island nation of Grenada in the Caribbean Sea. Reagan had already declared his intention to run for reelection in 1984.
While watching these events unfold on the three television network-news channels then, and reading about them in the mass-circulation daily newspapers of the time — there was no Cable News Network yet, that would not come until 1985 — I packed my belongings into a U-Haul truck and headed south for Bay Minette. My fiancée and I found a small, reasonably priced apartment right in town, just about a mile from The Baldwin Times newspaper office on the courthouse circle in the county seat of Baldwin County, Alabama.
On the first day of January, 1984, an ominous year considering the book title of that name, I took my place in a newsroom as a full-time professional newspaper reporter. Looking back at the history now, I see it was the very same day when the Reagan Justice Department split the nation’s giant telephone monopoly ATnT into 24 independent Bell System units. We would all watch again 22 years later during the Christmas holiday season in 2006 as the Bush Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission put it all back together again, this time run by Southwest Bell out of Texas — Bush country. That will play a major role in the future of the Web Press, as we will see in a later chapter.
But there was no way to predict that in January 1984. I just remember being thrilled and fascinated on my first few days on the job, walking across the street from the newspaper office to explore a small-town courthouse. It is my contention that one of the most important things for young reporters to learn is how to cover the legal system, from arrest and arraignment through indictment and trial. I told these stories often in my nine years of university teaching, although I’m not sure how many of my students were impressed. Only big-time celebrity seems to matter now, in Bush’s America.
There is no doubt that experience would be invaluable later in covering bigger trials, like the federal case against Judge Roy Moore, the Ten-Commandments Judge, and the trials of HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy and former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, for papers such as The Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times.
Symbolically, I think it was also helpful to work in a small town where the courthouse was the center of things, since the heart of American democracy is the ideal that “we are a nation of laws.”
Have you ever noticed that in some cultures in the old-world capitals of Europe, the central architecture might be a mosque, a temple, or a cathedral? Those cities date to a time when the church was the center of all information and power. In newer American cities, developed in the era when big business and capitalism took over U.S. culture at the height of the Industrial Revolution, the tallest buildings at the center of town tend to be owned by banks, insurance companies, utilities or other big-business entities such as the Harbert Center in downtown Birmingham. In most state-capital cities in the U.S., the state house lies at the center of things. But in the small towns of rural America, developed during the height of agricultural society, the courthouse is still at the center of town — and society.
Bay Minette was and is such a place. Before moving there, I never really drank a lot of coffee. But it became part of the ritual of working as a newspaperman. So every morning I would drink a couple of cups of bad coffee with real sugar and artificial creamer — this was well before the Starbucks craze — and scan The Mobile Press, then considered one of the worst daily newspapers in the country. Mobile had two newspapers then, but they were owned by the same company and equally bad. I mean the papers were not only badly written and lazily reported — they were downright ugly. The Press came out in the morning, the Register in the afternoon.
But they would manage to break a story now and then of interest on my beat, so I walked through the back shop every morning where the old printing press used to be and picked up the paper off the asphalt. We considered the Mobile paper competition, and it was, in every sense of the word. They had just started publishing a separate weekly section for distribution only in Baldwin County, a zoned edition like many corporate, chain daily newspapers had started, to try and corner the market on news. The competition was not only for information — “news” — but advertising dollars as well.
The publisher of the Baldwin County papers at that time was a fellow you may have heard of, since he ended up in Congress a few years later. Terry Everett of Enterprise, Alabama, had recently bought up all six of the papers in Baldwin County and started printing them all on an offset press located in the center of the county in a town called Robertsdale. It was a perfect economy of scale, especially in a place where people still valued their local weekly newspapers.
I guess Everett sold off the old printing press in Bay Minette. There was a small antique printing press there at the time, although it’s long gone now. On most mornings, when the phone was not ringing off the hook with news tips or the scanner was not popping with cop news, I would walk across the street and check with the sheriff’s department and the jail docket to see who was arrested the night before. On mornings when the county commission met, I would take my place in the commission chambers and watch the business of the county being conducted. I also checked in often with the district attorney’s office and the clerk’s office to keep up with the legal movements of various court cases of particular interest to the reading public.
When a big, newsworthy trial happened to be underway in the courthouse, it would be possible to stay out of the office for hours at a time, watching the lawyers and judges work on all kinds of cases, criminal and civil.
In those days, especially on Friday afternoons and around holidays, it was possible to sit in the chamber of the chief judge and sip whiskey and smoke. I remember old Judge Harry Wilters puffing on a cigar and telling stories, along with the probate judge, Harry D’Olive, who earned the nickname “the Fiddlin’ Judge” for his fine fiddle playing. I was sad to hear earlier this year that old Judge D’Olive had died.
