Why we do what we do

When the alarm sounds every morning at 2:30 a.m. I don't jump out of bed and scream at the top of my lungs, "I can't wait to tell the world what's going on with Brittney & Paris." I don't grumble when I see their slugs, I know that there are people out there who care. But it's not why we get into this business. Why do we do what we do? We do it because we know we can make a difference.
I remember years ago I was working at KSBW in Central California. For one week I was assigned to work in the Santa Cruz bureau because our bureau chief was going on vacation. The bureau chief Tom Manheim showed me the ropes before he hit the road. One of the bits of advice he gave me was to check my box after lunch. He said that's when the county would slip in news releases. His advice was prescient. I found a news release one afternoon after lunch. It was a three sentence release about a toxic chemical spill that had been re mediated. It wasn't a huge spill, it was small, but there was something that didn't add up.

The discrepancy was the amount of time it took to clean it up. The spill had occurred weeks before, but had only been cleaned up the day before. I called the county official who left the release and asked if I could interview him, he said sure. First though I would have to go get video of the site. When I pulled up to the address I noticed it was an elementary school. I checked with neighbors and found out from them that kids had been playing in the area for the last few weeks leading up to the cleanup.

When I sat down for the interview I'm sure the county official thought I was just going to ask about the length of time between the spill and cleanup. I don't think he ever expected me to go to the site. So when I started firing tough questions, he was taken aback. The bottom line was the county thought the EPA would clean it up, the EPA felt it was a county issue. They argued about it for weeks until the county finally cleaned it up. It became a lead story and the next day our local congressman called a news conference to introduce legislation so that this would never happen again.

That one episode showed me how what we do can have a major impact. I was reminded of that this week when I got this e-mail from Miles Moffeit.

Friends: I couldn't wait to share this with all of you. In the last couple days we've learned that two of the prisoners we featured in our DNA-destruction series - Floyd Brown of North Carolina and Donald Odoms of Texas - will be released. Floyd, will walk into the arms of his family sometime tomorrow for the first time in a dozen years. My co-writer Susan Greene championed his cause. A few minutes ago she called me in tears from North Carolina saying, ``They're letting him out!'' Our other guy, Donald, has been granted parole and will walk out sometime next year after 23 long years in prison.

Miles sent me information on his DNA series a while back. He is a masterful, brilliant journalist, who has been a finalist for a Pulitzer. He's also down to earth and has that ah shucks John Denver quality about him. Miles reminded me this week why we do what we do. I summed up my feelings in this e-mail to him.

Miles, When we first talked about your series and you sent me it I knew then that you would win awards for your incredible work. But this is the real award and reward. It's easy to get discouraged in this business with cutbacks and changes coming at us at such a rapid pace. But then every once in a while we get a note like yours and we realize why we all do what we do. I can't agree with Penny more! I'm truly proud to know you as a friend and a colleague. Your series was brilliant and it made an enormous difference. I know years from now Donald's grand kids will be talking about Miles Moffeit the man who helped to set their innocent grandfather free. That's pretty heady stuff! Congratulations!Mike