NOT SURPRISINGLY, BARBARA AND I DIDN’T MAKE GEORGE BOCHETTO’S CHRISTMAS CARD LIST.
That year Jeff’s attorney sent out holiday cards that could only have been dreamed up by this contentious barrister. The card featured a Photoshopped image of Bochetto and his law partner swimming underwater, surrounded by teeth-baring sharks and a bosomy blonde in a skimpy bikini. In the photo, Bochetto’s wavy hair floats atop his head and a plume of air bubbles rise up from his nose. He’s wearing a ferocious expression and his trademark pinstriped suit, briefcase in hand. The card reads, “Litigation is an ocean . . . full of sharks.” The words next to Bochetto and his law partner, Gavin Lentz, say: “Man Eaters . . . George and Gavin wish you an ocean of good fortune in 2010.”
A Daily News reporter who had received Bochetto’s card thought I’d find it humorous and handed it to me. “I love it,” I said, as I thrust a pushpin through Bochetto’s forehead and tacked it up on the fabric-covered wall divider near my computer.
Barbara and I had moved past Tainted Justice to write stories on topics other than police corruption, and the Daily News was nearing the end of its fourteen-month slog through bankruptcy.
Philadelphia Media Holdings, which owned the Daily News, the Inquirer, and Philly.com, was more than $300 million in debt. Though the company cleared about $15 million in profit in 2009, that gain was gobbled up by $26.6 million in legal and professional fees associated with the bankruptcy. That expense included legal bills generated by the lenders, but paid for by Philadelphia Media Holdings.
The company was now slated for the auction block, where it would be sold to the highest bidder. For months, the auction was held up by a legal battle over credit bidding in federal court: company CEO Brian Tierney and his investment group wanted all the bids in cash; the senior lenders, who held the largest portion of the company’s debt, wanted to use that debt as IOUs to bid on the company. Tierney wasn’t expected to win the fight, but the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit handed him an improbable victory—and the auction was a go.
The victory meant Tierney stood a chance of holding on to the papers. Tierney ramped up his efforts to recruit investors who would go up against senior lenders. He approached every super-rich benefactor or businessman in the region and crisscrossed the country in search of civic-minded bidders. Tierney put it to them straight: This isn’t an investment. It’s philanthropy. We’d be saving a cultural gem, an institution with a community value that could never be measured in dollars.
This was a change in thinking for Tierney. Like a lot of publishers across the country, Tierney had believed that Internet advertising would save newspapers. He figured if he could drive up web traffic on Philly.com and increase the number of page views, he could charge more for online advertising. But even though the number of page views soared on Philly.com, the Internet became awash with competing websites, which drastically drove down the price of online advertising.
“This aspect of the business really scares the crap out of me,” Tierney mused. “You look at it and you say to yourself, ‘Online maybe isn’t the future.’ . . . That was the killer for the model.”
Tierney finally realized that newspapers as a for-profit venture were a thing of the past. But that didn’t stop him from fighting for his hometown papers, and he mounted a last stand against the lenders in the form of a “Keep It Local” advertising campaign that made them bristle.
“You’re in Philadelphia, pal,” Tierney said. “This is my town. . . . If this was a box-manufacturing company in Akron, I wouldn’t be fighting like this. But I live here.”
Tierney cast himself as the home-team backer, and the senior lenders, who included Angelo Gordon, a New York–based hedge fund that specialized in distressed debt, as vultures who would ruthlessly go after short-term dollars and erode the quality of journalism.
Tierney’s sales pitch worked, and local investors—the very ones who had lost millions in the first 2006 go-around—once again agreed to put up money, this time sold on the notion that without their help, journalism in Philadelphia would die. The team assembled by Tierney also included new investors: benefactor David Haas, an heir to the Rohm & Haas chemical company fortune; Revlon chairman Ronald Perelman and his philanthropist father Raymond, who together threw in $27 million; and at the last minute, amid the heat of the auction, cable television mogul H. F. “Gerry” Lenfest, who went in for $10 million.
The reality of the impending auction didn’t really hit Barbara and me. We were too focused on a fantasy. Barbara and I had already won two national awards for Tainted Justice. The Daily News had nominated Tainted Justice for a Pulitzer for investigative reporting, one of the hardest categories to win. Editors at big newspapers across the country nominate reporters every year. Being nominated was nothing more than a pat on the back by your colleagues. It had as much weight as a parent advocating that their kid deserved to be Student of the Year. The Daily News wasn’t exactly a heavy hitter in Pulitzer world.
