A native New Yorker, Lou Young joined CBS 2 in June 1994. He has served
as a broadcast journalist in the New York market since 1981, working at
both WABC-TV (1981-1990) and WNBC-TV (1990-1994).
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RECESSION WATCH: TALE OF TWO LIQUIDS
Just this morning a supermarket employee with an eye for history marked an important moment. "That's it!" I heard him shout. "Gas is now more than milk!"
He was changing the price on milk, adjusting it DOWN by thirty cents a gallon to $3.69: a price most New York drivers would recognize as a bargain at the gas pump.
Now, the price of these commodities will vary from place to place, but the trends are pretty clear—gas prices are rising so fast, that we're able, for the first time, to imagine what it might cost if purchased by the pint in a cardboard carton with a little straw to draw it out, rather than pumped directly and invisibly into our gas tanks.
A small knot of people gathered around the guy as he changed the numbers over the dairy cooler, marveling at the moment. I checked his name tag and asked Jose what he thought of the situation. "In a way it's OK," he said. "I buy six gallons of milk a week."
"But more gas?"
"Yeah."
I couldn't remember if we needed milk at home, but I got a half-gallon anyway. A bargain's a bargain. Besides, if I save myself a trip to the store I'm using less gas.
What kind of things are you noticing?
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MORE RECESSION SIGNS
I've started thinking about "cheating" on my regular gas station; the one where Carlos, the mechanic, keeps an eye on my tire pressure and the expiration date on my inspection sticker without my asking.
Premium gas at $4.09? Will he notice if I come by only once and a while to top off?
The fancy cigar store in town is running a sale: Buy four get one free. A sale on high-end cigars? "The economy's tough," Dominic concedes. I mention the gas thing to him and he says he makes sure to stop to get gas at half a tank. "But that's for me," he says. "I drive a Denali and I don't want to give the guy a hundred bucks. It feels better if I hand him fifty twice a week."
Just like it feels better to walk out of the cigar store with an extra in the bag, I imagine. Are we deluding ourselves?
Last weekend I went to the pantry to get a snack and couldn't find the usual stuff. "Check the food bills," my wonderful wife suggests. There are multiple entries at the supermarket for a hundred dollars and more a piece. "I'm walking out with less and paying more," she says.
It's real.
While writing this blog I mention some of this out loud and one of the Web editors holds up a can of Coke in the air. "Just back from the vending machine," he announces. "Price went up."
Someone suggests we bring back the office coffee machine.
Last night at a fundraising event I'm talking to three successful Manhattan lawyers about cars. Is a Jaguar still a Jaguar or is it now a high-end Ford? What's a good mid-life sports car?
The guy in the middle loves his Porsche. "What kind of law," I ask?
"Bankruptcy," one answers.
"Business good?"
They smile.
GOING LIVE
It is surreal to go back and look at our live coverage of the Pope's visit after actually delivering some of it from the field.
Watching it on this Web site I saw, for the first time, the full sweep of video feeds and clearly hearing the voices of the anchors without straining to make out their words over the din of the crowd. When I see myself on camera there is no hint of the stark isolation you can feel standing without a script in a roaring mass of humanity, watching an approaching motorcade or a receding group of men in clerical garb.
It's strange, because at the moment during the live broadcast I do not know if I am on camera or not, I cannot see the pictures you are looking at, and the scribbled notes from the background fact sheet are fluttering in the wind. My attention is focused solely on the sound coming out of a tiny speaker in my ear listening for the anchors to say my name before "throwing to me in the field," or listening for the producer's voice on the "interrupt line" saying, simply, "talk."
When that happens I start talking, playing to the camera that's pointed at me not knowing if it's "hot" or if I'm narrating some other picture I cannot see. All the while I'm trying to keep the action in my peripheral vision in case something unexpected happens.
Therein lies the mystery of live TV. Despite all the preparation,I am surprised by the unexpected. Pope Benedict is in the Popemobile completing his trip up Fifth Avenue to 72nd Street on Saturday. I expected to be talking as he moves into view, but the cue doesn't come. I wait and when I finally hear Kristine Johnson say my name, I turn and find I am looking directly into the eyes of Benedict XVI. I don't remember what I meant to say, but I exclaim, "He's looking right at me!" (or something to that effect.)
I am startled.
That wasn't scripted or expected and now I am talking from a combination of direct observation and notes jotted on that fluttering paper. Each one of us along the route deal with our own shock of the papal passage and the crowd reaction to it. Some of us talk from personal experience about our own interactions with the church growing up. When it is my turn, it's a decision I have to make in an instant in the mix of background fact, and direct observation we are delivering. I decide to avoid any direct reference to my past personal experience, but gravitate to the editorial "we," marrying my own impressions with that of the crowd around me. Somehow in all this viewers say they were pulled in to the excitement of the visit on a level they didn't anticipate.
