Misadventures in Journalism

By H.B. Koplowitz

From the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City to the 1995 O.J. Simpson trial of the century in Los Angeles, gonzo journalist H.B. Koplowitz explores the oxymoron of "journalism ethics" in this anthology of seven New Journalism stories. He also goes on an ill-fated media junket to Washington, D.C.; walks on fire; stakes out a media stakeout; tries to "seduce" a source; and slips over to the other side to become a patronage flack.

Koplowitz has been a reporter, editor, publicist, educator and author who has written two books -- "Carbondale After Dark" and "Blackspanic College" -- and ghostwrote a third for an Illinois governor who did not go to prison. This is his first ebook.

• Language: English
• Publisher: H.B. Koplowitz
• Release date: Dec 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301390656

H.B. Koplowitz

H.B. Koplowitz is a journalist and writer who lives in Florida. He was born in Carbondale, Illinois, and attended Southern Illinois University, where he edited the campus newspaper and started a campus magazine. After graduating with a degree in journalism in 1977, he worked at an alternative weekly in Springfield, Illinois, then returned to Carbondale to report for his hometown daily newspaper. He was living in Buckminster Fuller's dome home when he self-published "Carbondale After Dark" in 1982. He became a regional correspondent for the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" and earned a master's degree in Public Affairs Reporting at the University of Illinois-Springfield, where he interned as a statehouse reporter. He became a public information officer for a state agency and ghostwrote a book for an Illinois governor who did not go to prison. In 1996 he moved to Los Angeles, where he became a columnist for an entertainment weekly, an editor at the legendary City News Service, and a teacher at a community college in South-Central Los Angeles, which inspired his second book, "Blackspanic College," self-published in 2009. In 2012 he issued his first ebook, "Misadventures in Journalism," an anthology of New Journalism stories that examine the oxymoron of journalism ethics.

Book preview

Misadventures in Journalism

Journalism Ethics & Other Oxymorons

H.B. Koplowitz

Dome Publications

Misadventures in Journalism

by H.B. Koplowitz

Copyright © 2012 H.B. Koplowitz

Dome Publications

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

GOP Convention photo by John Barry.

Thanks again to

Deb, Bonnie, Gary, Matt, Jim & Melissa.

hbkoplowitz.com

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

My Checkered Career in Journalism

The Rubbish and the Rubies - 1976

The Great Washington, D.C., Fiasco - 1977

Firewalking for Dumbos -1984

Staking Out a Stakeout - 1985

The Seduction of Andrew - 1986

Fair and Loathing - 1987

48 Hours at Camp O.J. - 1995

Extra

Preface

From the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City to the 1995 O.J. Simpson trial of the century in Los Angeles, gonzo journalist H.B. Koplowitz explores the oxymoron of journalism ethics in this anthology of seven New Journalism stories. He also goes on an ill-fated media junket to Washington, D.C.; walks on fire; stakes out a media stakeout; tries to seduce a source; and slips over to the other side to become a patronage flack.

Koplowitz has been a reporter, editor, publicist, educator and author who has written two books — Carbondale After Dark and Blackspanic College — and ghostwrote a third for an Illinois governor who did not go to prison. This is his first ebook.

Misadventures in Journalism is also a multimedia ebook, enhanced with color, hyperlinks, audio and video that is only available at the author’s website. You can get a text-only version from the major ebook distributors, but if you are going to read this on a computer or laptop, color Nook or Kindle, tablet, smartphone or other mobile device, especially an iPad, you can experience Misadventures in Journalism as the author intended — and strike a blow for independent media — by checking out the enhanced edition at the author’s website.

The enhanced ebook is an epub3 file, which is a new and improved version of the epub (Nook) or mobi (Kindle) file that can include multimedia and Internet links, like a Web page. Compared to DVD-sized ebooks that read like video games, epub3 is a mere nickelodeon, a pop-up book for adults. But compared to conventional ebooks, it’s the difference between silent movies and talkies.

Even though Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Google and others make devices that can play multimedia, none has adopted the new ebook standard because it’s snarled up in the larger battle over who will control the digital book business. At present, the only app that will play the multimedia in an epub3 file is Apple iBooks, which runs only on mobile devices, like iPads or iPhones, that have the Apple iOS operating system.

