A lesson in journalism

Mark Henderson died Sunday.
I shouldn't be surprised, I knew it was coming. Not like Amy Winehouse I-knew-it-was-coming, but he had terminal cancer and had been told his days were numbered.
But I had something to give Mark, and I hadn't gotten around to it.

In April, a publisher asked me to write a book called The Afterlife Survey. It's a sampling of a bunch of different peoples' views on the afterlife, loosely hinged on a Pew Forum survey that said 74 percent of Americans believed in an afterlife.
They wanted a sample chapter from me immediately. This was a great opportunity, but had come at the wrong time -- I'd just been offered, and accepted, a perfect job back in my home state. I was getting ready to move, getting my house ready to sell, mentally preparing myself for a new job with new duties. But I knew it was too good an opportunity to pass up.
And I knew if anyone could bail me out, it was Mark. We were acquaintances. Facebook friends. Introduced by my sister a few years before when he was chaplain of the hospital she worked at. We had similar political views and both liked to talk -- she thought we'd hit it off.
We never really got to know each other well. We had one of those twenty-first century electronic acquaintanceships.
But I knew Mark had beat serious cancer a few years ago only to recently have it come back. I knew he was a minister, with a master's in divinity from Boston University, who had some intriguing views on religion. I knew that if anyone had some serious beliefs about an afterlife and would be willing to share them in a completely out of the blue request by someone he didn't know that well, it would be Mark.
And I was right. Not only did he say yes, but he embraced the idea.
I knew he was once again dealing with cancer, and he told me that is was terminal.
And he said, "So the idea of addressing questions about the nature of the 'apres vie' is not only something that I'd love to do as an intellectual exercise, drawing on my years of reflection/reading on the subject combined with my fairly vast experience dealing with death and dying, but something that is immediate and personal. I really see this wonderful coincidence as an opportunity to leave something of a legacy behind."

Some friends were stunned that I'd asked him. Wasn't it a little inappropriate? A little insensitive?
But that's what we do as journalists. We ask questions other people don't, or won't, and hopefully get some answers.
Not only did I know Mark would be okay with me asking, but I also thought, what kind of afterlife book would it be if I didn't survey someone staring down death's barrel?
And to top it off, it turns out that he was no longer a minister. He was now an atheist and didn't believe there was an afterlife.
He definitely had to be in the book.
So I sent my surveys out. Forty or 50 or so. I put an early deadline on them, hoping to get enough back to start writing the book.
The day before the deadline, in early May, I got an email from Mark. He wasn't doing so great and while he was still committed to taking part, didn't think he could make the deadline.
No problem, I emailed back. Take your time. If you're too weak to answer the questions, write out an essay based on them or something. Anything. Whatever you want.
I didn't hear back.
The days passed, my June 15 deadline for finishing the book neared, and still nothing from Mark.
I'd received a lot of great survey responses. Poignant, thoughtful. Some laugh-out-loud-funny. From people who practiced religion and people who didn't. From fundamentalist Christians and from atheists. A priest, a rabbi, a funeral director.
But I really, really wanted that survey from the guy who was dying, and knew there was nothing beyond that.
So in early June, after a lot of back and forth in my head about whether I really should, and checking Facebook to make sure he'd had recent posts so was still, presumably, healthy, I emailed him again. I apologized profusely if it was a bad time for him, but said I knew how much he wanted to take part. I wanted to be sure he knew I still wanted to have him.
But I didn't get an answer. I resigned myself to not having him, to the fact he was too sick, and this project just wasn't a priority.
But three days before the deadline, he answered. He'd been in the hospital -- his wife had been told he wouldn't make their anniversary (which was, in a jolting coincidence, the day I'd emailed him).
He didn't think he could answer the survey in writing -- he was having too much trouble focusing because of his meds. But he was willing to do it over the phone.
So the morning before the book was due, I got up early, brewed a pot of coffee, and gave him a call.
I'd assured him it would take half an hour, tops. We were on the phone for two hours.
And he was funny and articulate. He made sense. He was reasoned and passionate.
And he talked about measuring the days. How he'd rented a TV series, thinking he'd seen the whole thing, only to be find out part six was coming out Aug. 6. .
"And I wonder, 'will I be around to see it?' It gives me something to shoot for." And he said that with a laugh. And it struck me -- this is a guy who honestly doesn't know if he will be alive Aug. 6.
And while everyone trots out that tired old cliche about living each day like it is your last, the reality of it never really struck me until that moment.
And yet Mark could laugh about it.