Television does some things better than others. Sharing an experience is what it does best.
This visit was one of those moments.
THE POPE AT PASSOVER
"So he says I'm not a good Jew."
The comment catches my ear the other day at work. The guy at the next desk is talking about a dietary dispute over keeping kosher at Passover and how far he and his buddy were willing to submit to the traditions of their faith during the Jewish high holy days.
Without getting into the "meat" of the discussion, suffice it to say it's the old debate between a "reform" Jew and one who considers himself more "orthodox." One side says, 'hey, the rules are the rules,' the other says 'times change, remember WHY the rules were invented in the first place.' Strict adherence versus realistic reinterpretation: It's the template that colors our discussions about most religion in America. You can apply it to Passover and Judaism or to the Pope who has arrived for his visit this week and the Catholicism he hopes to heal.
Benedict XVI is the leader of orthodox Christendom for Roman Catholics who have their own ongoing internal debate about rules and dogma. Given the tenants of the theology, public accusations of being a "good" or "bad" Catholic are not common, but you will find many "church members" who are not necessarily "churchgoers," and many Catholics who separate themselves as "traditionalists," and "reformers."
Some would love to see married, women priests; others pine for the mass recited in Latin.
Many parishes have witnessed the number and size of average weekly donations slip steadily. Attendance fluctuates wildly, and the priest sex abuse scandals have had a devastating effect on parishioner confidence in their clergy. I remember two Catholics recently discussing how to make the annual "Cardinal's Appeal," more attractive to donors. "Rename it," one suggested.
The Pope, though, occupies rarified space in the fractured Catholic heart. As occupant of the Throne of St. Peter he can trace his authority back through the centuries to the man who stood at Christ's side and became the "rock" on which the Christian church was built. He leads what once the state religion of the Roman Empire; conquered by the followers of a single non-conformist citizen of occupied Judea. It is a rare direct link to the power of those thoughts and ideas that literally changed the way men deal with one another. For many it can be a glimpse at what we hoped in our hearts religion could be even if we are unsure about the forms it has taken.
Pope Benedict will be in New York for Passover and while some of us will observe varying levels of adherence to ancient law and tradition, others of us will be watching and listening to the man in white robes. It is the same impulse applied in different form.
WILL SPENS' STRUGGLE
My first day as a street reporter in New York City, Will Spens was at my side. We were standing on the perimeter of the largest TV newsroom either of us had ever seen waiting for our first assignments. "Look at it," he said as we watched close to a hundred people scurry through a sea of office cubicles, low-slung production desks, and Plexiglass partitions. "It's like being on the edge of a mountain range."
He spoke with a sense of awe in his voice. I shared his excitement; we both hit the streets of this town and over the course of our years discovered it was the only line of work we every really wanted.
Will was always a strange bird. Tall, sandy haired, deep-voiced, and perennially world-weary beyond his years. He looked like a character out of '40s film noir with a lightly-groomed mustache and a thousand-yard squint. Tom Berenger could play him in the movie. He was the first guy I knew who wore "the trench coat" who didn't make it look like a cheap prop. Seeing Will saunter around the newsroom, I always got the feeling he'd left a fedora with his press card in the headband at a bar somewhere. Oddly (I thought) although he smoked non-filter cigarettes, he didn't drink with the rest of us. I always wondered why and didn't figure it out until right before he died last week.
Will's stories on local news were some of the damnedest TV pieces I'd ever seen. He did virtually EVERYTHING on camera. You'd see him at the scene of the story, with his BACK to the viewer and he'd turn and begin talking, then walk to an interview, conduct the interview and continue narrating while the camera panned off him. The scene would change and Will would walk back in to the next scene, take you through a door, interview someone else, then keep talking as the camera moved to something the man was holding.
Then there'd be a third scene and Will would come out of a door or through an open window and wrap up the tale. It was sometimes seamless art, sometimes absurdly fascinating, and always completely out of character with everything else that appeared on the screen before and after.
It was amazing.
He actually wrote entire stories in his head while he was on scene with the camera crew! (Trust me in that most reporters have a hard time coming up with three lines they can say while the story's still developing.) It was of course an impossible style to sustain indefinitely, but when it worked it was the best thing on the show.
There was trouble, though, from the beginning.