Their ancestors had their names on all kinds of local landmarks, including buildings and creeks. Thinking about them now, I am recalling a time when non-partisanship and respect for people of opposing views actually meant something. It was a different time. I distinctly remember being impressed when opposing counsel, even Republican and Democratic Party opponents in politics, would shake hands at the end of a trial no matter the outcome. And I can’t help but wonder what kind of a world today’s young people will see after growing up under the regime of the Bush administration, especially the partisan Bush Justice Department, where all pretense of respect for the law and the other side in politics was obliterated in the name of winning at any cost for the big-moneyed interests.
While not the most populous county in Alabama by a long-shot, Baldwin County was a great place to be a cub reporter. It was and is the largest county in the state by land area. It extends more than an hour’s drive from the beaches in the south to the massive delta swamps in the north, and there was always news to cover. When the news slowed down, the city of Mobile was not so very far away across the bay. Then, there was always the Pink Pony Pub and the Flora-Bama Roadhouse Lounge at the beach.
Less than two months after starting the job, a big story fell into my lap. Digging around in the courthouse, I found out the Uniroyal Corporation, a chemical company known more for its automobile-tire-manufacturing division, had filed a lawsuit against two of South Alabama’s most prominent citizens. It seems the company had purchased a small local chemical plant from Jack W. Boykin, a member of the Alabama Ethics Commission, and James H. “Jimmy” Faulkner, the original publisher of The Baldwin Times and a legendary political figure who had a great deal of influence with George C. Wallace — then serving his fourth and last term as governor.
It seems there was a problem with the local chemical plant. It was discovered that toxic discharges from the plant had contaminated a creek, and a group of residents had decided to sue Uniroyal. But the corporate giant decided to sue the local owners who sold them the plant to blame them for the pollution.
Faulkner’s office was right around the corner from the newspaper office, and I had already met him a few times. He was a tall diplomat of a man with fine grey hair, a country-boy friendly manner — and a certain cunning hidden behind the twinkling eyes of a man who knew he had money and power. He had built up a political following through the newspaper for many years, then served in the legislature, finally running for governor but losing in the primary to Wallace in 1958. But he struck up a friendship with Wallace anyway, the “fighting little judge” from a county on the other side of the state’s southern border. It was a relationship that would pay huge dividends for the people of Bay Minette and Baldwin County during the 1960s and ’70s, and especially for Faulkner himself.
Wallace had won his bid for an unprecedented fourth term as governor against all comers in 1982, beating Lt. Gov. George McMillan in a tight Democratic primary race by only one vote per precinct in Alabama’s 67 counties. Faulkner was delighted to have Wallace back in the governor’s mansion, although he probably had just as much influence with former Governor Fob James, who had a house in Gulf Shores and later moved to Magnolia Springs. With Wallace back in power, however, Faulkner figured he would get whatever he wanted for Baldwin County — and for himself.
But on that winter day when I walked around to Faulkner’s office, I would not make his day. I guess he figured it was inevitable for the newspapers to find out about the Uniroyal suit, although I’m sure he expected “sympathetic” coverage from his old newspaper. It seems Faulkner and Boykin had been partners in a chemical plant called Alpine Laboratories. When they found out it was leaching chemicals into a nearby creek, and that a group of citizens planned to sue, they talked Uniroyal into buying the plant. But they neglected to mention to Uniroyal officials that the chemicals leaking from the plant might possibly be declared a potential human-health threat and sicken a number of people.
As I was ushered into his office by his always-attentive and super-friendly and very-southern secretary, Faulkner greeted me warmly, pointed me to a chair, and sat down at his ancient, rosewood desk, always freshly polished to look like new.
He said, with the utmost of respect and no hint of irony in his voice: “What can I do for you today, Mr. Wilson?”
“Well, sir, uh … Mr. Faulkner,” I said. “I just happened to be over at the courthouse today and found out about this lawsuit. The Uniroyal case. And I figured I would have to do some kind of story about it. But I wouldn’t want to write anything without first talking to you, you know, to get your side of it and all.”
Faulkner’s face flushed, first with anger, then fear. He caught himself, gaining his composure before he spoke. He settled on a mildly sad, innocent look.
“Well, Mr. Wilson,” he started. “It’s right interesting that you found out so soon. You’re going to make a fine reporter, I’ll wager. As for the suit, I haven’t prepared a statement yet, but if you’ll give me a little time, we’ll put something together for you.”
Then he continued with a little wink and a nod.
“Just between you and me, off the record, this thing is bogus. Uniroyal is supposed to be making a payment this month to us for half-a-million dollars. This lawsuit is an obvious attempt to get out of paying an honest debt. I don’t expect it to make it to trial, but a suit like this can cause a man an awful lot of trouble. (I found out later the banks froze his assets in case of a lawsuit judgment.) Can you give us until tomorrow on this thing? Of course, we’ll give you our statement first.”
