Page 62 of Head Room

“Anyway, this guy from Colorado said he’d not only encountered paid agitators, but members of his group infiltrated them.Then, he said, the paid agitators showed him their backpacks loaded with bottles of frozen water and big rocks.”

Orson huffed.“Must be very fit agitators to haul that load around a protest.”

“Yup, and one he mentioned was a two-mile march in Seattle or Portland, somewhere like that.”Needham raised his index finger and tipped it toward Orson, saying he’d spotted a point.

“He said members of his group infiltrated, but the paid agitators showed him what they had in their backpacks?Isn’t he the public face of the group?Wouldn’t they have known who he was?Or did he, uh, take license with the accuracy of his account?”Mike asked.

Needham added his middle finger to the index, tipping both of them toward Mike in a second acknowledgment.

“Wait a minute,” I said.“He’s usingoutside agitatorsas bogeymen when he lived in Colorado, but went to Seattle or Portland, then came to Wyoming?”

Needham raised his ring finger and shook all three slightly toward us.“You all got it right off.Too many in his audience didn’t.Heardoutside agitatorsand never questioned anything.”

“Not surprised you saw the flaws,” Orson said.“Not at Needham, from the years I’ve known him.Not at Elizabeth, from what I know of her work.Now you, Mike, I don’t know, except for your football career and recent clips Needham gave me.Nice work, but—”

“He’s also the best station owner I’ve ever worked for,” I said.

“Owners.”A single word from Orson, half-snorted with derision.

“An unfortunate necessity—”

“With the emphasis on unfortunate,” Orson inserted.

“Hey,” Mike grumbled.

“—unless you’re smart enough to work for yourself,” Needham finished gleefully.

“That bad?”I asked Orson.

“Don’t get him started,” Needham said under his breath.

No sacrifice for him to avoid pursuing this.He already knew the details.I had, of course, heard rumblings.I wanted to hear the inside scoop.

“I know there’s been a talent drain—”

I’d picked the right match to light the fuse.

“Drain?An outright purge, a deliberate flushing of talent, experience, stature.He brought in a bunch of raw — and less expensive — youngsters.Some with promise.And the paper’s producing good work despite everything.But who’s left to bring along that promise, to be the stone that makes them sharpen their sword of words?”

“You.”

“Me?”he scoffed.“Not there anymore, am I?At least I had the satisfaction of making the smug, dishonest — and smug about being dishonest — SOB fire me.Wouldn’t fire myself for him and that CEO — hah!had to call him CEO because he sure as hell’s not deserving of being called a publisher.He’s no newspaperman.”

“That’s not the only place that needs someone like you,” Mike said.“You could be the stone for apprentice journalists to sharpen their skills here.”

Orson Jardine side-eyed him.“TV.I’m an ink-stained wretch.Got it in my veins.You know the quote,Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations.Nothing in there about putting it on-air.Printing.”

Needham jumped in.“Possibly George Orwell.Or—”

“—Possibly a twist on a William Randolph Hearst quote,” Orson finished.“But this one’s Thomas Jefferson for sure:Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

“In a letter to a friend in 1786.I’ve seen a photo of the original,” Needham said, topping him.“In another letter in 1789, he wrote,Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”

Orson immediately responded,“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.John Adams, 1765.”

“Hah.Also John Adams, but 1772.The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”

“The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen.What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed.Hannah Arendt.”