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9:30 A.M., THURSDAY, Jan. 13, 2022, Goose Hollow apartment — Blair made breakfast. Scrambled eggs and toast. And Will was pleased and grateful and even said so. Blair smiled at him.
She thought they should probably talk about last night, but she didn’t know how to start the conversation. Did he even remember what happened? Was he surprised to wake up in bed alone?
While she was pondering how to talk about it, Will brought up his own topic.
“I wish Ryan hadn’t changed the lineup for the panel today,” he said, as they were finishing coffee.
“Oh? Have you two talked about how the panel is going to be done? It’s really about him presenting his research isn’t it?” Blair asked.
“He doesn’t run EWN. Sometimes he forgets he’s the adviser now, not the EIC,” Will said grumpily.
And possibly somewhat accurate, Blair acknowledged. But then, there had been reasons for that, hadn’t there? “But this isn’t an EWN panel,” Blair pointed out. “This is a TIP/Center panel, with Ryan as the key presenter. And he is in charge of them. Co-manager with Tabitha for TIP. Manager of the Center.”
Will frowned, and Blair retreated back to her coffee. “You two should talk before 2 p.m.,” she said, smiling. “Tell him how you feel.”
“Or you could just step off the panel,” Will suggested.
Blair got very still. “It’s me on the panel that’s bothering you?” she asked, and she worked hard to keep the hurt out of her voice. She wasn’t sure she managed, but Will wasn’t the best at reading people anyway.
“Kind of?” Will said. “I can see why Ryan wants to include more diversity... it makes us look good. But why you?”
Telling him about Dr. Crenshaw’s directive wouldn’t help the situation, she thought. “I’m the token female? Maybe you should ask Ryan that,” she said. “I’ve got to get going — I’ve got a class at 10 a.m. and I’m not dressed yet.”
She looked in her closet and thought about what she wanted to wear for the day. Rebelliously, she pulled out a knee-length black skirt she’d bought to go out one night, and a black T-shirt. She added a bright blue sweater. Black flats. She’d need a bit more makeup, she thought, and maybe she should leave her hair down.
“You’re wearing black?” Will asked from the doorway. “Wear pink. I like you in pink.”
Blair smiled brightly at him as she pushed past him and into the bathroom. “Good to know,” she teased. “I’ll wear it for you tonight.”
She touched up her makeup and grabbed her backpack. “See you at 2 p.m.,” she said and then fled their apartment.
Truth was she didn’t have class, but the term was too new for Will to know her patterns, if he bothered to ever pay attention. That was unfair, she chastised herself. He was better than that. She did want to attend the workshops today, though. They were media-related. She frowned. Why wasn’t Will attending them? Because he wasn’t interested? Or because he was still hurting? He’d seemed OK this morning.
She started to go back and ask him. Then shook her head. He was a big boy, she thought. And she wasn’t his mother — wasn’t that what he said?
She swung by the EWN building and saw that they had a new front door. Progress on one front at least. She shook her head at her own negativity and decided she was just going to enjoy the workshops. She sent Bianca a text to see if she wanted to get a salad in the student union for lunch. Thumbs up.
There was a lot of EWN staff in the first workshop. Good, Blair thought. She found a seat next to Kari. “I like you in black,” Kari said. “I don’t think I’ve seen you wear it much.”
“Not during the day,” Blair said, although truthfully she didn’t wear it much at all. “I’m on Ryan’s panel this afternoon, and decided I’d pass on the cheerleader look.”
“Good for you,” Kari said, and then the workshop started.
Blair sat next to Miguel in the second workshop. “How are you doing?” she asked him quietly. “I haven’t had a chance to ask.”
He shrugged uncomfortably. Men and their issues about talking, Blair thought a bit irritated.
“OK, I think, and then there’s a loud noise, and I jump and want to dive for cover,” he said. “But I would be a lot worse off, if my attempts to put out the fire hadn’t worked.”
He would be dead, or at least severely injured, Blair thought, troubled by that realization.
“You’re our hero,” Blair said sincerely. “But that means you’re off the hook for future heroic deeds. Someone else will have to step up next time.”
Miguel laughed at that, and relaxed. “Deal,” he said. “Or better? Let’s not have a next time.”
Neither of them was the kind of optimist to believe that, Blair thought.