Misadventures in Journalism is also being issued as an enhanced pdf file that can be viewed on most computers and mobile devices except black and white Nooks and Kindles. It is similar to the epub3 version except some of the audio and video in the epub3 is embedded, while all the multimedia in the pdf version is hyperlinked to a webpage. The bottom line is that consumers are being denied access to the next generation of ebooks.

Misadventures in Journalism was written to be read, and it barely scratches the surface of what the new format can do. Whichever version you read, please post a review, and urge ebook distributors to put aside their differences and adopt the new standard.

Until the computer age, freedom of the press was only available to those with printing presses. The Internet allowed anyone with a modem to tweet, blog and pontificate to a global audience. Today, ebook readers and tablets have freed authors from the stranglehold of elite literary agents and giant publishing houses, enabling more writers to compete in the marketplace of ideas.

To find out more about the enhanced Misadventures in Journalism and H.B. Koplowitz’s other writings, or to comment on his blog, visit the author’s website at hbkoplowitz.com.

Introduction: My Checkered Career in Journalism

I loved journalism, but journalism didn’t love me. That’s been my excuse over the years for not rising higher in my chosen profession. That and names.

I’ve been a reporter, freelancer, editor, author, publicist and teacher in small, medium and big cities. I also self-published two books and ghostwrote a third for an Illinois governor who did not go to prison. But a close look at my resume reveals some gaps.

I was born and raised in the small Southern Illinois college town of Carbondale. After graduating from high school in 1969, I briefly attended UCLA before dropping out to protest the war in Vietnam, which in my case meant hitchhiking cross-country and smoking pot. Eventually I limped home and my parents agreed to pay for my education at Southern Illinois University.

It was during the heady post-Watergate days of 1975, and as a 25-year-old college student, I had a promising start in journalism, founding a campus magazine, nonSequitur, and becoming student editor of the Daily Egyptian campus newspaper. I was even selected outstanding grad by the school’s journalism fraternity, to which I did not belong.

My first job out of college was with the Illinois Times, an alternative weekly in Springfield, the state capital. I accepted an offer to become a staff writer, but once I’d relocated, the editor said the writing position had been filled, although he had another opening for someone to deliver the newspapers. Occasionally he let me do a story, and I quickly proved the wisdom of his decision to make me a deliveryman. When I wrote about the University of Illinois in Champagne [sic], he said journalism is about precision, and that misspelling Champaign was not just imprecise but embarrassing.

But eventually the editor made me a staff writer, and I did well enough to get hired by my hometown daily newspaper, the Southern Illinoisan, first as a feature writer and later as a county beat reporter. In what would become a pattern, I was a hit with readers but unable to get along with editors. My writing was first-rate, but my work habits were slovenly. I wasn’t a people person, networker, glad-hander or corporate climber. I was a wannabe syndicated columnist stuck covering school board meetings.

The first time I got in trouble at the SI, I was working at the Murphysboro bureau, seven miles from the Carbondale office, and not happy to be covering the Murphysboro Apple Festival. After observing the annual apple seed flicking contest, in which kids took apple seeds between their fingers and thumbs and whoever flicked the seeds the farthest won prizes, I went back to the office and wrote a story that began:

A 16-year-old Murphysboro boy shot his seed 16 feet last night, and the Apple Queen was so stunned she fainted. But seriously folks … I added a couple of carriage returns and then wrote the story straight, saying the teen flicked his seed 16 feet, and nobody passed out.

It was pre-Internet days, so I put my hard copy in a basket to be teletyped to Carbondale the next morning by a sweet older woman who for some reason I thought would appreciate my pun. The next morning I came straggling in, late as usual, and when I asked her if she liked my little joke, her disconcerting reply was what joke?

I immediately called a friend on the desk in Carbondale and told him to delete the bogus story from the computer system and I’d resend a cleaned-up version. I figured nobody would notice, but a few minutes later I got a call from the city editor, who apparently wasn’t much of a punster either, because he wanted to know what happened to that story about the Apple Queen fainting. He said he’d pitched the story during the editors’ morning meeting and that it was slated for the front page.

While working at the SI and living in Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome home, I wrote and self-published Carbondale After Dark, an illustrated anthology of history, essays and short stories about my hometown in the 1960s and ’70s. The book was a success, by small-town standards, but it also cost me the coveted Carbondale beat at the SI. The editor told me there was concern that my book might make me appear biased. In other words, researching and writing about a subject disqualified me from reporting on the same