Field Note 06: The most powerful word

“Why, yes. I can help you spell ‘occasion’.”

For almost everyone else, it’s please, or sorry, or some polite thing like that. For reporters, though, the most powerful word you can use–and often the only one you have time to–is “copy”.

Borrowed from radio voice procedure, copy means “I heard what you said, ok, all right.” To a reporter, though, it means so much more (and also so much less).

Did you just get assigned a story? A simple “copy” will let your editor know you’re on the move even as you freak out internally at the miracle of logistics needed to get from, say, Pasay to Ortigas in 15 minutes.

Do you need the desk off your back so you can actually sit down and write a story? “Copy.” If the desk is being particularly nit-picky, or is asking you to Google something for them, you can go “Copy. Copy.” and imagine it is some other more colorful two-word combination.

Note too, that copy only really means you heard the instructions or information relayed to you. You can, in good conscience but bad faith, say you never agreed to Google that thing they asked you to Google.

You won’t get away with it for very long, which will give you an opportunity to test whether it’s possible to respond to a tongue lashing from an editor with “copy, copy”.

When covering something or in the afternoons, copy can also substitute for a temporary thank you to a colleague for giving you extra background information or for helping you confirm that you got the story right.

This, of course, comes with the understanding that high fives and an actual show of gratitude will follow once the story has been filed. Preferably in the form of alcohol.

Another useful word to know: “Choppy”, for when the reception on your mobile phone makes every conversation a guessing game and an exercise in telepathy.

Wheels within wheels

Berlin, 1956

There are so many layers to this thing we do that it sometimes gets scary.

Not death-threat level scary. I haven’t handled a story big enough to prompt some politician or drug lord (or both, in the same person) to call someone to call someone to call me. It’s more of a feeling that there are more things going on than what can be said in a couple of hundred words.*

You might, for an example from real life, write about a controversial freeport zone in Central Luzon and then get a message a friend asking whether you are part of a campaign to discredit a senatorial candidate associated with that freeport. It was a question asked in good faith, too. Asked along the lines of “I know what you’re up to. *Wink, wink*.”

What I was up to–and this is true even in my heart of hearts–was writing about a press conference held by critics of that freeport. My friend told me, though, that such a campaign exists and that it is rooted in a political rivalry that began long before either of us were reporters. Nothing to do with me or the website I contribute to, but a good thing to know.

Within a few minutes, a call from a friend at the office of that senatorial candidate asking me about the story and then asking me to be fair.*** A few minutes after that, a call from an official spokesman and documents in my e-mail and me banging out several hundred words on their version of the truth.

None of this is really cloak-and-dagger stuff, of course.  It’s really more of a reminder of how connected everyone is to almost everyone else in this industry. There are wheels within wheels and sometimes it’s easy to be mistaken for a cog.

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*Which, of course, is a pretty obvious thing to say outside of the first week of Humanities I**

** A college course that no longer exists, apparently.

***Which, in actual fairness, I had been. I got in touch with them for comment but got no response.

And it’s still all good

“They call me Jaws, my hat is like a shark’s fin”, says pre-NCIS LL Cool J

It does get better.

Things got pretty crazy from December last year to March this year, and there were times that I felt I was actually crazy. Had everything that happened happened when I was a lot younger, I might have said fuck it and eaten a gun. Probably not but that would have been more likely back then, anyway.

I am pleased to report that I did not go wild in an ill-advised (but usually effective) attempt to get over things. What I did do is teach myself to appreciate things. Things like having my family back, having great opportunities to get better at what I do, having people to have drinks with and secretly cry (or not cry) at the movie theater with. Not being dead. That sort of thing.

I have also been spending a lot of time listening to hip hop. Not for me, though, the swagger of money, cars, clothes, hoes*. I guess I’m too old for that now and don’t really have those to begin with.

The songs that resonate with me now have old school MCs talking about how great they are not because they have guns and gangs but because of skill. Because they’ve done the work and because they got through whatever hassles came their way (including, but not limited to, suit-wearing and girlfriend-kidnapping drug dealers).

They can back it up, too. As LL Cool J goes on “I’m Bad”: Even when I’m bragging, I’m being sincere!

Consider, for example, this performance by Big Daddy Kane at the VH1 Hip Hop Honors in 2005.

He was nearing 40 at the time but could still rap AND do splits. That’s the kind of swagger I’m going for now.

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*I’m sorry!