Bianca gave her all the encouragement she needed about her new look today. Of all the EWN staff, she was one who got the ‘look as if’ version of Ryan’s ‘act as if’ mantra. “You look great!” she said and made a motion for her to twirl around. Blair did with a laugh. “I like the black on black rather than a white blouse,” she said. “White would have been too schoolgirl. This is more sophisticated. New look for the panel today?”
Blair nodded. She ate some of her salad. “Will thinks I shouldn’t be on the panel,” she said. “But Dr. Crenshaw was the one who thought I should.” She told Bianca the story.
“And Dr. Crenshaw is right,” Bianca said with a nod. “And apparently Ryan agreed. It’s really his panel, right?”
“That’s what I told Will, and told him to talk to Ryan about it,” Blair said. She sat back in her chair, no longer hungry. “He’s angry, Bianca. Angry at Ryan, because he says Ryan forgets he’s not EIC anymore. Angry at me, because he says I think I’m better than he is. Angry at all of us because our news coverage differed from other stations. And I had just realized that one of the reasons I loved him was because he didn’t get angry very often.”
Bianca paused and looked at her. “Everyone gets angry sometimes,” she said. “You, me, even Will. Ben most certainly. But I think this is temporary, don’t you? That concussion? Did he get the results of the MRI?”
Blair shook her head. “I don’t think he’s called and asked,” she said slowly. “I’ll ask him.”
She paused, thinking about how irritable he was, and added, “after the panel.”
Bianca laughed, and told her about how the newscast had gone the night before. “While you were having a night off,” she teased.
Blair forced a smile. Bianca gave her a sharp look, but Blair shook her head slightly. She couldn’t talk about it or she’d lose it. And she had a panel to sit on — if Will didn’t get her booted off of it. Just her apparently. And he’d dismissed the others as diversity tokens? Where was her Will Bristol and who was this imposter? She found a quiet seat to relax in before the panel and Googled traumatic brain injury. She read a bit and frowned. OK, so the changes could be from the concussion. The stories she read online were really disturbing. Personality changes. Anger issues. Pathological lying. Criminal activity. A lot of the research was on football players, wasn’t that disturbing? How many kids played football? She set that question aside.
How bad of an injury had it been? Did anyone even know? Things had been so chaotic that night.
Not that it mattered, health-wise. Apparently it didn’t need to be all that bad of one, if it got the person in the right spot. She frowned. After the panel and the editor’s meeting, she’d get him to go home for supper again, and they’d talk about his health. Beyond being hurt by his behavior, what the stories said was alarming for his own well-being.
She got to the panel early. Ryan was setting up the room. “Did Will talk to you?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No? Was he supposed to?”
“He doesn’t want me on the panel,” she said baldly. She kept her emotions tamped down.
Ryan looked at her for a long moment before he said, “You’re on the panel, Blair, and it was only my stupidity that you weren’t on it in the first place. You were essential to the story’s development, and so was Ben. Corey was essential to the data gathering for my paper. And Turk edited the most widely read package. And I shouldn’t have needed Dr. Crenshaw to see that.”
She smiled at him, a bit tremulously. “Have you heard anything from OHSU about Will’s MRI?” she asked.
“They can’t tell me that, and I haven’t had time to ask Will either. He hasn’t said anything?” Ryan asked, frowning.
She shook her head. “I’ll ask him after the editors’ meeting.”
Ryan grinned at her. “Dr. Crenshaw is going to observe the editors’ meeting after the panel,” he said, laughing.
“Wanna bet she says, ‘Is it always like this?’” Blair said, laughing too.
“No bet, but I thought you all would like to hear her take on the Tuesday night show,” Ryan said.
She started to ask him what he was talking about, when others started showing up. Ryan had nameplates for the panel, and he set them out. She noticed he changed the moderator from Will to himself. Well he should, because as she’d told Will, this was about his research not EWN. She sat down where he assigned her — on the end next to Turk. Then Ryan, Corey and Will on the opposite end. Will might sneer at the diversity, but the panel did showcase EWN diversity very well, she thought with pride.
Will came in, but he didn’t come up to her. He would have in the past, she thought with a frown. What had he done all day? Should she ask? Later. He was so unpredictable now, who knew what would happen? And treating the audience to a meltdown at Ryan’s presentation would break her heart. This really mattered to Ryan. Odd that Will couldn’t see that. Or saw it and didn’t care?