That was Tuesday afternoon, and the paper did not go to press until Wednesday afternoon, so I said there was plenty of time and told him I would call back in the morning. I went back to the office and started reading the details of the lawsuit and writing up a story, which accused Faulkner and Boykin of fraud. An attorney for Faulkner and Boykin issued a statement the next morning including their denial of any knowledge about the contaminated creek and their assessment that Uniroyal was suing to “get out of paying honest debts,” a counter-accusation denied, of course, by Uniroyal’s attorneys.
The next day, The Mobile Press and Register both carried the same story, although their version was far more sympathetically slanted toward the local boys and against Uniroyal, making it sound as if there wasn’t anything to the case. To this day, I don’t know how it came out. I left The Baldwin Times after a year and never saw another word about it in any newspaper. I suspect it was settled out of court and the file sealed from public view, as often happens in corporate civil cases. I don’t think it did much to shake Faulkner’s political and financial empire, however. He continued to thrive.
From that day forward, however, while Faulkner was always outwardly friendly, he never gave me preferential treatment on the release of information again, except for once. It was an important lesson in how people use and abuse each other in politics and the news business, how “favor” is expected, and a prime example of why the independence and freedom of the press in America has eroded to the point where it is today.
People who cover politics are pressured to slant stories in ways that are sympathetic to their sources. If you try to be independent, unbiased, objective, and to “print the news that’s fit to print, without fear or favor,” quite often you are the last person to find out about anything. As they say, “politics makes strange bedfellows.” In the news business, sometimes a more vulgar term should be applied, maybe f— buddies.
By that August I had pretty much locked up the sources in the courthouse and convinced most of the people working there that I was the real reporter in the room, however. I beat the Mobile paper regularly, and even got an offer to jump to TV news from one of the stations out of Mobile. The station offered me a job covering the courthouse for them, since they found themselves regularly making the trip from Mobile to cover stories I had broken in the newspaper. I offered to do a weekly broadcast on goings-on in Bay Minette, but they actually expected me to quit the paper and work for them full time. There was no way I was going to give up on the print-news-writing business to be a “talking head” on TV, even if in the long term, the money would have been much better.
I also enjoyed running the dark room in Bay Minette, and taking great black-and-white photos with that Pentax K1000.
At that time, due to the growth of the beach resort towns of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach in the wake of the post-Hurricane-Frederick building boom, and the growth in crime, it was determined that a third circuit judgeship position was necessary in Bay Minette. Rather than holding a special election to fill the position, the power fell to Governor Wallace to appoint the new judge. And of course who was right there to shout in Wallace’s near-deaf ears? None other than Jimmy Faulkner, who expected to get his way.
Faulkner wanted the new position to go to an attorney named Charles Partin, a conservative in the law firm of Stone, Granade, Partin and Crosby, who also just happened to be one of the attorneys of record in the Uniroyal case. Also in the running for the judge’s position were District Attorney Tom Norton and Gulf Shores Municipal Judge David Whetstone, both with solid Democratic credentials and with their own connections to Wallace.
The lobbying was obviously fierce, and Wallace was evidently having a hard time making up his mind. A few days later, I wrote the shortest lead I’ve ever written for a newspaper, based on what I was told by Wallace’s long-time personal aide, Elvin Stanton.
I asked Stanton on the phone in Montgomery what Wallace said.
My lead was:
“Give me another day,” said Gov. George C. Wallace.
After reading that, Stanton told me later, Wallace threw his copy of The Baldwin Times down in the governor’s office in the old, historic Capitol Building in Montgomery — and ran over it again and again with his wheel chair.
As the suspense continued to build on the appointments, Faulkner called me into his office one day, the Uniroyal story seemingly forgiven if not forgotten, and swore me to secrecy. He said I could not use his name, but I could do a story saying Partin was to be named to the judge’s position. He even told me the day and time the announcement was going to be made. I tried to confirm the information with Wallace’s appointments point man, Charles Carr. He would neither confirm nor deny it, but made no effort to hold me back from printing the story.
On Thursday, August 16, 1984, we ran the story as the lead story, quoting “a source close to the governor,” with a banner headline: “Partin likely to get judgeship.”
I guess that story pissed off Wallace too, because guess what? Faulkner did not get his way. Partin did not get the judgeship. Faulkner’s influence with the governor was obviously on the wane. Norton, the District Attorney, got the judgeship, and Whetstone got the D.A.’s job — giving Wallace two appointments in one. To the victor go the spoils, as the old saying goes.
Faulkner also died in August this year. We ran his obit here.