Will had what we politely called "personality problems." He'd make friends then turn them to enemies. He'd imagine enemies where there were none. He was excessively charming sometimes, developing an unsettling habit of forging volatile romantic links with female reporters and co-anchors. He had fistfights with security guards while on assignment and was threatened with arrest a little more often than is usual in our line of business. At WABC-TV, where we worked together, he was "on the chopping block" to be fired for a very long time before they actually did it. He managed to hold "them" at bay by winning Emmy awards for live reporting and spot news two years running. We rooted for him, but knew he was doomed.
Will Spens worked at WNBC for a while then moved to Los Angeles. I assumed he'd become a star out on the other coast where eccentric behavior seemed more appropriate. A news executive at KCBS told me his crime stories were a big hit. He wrote some screenplays. People said they were pretty good, (albeit a little on the violent side). I imagined he'd make it big and smiled when I heard he was living with a popular TV personality in Los Angeles. Years past and the next news was not good.
Will lost his last TV job about ten years ago. He became a monk, preached some sort of Christianity and became obsessed with the Catholic Church. He started a book that a publisher in LA was interested in, but never finished it. He moved to Santa Barbara where he was homeless for a while before being befriended by a local social worker who at first thought Will's problems might be drug or alcohol related, but then realized there was something else at work.
I began to get phone messages on my office line from my old colleague about a year ago. They were always polite, but frantic: "Lou, it's Will Spens," the voice from the past would say. "God, it's good to hear your voice and bless you that you've been able to keep doing it and be successful. I need your help. I'm in Santa Barbara and need to speak with you. It is a matter of life and death. Things are happening that are difficult to explain." Then the message might mention the Pope or the Catholic Church or a plot to kill and silence him for his outspoken statements on the priest sex scandals. There was no callback number and I learned that he'd been reaching out to other former co-workers at WABC and WNBC who told me he'd been homeless and seemed to be in serious distress. At least one contact had sent money to keep him afloat financially.
One day, my cell phone rang and it was Will (who had charmed the number out of a desk assistant at the station) and we started talking. He wanted to know about "the business" in New York -- the stories, the old rhythm and pattern of doing news in the city. We spoke like old friends about standing on the edge of that "mountain range" years ago. He talked obliquely about mistakes he'd made, then about how much he missed it, then finally about "the story," that could change everything. It was about the Catholic Church and a plot to silence him and it was his disease talking.
Will had constructed a perfect unprovable symmetry of intrigue involving paid assassins who were systematically poisoning him with chemicals that clouded his mind and made people think he was insane. He readily admitted that his story "sounded crazy," but then used its very improbable nature to plead its accuracy.
"This is true," he assured me. "It is actually happening to me."
I agreed to speak with him on a regular basis to "try to help." He seemed very pleased.
I checked with some friends in the mental health field and asked for advice. They warned me not to directly challenge him, but also not to endorse his delusions and to urge him to seek treatment and medication. I did what I could, suggesting that he put aside the source of his distress and simply seek treatment for the symptoms, that I could not discuss the situation with him until his "head was clear."
Will worried that medication could react with the chemicals the secret operatives were using against him and further cloud his ability to keep track of the plot. I told him I would keep his research for him and make it available to him after he was under psychiatric treatment. He agreed, sent me the material and said he was speaking with psychiatrists, but I don't know if he was telling me the truth.
I do know that a friend of his in California predicted flatly that we had as much chance of getting him to submit to treatment as we had of landing the space shuttle. I have dozens of e-mails from Will outlining the details of the plot against him including names, dates, license plates and how these people were likely to respond when questioned by "an impartial investigator." A central location of the plot revolves around the operators of the Faulding welfare hotel in Santa Barbara where Will had been living.
There were a couple encouraging messages I did receive after we'd made "our deal." In one Will told me I had no idea how difficult it was for him to do what he was attempting, and that having knowledge that we could have periodic conversations by phone might be like "having a buoy to swim to." He seemed most motivated when we talked about him being well enough to report news again. An acquaintance told me Will was often lucid enough to get job interviews, but that they would end badly as he explained the big story he was sitting on.
Will's last e-mail asked if our old station was hiring freelance reporters.
One theory about Will is that he had always been wrestling with the same mental demons and had managed to keep them at bay with his formidable intellect. That's why he didn't drink or take drugs. He needed all his powers of concentration to keep reality in focus. It's quite possible he simply lost the battle ten years back.
I got the news about Will's death last week while heading out the door on a story. He died behind the wheel of an aging Toyota as it hit a bridge abutment in Santa Barbara. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt, which seems entirely in character.
There was no one else in the car. The police found his cell phone and went through the address book. Every number connected with someone from a major market news operation.
He never stopped trying to come back.