Tabitha came in and gave her a thumbs up. She smiled back. She’d gotten to know her since she’d moved into the EWN building. She made a mental note to get an update on the plans for a remodel. Really, Ryan needed to give them a major report soon. She made a mental note to put it on the agenda for a future editors’ meeting. Not today. Maybe not even this week. She was damn tired.
And she’d even had a night off.
Had she? She didn’t feel like it. Second-shift work, wasn’t that what it was called? Blair thought suddenly. Women worked at a job and then came home to do all the work of making a home and maintaining relationships. Her mother had done that. She wondered if her mother would talk about it with her now.
And maybe she should ask how she liked retirement. Had that been her idea? She wasn’t 65 yet, although her dad was. Suddenly she was seeing their marriage differently too. It made her head hurt.
Focus on the panel, she told herself. Stop obsessing about yourself. Geez.
Ryan asked her to talk about the ‘Whose story do we tell’ questions. Easy enough to answer, and she relaxed. Ryan was good at this, she realized, as he wove a story of all of their contributions. He asked Will why it had been important to do, and why this story?
“Too many have framed this story as protesters left the downtown in shambles, but that wasn’t true,” Will explained. He talked about the brainstorming session that resulted from Blair’s question of whose story do we tell?
Ryan then had Turk talk about their editing choices and Ben about how he put it together night after night — and about the piece he’d written about the vandalism of the statues and the historical society building on Columbus Day. “Did being Native American yourself influence your story?”
Ben said it did. “If I hadn’t been Native American — Yakama — I probably wouldn’t have thought the story was important to the series in the first place,” he said. “And I wouldn’t have had access to some of the sources I used. I was able to track down some of the people involved that night — and none of them were Native, by the way. But I also talked to a lot of Native Americans about how they felt about it, and their reactions were complex. I hope I did them justice.”
Then Ryan and Corey had a conversation about a web metaphor for data organization rather than a linear approach and how that had been a breakthrough in how Ryan organized the data. “I was thinking hierarchal structure,” Ryan admitted. “And isn’t that telling? The web of nodes and connections helped me to see it very differently.”
He then presented his conclusions from the data so far: “Objectivity doesn’t work,” he said. “It’s really a frame determined by those who hold power in the media, and those people are white men, most of them over 40. If you turn the decision making over to other groups, what is objectively obvious changes.”
He asked the audience for questions. There were a few, mostly around the notion that there was no standard of objectivity, and what should it be replaced with?
“How about completeness?” Ryan suggested. “Diversity of perspective? Are all the stakeholders’ voices represented? Thoroughness? That’s the question the Center for Experimental Journalism is seeking to answer. In turbulent times, what does society need from its journalists? How do we provide it? And how do we know if we’re doing a good job?”
Then he closed by repeating Blair’s original questions: “Whose story do we tell? Who tells it? Who decides? And what audience are we writing it for? All of those questions matter, and they determine the quality of what we produce.”
There was applause, and then they were done. Blair sagged with relief. She thought it had gone well. She watched as Ryan took Will over to introduce him to Dr. Crenshaw and that she had asked to observe their editor’s meeting. Will laughed.
She was glad to see it. Maybe he’s coming out of it, she thought. Corey squeezed her shoulder. She looked up at him and smiled. “You OK?” he asked. “Yesterday was a bit intense. And then you went home with him, and I worried.”
Blair grinned. “I can handle Will,” she teased. “I can handle all of you, haven’t you noticed?”
Corey laughed and moved on. But Turk met her eyes for a moment. “If you need a place to land, holler,” Turk said quietly and then went to be introduced to Dr. Crenshaw. That was a troubling reaction, Blair thought. Why would she need a place to land, as Turk called it?
That was what you said to someone who might need a sudden way out of a relationship — especially an abusive one, Blair thought suddenly. She wasn’t that person! Will was just irritable right now because of the concussion. He wouldn’t harm her.
Or did Turk see something that she didn’t?
She looked at the time, and decided she better get a move on it. She wanted to be in the newsroom for the editor’s meeting, and Ryan and Dr. Crenshaw were already headed over. Will was waiting for her. She smiled at him and slid her arm around his waist. “That went well, don’t you think?” she asked as they headed toward the EWN building.”