I had a lot of fun in my first year in the news game. But I also saw some things go down that made me begin to question the integrity of the whole business. As I indicated in an earlier chapter in the story about how freedom of the press depends on who owns the printing presses, that was true of Everett’s papers. The fact is that money and personal relationships often determine the direction news coverage takes. It’s not always the pure enterprise that editors and publishers want you to believe it is, as demonstrated by this story.
During the 1984 Congressional elections, Mobile Republican Jack Edwards was retiring from the House of Representatives after twenty years on Capitol Hill. He picked as his replacement a conservative Democrat-turned-Republican, Sonny Callahan, whose experience was in the trucking business. Somewhere along the line, Callahan and Everett struck up a friendship.
Callahan agreed to spend a significant amount of money on advertising in the newspapers in Baldwin County — in exchange for sympathetic news coverage and the editorial endorsement of the newspapers. Of course if given the opportunity, Callahan and Everett would deny this. If their vocabulary were broad enough, they might say there was no “quid pro quo,” or no “tit-for-tat” exchange. But the evidence was overwhelming, enough to make the most hardened newsman cringe.
The week before the election in November, over the objection (albeit weak-kneed) of the entire editorial board of all six Gulf Coast Media newspapers, Everett wrote the lead editorial that ran in all six papers. He endorsed Callahan for congress. Frank McRight, the Democratic Party’s nominee, was considered to be a much better man by most of the news staff — but Everett owned the press.
The most embarrassing aspect of the episode, to me, was this. On the same day the endorsement editorial ran, Callahan had paid for an eight-page tabloid-sized advertising insert, which was part of the papers that day. Not only did Everett benefit from the advertising revenue in exchange for his editorial — he also held the printing contract for the insert. It just goes to show you the extent to which the press can be bought.
Everett sold the papers for about $3 million a couple of years later to Worrell Enterprises, a chain of small papers based in Virginia that had been started by a former FBI agent. He moved back to his native Enterprise, Alabama. In 1992, he ran for Congress against George Wallace Jr., financing his campaign largely out of his own pocket. He won, handing the junior Wallace his first political defeat.
It just goes to show you that sometimes big money in politics is more important than a big name, especially in a conservative district in a southern state where George Herbert Walker Bush liked to go fishing — and George W. Bush partied in 1972.
On the very day the Callahan ad-and-endorsement editorial ran in the papers, according to a diary I kept of the time, I went to Mobile to pick up my fiancée from work at the Riverview Plaza. I was so sick to be working for a corrupt publisher like Everett that I started hitting the Scotch pretty heavily that afternoon. As I often did on my trips to downtown Mobile, I would order a Scotch and sip it in the hotel lobby while listening to the sweet jazz from the piano player, tinkling the keys of that big grand piano in the lobby bar with utmost delicacy.
Most of the time I associate that sound and the feeling from booze with happy times. But I recall on that day feeling a profound sadness. All the idealistic notions I had heard and felt about the newspaper business began to dissolve that day, like the rocks in that glass full of Scotch whiskey.
I had already learned one lesson about how people with power and influence would corrupt the news business. Now I was confronted with another in what would become a long line of transgressions that would eventually lead me to abandon the newspaper business altogether, first for business, then academe — and ultimately the Web Press.
I could not quit that day, though. As a poor man who needed the work, surviving on a newspaperman’s salary, I sat there sipping that smooth Scotch and began to consider trying to find another newspaper to work for. Perhaps it was time to make the move to a daily paper. Maybe there, I thought, I would find men of honor in the newspaper business.
The stories for 1984 were not yet over, however, so my spirit as a reporter lived on. There are other stories I could tell, but for the first draft Web version of this story, I’ll wrap up with this episode about how I learned to “work” sources.
One summer day in 1984, an officer with the National Guard came to see me at the newspaper office. He had a press release about a planned military exercise along the Gulf of Mexico coast. Each year, the Guard would team up with other branches of the military and pretend to repel a mock invasion by Soviet forces along the coast. But due to the increasing tension between the Reagan administration and the Socialist government of Nicaragua run by the Ortega brothers, the exercises became part of Big Pine II, which I learned was preparation for a full-scale U.S. invasion of Central America.
The officer, I believe he was a sergeant, hinted that was part of the plan, but it wasn’t in the press release and he was not supposed to tell me. He did it with a wink and a nod. I don’t think he expected me to print it. But, he didn’t say it was “off the record.” That weekend, along with a photo essay of feature photos from the exercises, I printed it anyway in the weekend edition of all six papers.
I don’t know if he got into trouble for that breach. I never heard from him again. But I would watch with interest as the war in Central America grew into the Iran-Contra scandal over the next few years. I got a few more pieces of that story before it was all over, when a small-time grocery-store owner in Priceville, Alabama, near Decatur, would become famous for his role in shipping arms to the Contras.
Check back next week to see the next installment in the story.