I realized at the time it was the best interview I'd ever had in my 30 years in journalism -- someone who was being completely honest, opening his heart and his guts, making sure that I understood his point.
As a reporter, I've always favored the conversational interview technique, rather than the firing questions technique. So Mark and I had a long conversation. And he blew me away.
He was excited about the book. He felt it was his legacy. He felt he'd been given a big opportunity to say something. That it was a wonderful coincidence that my opportunity and his opportunity collided.
I dedicated the book to him and made plans to send him an early bound galley. I didn't tell him about the dedication, I wanted it to be a surprise.
I couldn't wait for him to see it. Couldn't wait to unveil the big surprise.
And then my sister sent me a simple text today: "Mark H. died yesterday."
I won't insult him further by saying he's "up there" somewhere, seeing all this play out and appreciating the role he played.
But if I've learned anything, it's this: Journalism is a funny thing.
A bunch of barely qualified talking heads on TV can inflame a nation about a woman (one of thousands every year) who may or may not have killed her child. Where people running for president of the United States can't get their simple facts right, but no one seems to think it matters and no one holds their feet to the fire on it.
Where if something can't be said in 146 characters, it's not really worth listening to.
It's not a world where many people will pay attention to the thoughts, given over a two-hour interview, of a dying man musing on the nature of god, an afterlife, and humanity in general.
Mark scoffed when I said what he was doing was noble. He said noble had nothing to do with it. There was nothing courageous about it. But this was all he had. There was nothing left. And he wanted to go out of this world being understood.
He didn't know me that well. We'd had one long, beer-fueled night talking a few years ago. Some back and forths on Facebook since.
But he knew I'm a journalist, so he trusted me to get it said.
I hope I did him justice.
And if any of us need a reminder about what journalism is -- I know I do these days -- that is it.

Vapidly ever after...

People love a fairytale. I don't have to elaborate on why -- we all know it's got to do with our fantasies being a lot more fun and pleasant than reality in a lot of cases.
But the problem is, the fairytale is the template for reality.
Take, for instance, the recent royal wedding. The amount of excitement this generated was way beyond anything that the tale of two young people -- much richer and, at least in the girl's case, better looking than anyone deserves to be -- getting married should generate.
The gushing cliches that accompanied it, not only from magazines that you'd expect that kind of thing from, but from TV news, newspapers, and other mainstream news sources, were nausea-inducing.
This all came to mind again this week when I was thumbing through People magazine and came across the incredibly substance-less, trite and downright bizarre when you think about it story of the "fairytale" engagement of Kim Kardashian, famous for simply being famous, and NBA star Kris Humphries.
The whole thing was "a dream come true"!
The 20-plus-carat ring brings this line from People: Kardashian had "long dreamed of the perfect man -- and the perfect ring"!
They had an engagement party that rivaled a state dinner to celebrate Kim's "Cinderella moment" (People's words, not mine). This was chronicled over several pages in the magazine, complete with photos of the proposal being spelled out in rose petals on the living room rug and the "princess themed" cake that cost thousands of dollars.
Now, I know it's People magazine and not The New Yorker. But I'd say People mirrors our attitudes as a society a whole lot more than probably any other popular publication.
And so, there we have it: a very rich young lady who is a "reality show" star with a B-list famous late dad (OJ Simpson lawyer Robert Kardashian) and B-list famous step dad (Olympian Bruce Jenner) and an NBA star.
They've known each other since November so they "took the right amount of time and made sure it was right," according to Kardashian.
He asked her step-father's permission to marry her.
She has "always dreamed of a big wedding" so will "do something really over-the-top."
Now a lot of people may be saying, "Yeah, so? Sounds really romantic to me."
And that's the issue -- we are programmed to think all this is just great. Particularly women.
"Every little girl dreams of being a princess and marrying a handsome prince."
I heard that phrase so many times before, during, and after the royal wedding I was ready to go looking for a prince and princess and stick of TNT.