“Seemed a bit long,” he replied. “But that might be because I have a headache. Why does Dr. Crenshaw want to see an editorial meeting? Do you know?”
“Not really,” Blair said. “Did you ask?”
“No,” he said. “Since I wasn’t consulted about the invite.”
“Did you take something for the headache?” she asked, ignoring the irritation. She wasn’t going to play referee between Will and Ryan. Not in her job description. The two of them were close friends, and they’d gone through hell together. Whatever was bugging Will, Will could deal with it and with Ryan. But it did worry her, she acknowledged, as a sign that something was still wrong.
“Took one before the panel,” he said. “Might need another one for this meeting.”
“And maybe we need another night off, then,” Blair said, forcing a smile. She felt like she was becoming isolated from the newsroom and she didn’t like it. Isolated from her friends. She didn’t like that either.
“Maybe,” he conceded.
The editorial meetings had a certain format that Emily had established a year ago during the COVID spike when meeting in person became too risky and they’d started using Zoom. Will followed her pattern. Announce the guests. Have the editors and managers introduce themselves. Ask if the managers had anything to raise, then Ryan as adviser, and then brainstorm stories and coverage. Having a routine made it comfortable.
Joe Castro asked for feedback on Folio which was out today. She hadn’t even picked up a copy yet and felt guilty. Oops. But others had, and they liked his photo essay that he’d managed to get in on production night. Sports had a problem with staffing the home basketball game on Friday that got discussed. Radio was fine; Portland Review was fine. Everyone was fine.
“Ryan?” Will asked.
“I invited Dr. Crenshaw to join us, because she wanted to observe — and we’ve had other observers before — but also because she and I had an interesting conversation at the reception last night about why the protesters didn’t come back,” Ryan said. “And I thought you’d like to hear it. Dr. Crenshaw?”
“Thanks for letting me sit in,” she said with a smile. She talked about still being on East Coast time and watching the coverage on all the stations. She praised EWN for its more comprehensive coverage — to be expected since it was essentially the hometown paper. She turned on the radio, caught most of Larson Jones’ show, and there was no mention of CRT, PSU or protesting.
“Then I got to campus and there were no protesters,” she said. “And I wondered why. Here’s what I think.”
She talked about the Free J6 protests in the fall, how mainstream media had covered it — and how alternative media covered it differently. “To echo the panel just before this, you all covered it comprehensively, not going for a 5-minute segment that could appear any day of the week in Portland. And what the right-wing agitators fear most of all is a failed event. Larson Jones watched your show and abandoned the call for more protests. What you showed was a vibrant event that, yes, had protests as opposed to protesters in the Park Blocks, again.”
A lot of thoughtful looks, then Will said, “But the conflict — the protesters vs. the symposium goers — is news. And we didn’t cover it, not really. The protest was bad enough that the police pulled back and recommended PSU cancel the speech.”
“We did cover the police pull-back,” Ben countered. “But last night, not Tuesday. It led, actually — that the police had recommended the cancellation and pulled back, but that university leadership and Dr. Crenshaw decided they would go through with it. Kind of made the cops look like wimps. We used more footage of the parade down Broadway.”
“Did we know about the police recommendation Tuesday night?” Will asked.
“I did,” Ryan said. “Because I was there when an officer told President McShane. I didn’t get a chance to pass it on, however. Did anyone else get it?”
“Ren did,” Blair said, “but it was late by then. He called it in around 9:30 p.m.?”
“We could have gone with it,” Will said stubbornly. “Conflict is news.”
“Is it?” Dr. Crenshaw countered. “Is there anything new about protesters getting upset because of something Larson Jones or any of his kind tell them to get upset about? Really? What you all did was inform your viewers. I’m curious, what kind of feedback have you gotten?”
Everyone looked to Corey. “We got our usual hacker attacks,” he said slowly. “No more than usual. Most of the posts were focused on individual stories about the different workshops. I’d say there was more engagement with the issues rather than political divisiveness, but I might be biased about that. We were prepared for much more virulent attacks than we got — I can tell you that much. But our numbers on engagement were good.”
“Viewership seemed good,” Ben added. “As much as you can ever really tell that. But Public Access was happy. We went live when the protester threw the Molotov cocktail and stayed on the air throughout the protests, so by the time we got to the show, we could focus on other things.”
