Another Angle on the Inside Story

By John Kelly
Friday, February 24, 2006

Not long ago I abandoned a story I had planned on writing and for which I had started doing research.

There were several reasons I gave up on the article, the main one being that I realized I just wouldn't have the time, what with the demands of my daily column and the extensive volunteer work I do on behalf of prematurely bald harp seals.

But there was another reason: For the story to work, I was going to need access.

Now, I'm not talking access access. I didn't need access to administration officials or CIA operatives or NSA bigwigs. I needed to talk with normal people doing fairly normal jobs, but doing them at a semi-governmental organization, an organization responsible for operating a public attraction that I dare say most of us have visited.

For my story to work the way I'd hoped it would, I needed to visit these people in their offices, spend time with them, shoot the breeze.

Of course, this being Washington in the 21st century, I couldn't just show up, sit down and open my notebook. First I had to talk with the public relations people.

I understand the need for public relations people. Many of them are quite knowledgeable. When a reporter needs specific information on deadline, they are good at finding it. But sometimes PR people are barriers to information, not conduits. And even those who are conduits are often selective ones: crimped little pipelines encumbered with all sorts of restrictive valves.

That's what I sensed was happening in my case. What I'd hoped for -- relatively unfettered access to what I assumed were noncontroversial people -- was reduced to the promise of several prearranged interviews.

You didn't miss much by not being able to read my story, but all of this made me think: We embed journalists with military units in Iraq. Why can't we embed reporters with, say, Metro, or the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority, or Fairfax County public schools or Freddie Mac?

We'd have a better understanding of what goes on there, and we could pass that on to you, our loyal customers. What's not to like?

"I imagine that those who are much more politically minded than I am would get the willies even thinking about it," said a public information officer for a local government agency. (So that the PR folks would open up, I promised not to print their names.)

Another said: "If you're sitting in on a staff meeting where people are being brutally honest with their supervisor about something they're working on, are they going to feel as free to speak their minds and give their honest opinions with a reporter sitting there?"

She didn't think so. She also worried that reporters would write about unnewsworthy "problems" they might observe, problems that would be solved long before the public needed to know about them.

She added: "It actually would be a cool idea. But there'd have to be, like with the military, some agreement about confidentiality and what could be shared and couldn't be shared."

It was the Pentagon's idea to embed reporters in Iraq. The brass hoped it would result in more favorable stories. That isn't always the case, but you do tend to bond with the people who are responsible for keeping you alive in a dangerous environment.

Now, the DMV isn't the Sunni Triangle, no matter what it was like the last time you tried to renew your driver's license. So I guess my suggestion is a little facetious. And good reporters are able to ferret out scoops even when spokespeople stonewall.

But I bet you'd get entirely different sorts of stories -- more nuanced, more immediate, more reflective of the rank and file-- if journalists could embed in more places than just Fallujah.

Whaddya say, bunkmate?

Clothes Call

Earlier this month, Sharyn Bowman noticed that two trees outside her Silver Spring home were bearing an odd sort of fruit. One day there'd be a sweat shirt hanging from the pine tree. Another day there'd be a jacket nestled in the branches of her yew.

Sometimes the article was under the tree. Sometimes it hung from the tree itself. Sometimes the article would be there for a few days, until Sharyn would gather it up and throw it out. Other times it would be there in the morning and then have disappeared by the afternoon.

What was going on?

I would like to say that Sharyn and her husband, Mel , solved the mystery by setting up a hidden camera triggered by a laser beam, but the truth came much more easily. Their discovery shines a light into that most interesting of creatures: the American teenager.

There is a school bus stop outside the couple's house. One afternoon, Mel watched from his window as a high school boy got off the bus, walked over to the tree and took the jacket that had been sitting there all day.

"My husband ran out and talked to him," Sharyn said. "Well, he said he hangs his jacket in the tree just so he wouldn't have to take it to school."

The boy -- "a nice kid," Sharyn said -- apologized, and it hasn't happened again. He explained that the trees were "convenient" places for him to stash unwanted items for the day.

Parents, let this be a lesson: Just because your teenager answers affirmatively when you ask if he has his coat when he leaves for school, don't assume that he's actually going to take it there.

Come embed yourself with my weekly online chat, today at 1 p.m. Go tohttp://www.washingtonpost.com/liveonline.