And Kardashian. Cinderella? Guess again. More like one of the stepsisters -- rich, privileged, and entitled.
He asks her dad for her hand. Why? She's a grown woman.
Oh, but it's so romantic.
And she's dreamed of such a perfect engagement.
How about teaching little girls, and bigger ones for that matter, and maybe even the fellas, that instead of dreaming of weddings, spelling out proposals in rose petals, pretending to be princesses, we dream of a perfect marriage with equal partners who discuss their values, expectations and yes, dreams, before taking the plunge. 
The guy asks the dad for her hand instead of the two adults sitting down and discussing -- seriously -- what kind of life they expect to have with each other.
Every girl dreams of being a princess.
And that's the problem. No one dreams of a perfect marriage. Just the engagement. Just the wedding.
All that hype the royal wedding got never talked about the royal marriage, except maybe to speculate on where they would live. How about girls dreaming of being strong, independent people who know what they want out of life and achieving it on their own merits?
So the Kardashian story is another example of  the fluff and superficiality that we like to base our beliefs on.
Cliches carry so much more weight than looking at something realistically, logically, and pragmatically.
And it carries over to the way we view the world around us.
People running for office mouth cliches that mean nothing, and everyone jumps on board because it is what every little taxpayer dreams of. But no one can really tell you what the substance is behind it. Or how we're REALLY going to run our government or country.
A horrible tragedy happens and everyone grabs a candle and goes to a vigil and says things like "no one deserves this" and vilifies the bad guy without maybe wondering what caused the whole thing to happen in the first place.
We care about the blond-haired, blue-eyed child who died because it's a big fairy tale to grab the candle, be on TV, cry for a child you don't know and be part of the fairytale that we live in a society that is divided into good and bad, princesses and evil stepsisters.
But what about all the other thousands of children in this country who are in equally precarious situations, and what about the circumstances that put them there? What about the things we support as a society that can cause so much damage to thousands of people, children, we don't even know?
Where's their candle? Their vigil?

Here's what we accept as true, good and romantic: A little girl dreams of the perfect wedding ring. The bigger the better.

What does that say about what we expect as a society, both of little girls and of ourselves?

This is how we cover it? Part two.

Well, the world didn't come to an end Saturday, as we all knew it wouldn't.
And while a flabbergasted Harold Camping presumably gets out his calculator and tries to figure out where the missing decimal point is, the media gets a few more days of non-news.
Because, come on, we all knew the world wasn't going to end. Truly "Dog Bites Man" in its silliest form.
The glee at which the media is reporting this non-story -- and yes, sometimes I see the media as one giant, gangling barely focused 13-year-old -- once again shows what's wrong with our all news, all the time 24 hour news cycle.
There are a lot of nuts out there. Thousand of them. Millions, maybe. Even nuttier and with wilderbeliefs than Harold Camping. And they never make the news.
Now some in the media, or maybe most, would say he brought all this on himself with his worldwide publicity effort to let us all know the world would end May 21.
But did we have to listen?
Another group of religious zealots, the Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas, is another perfect example of this. They are a group of about a dozen nuts who take inordinate pleasure in ridiculing and taunting people at the most painful time in their lives.
And the media love them.
Several months ago, this group sent the newspaper I was working for at the time a press release saying they were coming to town to picket a high school production of "The Laramie Project," a play that promotes tolerance. The newspaper did a story and sent a reporter to cover the picket.
But Elizabeth Edwards died, and so the picketers didn't show up. Remember, there's only about a dozen of them. They had to go to North Carolina to picket her funeral.
So the newspaper did a story on that.
That night, a story moved on the AP wire out of Fresno, Calif. -- about three thousand miles from the newspaper I was working for -- that they were going to picket there but didn't because of Elizabeth Edwards' death. That would have been the same night as the New Hampshire picket.
So where were they going to be?
The Westboro folks may be sick, intolerant people, but they've figured out one thing -- in this era of instant gratification media, you don't even need to show up. Their repugnant message got media play coast to coast and all they did was fax a couple of (very poorly done) press releases.