Dr. Crenshaw hadn’t heard about the Molotov cocktail, and Ben filled her in. “Miguel is the hero,” he said. “I hope it never happens again.”
Dr. Crenshaw looked at Miguel for a moment, and then nodded her head once. “Good job,” she said. “Fast thinking.” She paused. “Don’t do it again.”
Everyone laughed.
“Stories? Blair?” Will asked.
“You do this every day?” Dr. Crenshaw asked at the end of the meeting. “Is it always like this?”
Everyone cracked up. Finally, Ryan said, “Every observer says exactly the same thing, exactly the same way. Yes, every day, and usually it’s wilder. This was a bit boring — except for your observations, of course. Ben? Corey? This’s going to be my next research project. Could you archive everything for me?”
They nodded, and it was done.
An older Black man with gray in his hair and glasses appeared at the top of the stairs. Blair’s brain did a threat assessment: stranger, but not a white man, not angry, too old to be a protester. Safe. She wondered how many others did a similar assessment? Ryan introduced him as Dr. Bates who taught CRT at Reed and was on his committee. She realized she’d seen him at the panel earlier. He whisked Dr. Crenshaw off before Blair could say goodbye. Damn it, she thought. Well, she’d email her.
“Supper?” Blair said brightly, looking at Will, who was glowering at Ryan. “Come on,” she said. “We can eat, and then see if we’re needed back here.”
She linked arms with him and moved him toward the street.
“He did that on purpose to make me look bad,” Will said when they’d gotten out of the building. “He found someone who would say you edited a better newscast than everyone else, and that I was wrong in my critique of it.”
“Found someone? That was the keynoter for this whole event! And Will, I didn’t edit that newscast,” Blair said. “We’ve all told you, Ben did. I was just the writer for the keynote speech. I assigned stories during the editors’ meeting, and then we had the crisis with Miguel, and then I left for the speech. I got back shortly before you got there.”
He rolled his eyes. “But you like the newscast, don’t you?” he said. “No conflict. That’s how you like things.”
“In my personal life,” she agreed. “But I’ve covered some pretty controversial stories and assigned a lot more during the last year. You taught me, remember? I learned to do this from you.”
Which was true, if not complete, she thought. But it placated him a bit, and she changed the subject to maybe going to see a movie this weekend. “I like us having time as a couple instead of non-stop work and classes all the time,” she said.
She wondered if that was true. She missed the rush of the newsroom, to be honest. Half her brain was back there right now. And she wanted to be there — discussing what Dr. Crenshaw had said. Debating the coverage tonight.
But they were seconds away from another blowup like Wednesday night. Keeping the peace had become her job of late.
He agreed that a movie would be good.
“Will, did you get the results of the MRI? I’m worried about you still having headaches.”
“What? You think my brain isn’t working right?” he demanded, angry again. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”
Blair stopped on the sidewalk and looked at him. “I said I was worried about your headaches. You’ve had to take Tylenol throughout the day. You don’t usually get headaches. It worries me.”
He walked on, and she caught up with him. “Call them? Find out the results of the MRI?” she asked. “Please?”
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll call them tomorrow.”
Tonight, she thought, call Dr. Clarke tonight. But she took a win where she could. “You are taking Tylenol, right?” she added remembering her Google search.
“The Tylenol they gave me,” Will said. “I had to get a refill.”
Blair chewed her lip. Was that the stuff with codeine in it? He shouldn’t be taking that, she thought. She looked at his body language, the hunched shoulders, the stubborn set of his head, and shut up. Better think about what to cook for supper, she thought. If they were going to continue doing this she needed to shop for groceries.
Like a good little wife, she thought glumly. How had her mother done all this? And a small voice in her head said, I thought you didn’t want to become your mother?
Over dinner at their apartment she asked Will what he had done with his morning. He shrugged. “Went for a walk,” he said. He looked a bit unsure about that. She frowned.
“Not like you to skip class,” she observed.
“You are not my mother, Blair,” he said angrily. “Drop it.”
Blair looked at him silently. “What would you like to talk about?” she asked. “The panel? The editor’s meeting? You decide.”
“Maybe just shut up?” he asked. “I have a headache. Would silence be too much?”
Blair got up and walked into the study and shut the door.