We couldn’t bring ourselves to say the word, even though there was buzz that we had a shot. Almost every other day, Barbara scooched over to my desk, crouched down until her Cheshire Cat face was at eye level with mine, and began to sway, hands clasped, as if praying or gripped by a stomach cramp. “Wendy,” she whispered, “can you imagine if we won the P? Imagine that?”
Any chance of winning would require a little divine intervention. I took out an old photo of my dad. In the photo, I’m no more than fifteen, wearing a sea-green sundress, my long bangs feathered back à la Farrah Fawcett. I’m smiling at the camera, and my dad is gazing at me adoringly. I kissed the image of my dad’s face and tucked the photo under my pillow. While out for a jog, Barbara looked to the sky and talked to her mom. “Ma, please, please make this happen . . .”
My dad died in 1997; Barbara’s mom died three years later, both of pancreatic cancer. Each was the parent who pushed us to achieve and understood what drove us. Barbara prayed to her mom when she was struggling and grieving over her divorce. I prayed to my dad for help when my three-year-old nephew developed a brain tumor. Barbara and I prayed to them when we wanted something really bad.
At exactly 3:00 p.m. on Monday, April 12, 2010, the winners would be posted on the Pulitzer website, and Barbara and I would know if our break-glass-in-an-emergency parents came through.
The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, which administered the Pulitzers, tried to keep the winners a secret until the announcement. A committee of top-tiered editors and journalists from across the country judged the Pulitzers. Committee members often had friends or colleagues at newspapers that submitted Pulitzer entries. Once the committee had whittled down the entries to a few finalists, leaks happened, and winners and finalists got a heads-up.
But on the Friday before the announcement, Barbara and I still hadn’t heard anything. We lingered around until about 7:00 p.m., when Michael Days stopped by Barbara’s desk on his way out. As the paper’s top editor, he’d be the one to get tipped off.
“So I guess you haven’t heard anything,” Barbara said, looking at him, sullen, with her chin down and her head tilted to the side. Michael shook his head.
“You would have heard something by now, wouldn’t you?” Barbara pressed.
“Probably,” he said quietly. Michael promised to call her over the weekend if he got any news.
All weekend, Barbara waited for Michael to call. Nothing. By Sunday night, I was depressed. I turned off my cell and went to bed.
The next morning, I debated what to wear to work and whether to break out my contact lenses. I always felt more confident and less bookish without my eyeglasses. I settled on my beat-up ASICS sneakers, $2 black capris from Goodwill, a robin’s-egg-blue granny sweater, and saggy cotton undies. I slipped on my glasses. It was my no-win-Pulitzer look, insurance against getting my hopes up. I gave Karl a long squeeze and a kiss.
“Good luck,” he said.
“I know we didn’t win.”
Driving to work, I could barely see out the windshield, which was splattered with purplish white bird droppings, and I couldn’t hear the radio over the rumble of my broken muffler. Barbara was just getting out of her car when I pulled into the parking lot. She wore fitted black slacks and a cotton-candy-pink sweater with a matching pink belt.
“I’m sooooo depressed,” I said, as I hugged her.
“Me too.”
For weeks Barbara and I had nurtured a tiny sprout of hope, and we didn’t want that hope to die.
By 2:30 p.m. Barbara had a migraine, and I was holed up in Gar’s office while he edited one of my stories. My phone rang.
“Any word?” Karl asked.
“Nope.”
I hung up, releasing a puff of air through my lips. “Sorry, that was Karl. He wanted to know if we’d heard anything about the Pulitzer.”
Gar seemed taken aback. The Daily News had won two Pulitzers in its eighty-five-year history—Richard Aregood won in 1985 for editorial writing, and Signe Wilkinson won for her editorial cartoons in 1992—and both times, Gar and the rest of the newsroom had gotten word ahead of time. Gar had plucked his sapling of hope and tossed it on the compost pile days ago. He had no intention of replanting any seeds until he checked with Michelle Bjork, the assistant managing editor who’d entered our series in the Pulitzer contest.
Gar walked down the corridor to Michelle’s office and came back seconds later. “She hasn’t heard a thing.”
Staring us in the face was Gar’s satirical poster, “Despair. It’s always darkest just before it goes pitch black.” At that moment, I didn’t see any humor in it.
“It doesn’t matter. This was a great series. These prizes are all politics,” Gar said, waving his arm dismissively.
At 2:55 p.m., Michael summoned Barbara and me to a computer in the middle of the newsroom.
“Why does he want us to see that the New York Times or the Washington Post won?” Barbara muttered in my ear.
“I’m not going over there,” I told her.
“We have to. Michael wants us over there.”
We walked over to the computer, feeling as if the entire newsroom was about to witness our heartbreak.