Kind of like the way the world didn't end, but Harold Camping probably got a lot of hits on his website anyway.
This is not to say that people like the Westboro Baptist Church, or even Harold Camping, shouldn't be covered at all -- shining a light on them reveals a part of our society people should know about.
But very little journalism goes into any of this coverage. 
You'd think with all the avenues available for information these days -- and those of us who work for newspapers are painfully aware of it -- that journalists would be energized into covering the news in a substantial way.
But it's much easier to cover the dog biting the man.
And, let's face it, the public is no more inclined to fire up its brain. We live in a society where more people can name the contestants on American Idol than the members of the Supreme Court. Or president's cabinet. Or their own U.S. Senators.

Stay tuned for Harold Camping's next press release.

End of the world? And this is how we cover it?

Well, here we are, our last day on Earth. Kind of feels so...ordinary.
You'd think at least God could have given us some sunshine to usher us all out with. But since we're sinners and he's going to annihilate us all, I guess that's not a realistic hope.
Seriously though, if you're to believe Harold Camping, an 89-year-old nutjob with his own radio network (a bad, but not uncommon, combination), the world is coming to an end at 6 p.m. tonight. At least for those of use who haven't been "redeemed," which, if you believe Camping's narrow definition, is most of us.
But, of course, except for some lost souls who could probably use a hug from their mom and a big dose of reality, no one believes Camping.
And yet, somehow, his prediction, based on a "mathematical" reading of the Bible, is all over the news and has been for days.
So that prompts me to ask: When does something go from being a funny, odd story meant for the back page with all the Lohan stalkings, American Idol updates and three-headed calves, to the news pages -- or the TV and web equivelant of such?
I watched Nightline last night when a serious-as-hell reporter asked Camping, "But if it doesn't happen..."
And Camping, insulted, his giant ears actually wiggling with indignation, shot back: "I don't even entertain that question, because it will."
The reporter didn't press him on it.
Harold Camping says the rapture he's sure is coming tonight was "predicted" maybe even hurried along by, of all things, the gay rights movement and our society's growing tolerance of people who don't fit his straight as a straight-jacket mold (my words, not his).
The reporter didn't press him on that, either.

We all know, the world will end someday. Not in a giant earthquake on a Saturday night in May, but hopefully centuries from now when we're all part of the compost system.
It'll end from natural causes, maybe hurried along by our disrespect for nature and our ecosystem.

Humanity, too, may end someday. Hopefully, again, centuries from now and maybe hurried along by our disrespect and intolerance of our fellow human beings and neglect of those that Jesus himself would have been the first to help.
Harold Camping may disagree with that view.
But then again, who the hell is Harold Camping?
The biggest piece of idiocy in this nutty story is not that some religious zealot is once again using the Bible to support some completely unsupported theory, but that the media has jumped on it as though it's a real story.
And tomorrow, or at 6:01 tonight, we all get to have a chuckle at Harold Camping's expense.
And Harold will probably go back to his calculator and refigure the numbers.
And then in a decade or so, we can do the dance all over again.
And no one is ever going to notice the little erosions in the world around us that are the coming of the real end of our world.
Because, let's face it, they just don't make for good TV.