Gangrey.com

Reviled

WHEN READERS ATTACK

A few days ago, Kruse and Sullivan and I were sitting around drinking Blue Moons and talking about the stories we'd written that readers loved the most. The conversation reminded me of a story with the opposite distinction: among thousands I've written in my career, it's by far the most universally hated.

About a dozen readers e-mailed and called me about the story. No one had anything remotely nice to say.

It happened about two years ago, when I was writing for the Florida Times-Union. I was assigned to cover a space shuttle landing at Cape Canaveral. Problem is, the shuttle never landed. A lot of people might have chosen to bag the whole thing, but I decided to sit down at my laptop and spend an hour or two writing what I had seen.

Here's how it came out:

Second try was disappointing, too

Palm Beach resident made two trips to cape to view Discovery landing.

BY THOMAS LAKE
August 10, 2005

They called Josh Girdley a strikeout machine. In high school he once struck out 29 hitters in a single 10-inning game -- including two four-strikeout innings -- but his team lost when a reliever walked in the winning run.

Girdley is 24 now, out of baseball with an injured shoulder after six years in the minors. But his disappointment continued on Tuesday when the space shuttle Discovery found a new destination.

He and his friend Randy Rodecki came up from Palm Beach County early Monday morning to see Discovery land at Kennedy Space Center across the Indian River, losing six hours of potential sleep for nothing when clouds blocked the shuttle's touchdown.

The friends tried again on Tuesday morning, only this time with a twist: They loaded a black leather couch into the bed of Girdley's hulking pickup truck so they could watch the landing in style.

But Rodecki took a deep cut to the finger in the process, and he went to the emergency room. Girdley went north anyway, with his girlfriend's mother driving his truck because he was drunk.

They got to the parking lot of Paul's Smokehouse on U.S. 1 about 4:25 a.m., Girdley and his girlfriend, 16-year-old Elizabeth Rohaidy and her mother, Liana Vobarganas, and his dog, Ace, and the lights of the Space Center shone over the river. Stars twinkled in clear skies overhead, but lightning flashed on the eastern horizon.

They stood in the grass near the river until Vobarganas stepped in a fire-ant bed.

"Do you feel them anywhere?" Rohaidy asked.

"Baby," said her mother, "they already crawled up my leg!"

Girdley lifted her to the bed of the truck so she could sit safely on the couch.

"I haven't been carried like this since I was a baby," she said.

The ants got Rohaidy between her fingers.

"Why do they exist?" she wondered aloud. "They have no purpose."

Girdley smoked a cigarette and held a bottle of Mountain Dew, reminiscing about his baseball career and pointing a red laser into space. He noticed moss growing on two palm trees by the river.

"They need to clean those palm trees," he said.

"I shoulda brought my damn telescope tonight."

Lightning flickered red beyond the runway. A man on the radio said the shuttle had been diverted to California.

"We're done," Girdley said. "We're leavin'. We're goin' home."

He could not hide his discouragement.

"It sucks when you drive two hours one way to see something that could possibly happen once in a lifetime," he said. "At least they're gonna come home safe."

He was right. Four hours later, Discovery made a perfect landing in the California desert.

***

Looking back now, I can see that the story has a wicked combination of what frustrates readers: anticlimax, odd and inexplicable behavior by the protagonist, and the casual mention of a relationship that most people would find inappropriate. Oh well: That's what I had.

How about y'all? Anyone else want to talk about a story that turned everyone off?

Comments

Re: Reviled

A good story strikes a balance between things said and things unsaid. Both of these did that. I'm glad to read them. I want them in my newspaper.

Re: Reviled

I put together a file labeled "hate mail." It got its start last summer, when a story about anti-terrorism measures at a local high school fueled claims that I was "a right-wing nut."

Four months later, a story on the local hospital system added to the file, where I was now a "socialist," intentionally made the staff of two hospitals look bad and propagated a single-payer healthcare system.

The stories that make people the angriest are usually the ones in which they are most vested, but I think the weekend stories filed day-of draw equal ire: they usually lack context and posit the group of one advocacy group that has a parade.

Re: Reviled

Well, at least he called you "Sir."

Someone once wrote to tell me I was "maggot puke" -- one of the more colorful insults I've ever received -- but he was with the Klan, so I kind of took it as a compliment.

Re: Reviled

I wrote a story about people who wash their cars in the rain. It was a rainy day and the event I was going to cover got rained out, so I drove around and that's what I came up with after spotting an unusual amount of people doing it. It ran on 2B, the "Towns" page of The Burlington Free Press.

I got e-mail after e-mail telling me that it was not news and I should not have written it. I didn't tell my editor that, though. When I pitched her the story she had argued that it was not news and I should not write it.

Re: Reviled

Oh, just write anything remotely critical of Alabama football in Alabama and a steady stream of e-mails, letters and calls come your way, accusing you of being an Auburn graduate.
On the next day, write something complimentary of Alabama football and a steady stream of e-mails, letters and calls will come from Auburn fans, asking you to show your Bama degree.

My favorite is a column I wrote as Alabama was returning from a road agame at Hawaii in 2003 (God I loved those days). Texas A&M was courting then-Alabama coach Dennis Franchione. I wrote something about the Alabama brass having to pony up the money to keep their man, and that coaches will no longer stay at Alabama just because it's Alabama. And I ended the column with the line "Remember, Aloha also means goodbye."

The next morning the first message on my voice mail was the voice of an elderly lady who simply said "I WISH WE COULD SAY ALOHA TO YOU!!!" Then she hung up.

Re: Reviled

My favorite hate mail:

"Dear Mr. Decker, You are dumber than a box of rocks and worse than that you are a Communist, Marxist, Socialist Hitler..."

There was much, much more, I still have the letter somewhere, but that part I have memorized. He was a militia guy...

Re: Reviled

From a 10-minute-long, 3 a.m., booze and pills voicemail:

"Mr. Al-Rikabi, it's not your fault. It's your newspaper's fault. They hired you."

Re: Reviled

Here's a gem from a homicide story's reader comments:

"Duara is proving himself article after article to be a talentless and
unintelligent reporter. He writes like a high schooler to begin with,
and the addition of his clear and poorly-veiled agenda removes any
credibility that would be remaining. No benefit of the doubt for this
clown."

The anonymous commenter didn't specify which agenda, though. Which is too bad, cause I tend to be accused of Marxism early in the week, and apparently the copy turns increasingly facist. By Friday, I'm a nazi.

Re: Reviled

"You are a disgusting blight on the people's vanguard. May the ghost of Nelson Poynter haunt you for the rest of your life."

Re: Reviled

At the tail of one particularly blistering e-mail, questioning my objectivity and intelligence, the reader ended with this:

"Keep up your important work - I get a real kick each week from your esteemed fish wrapper."

Re: Reviled

Posted in the comments section on a story I wrote the other day:

"This article could be a nomination for story of the year! Great write up C/L. Just a stark reminder to never pay for this piece of s--- paper! What a bunch of *&@% dumb a-- reporters you hire. I could write a story better than this in the fifth grade."

Re: Reviled

an affectionate note some gun nut posted under one of my stories:

By Tom

January 28, 2007 11:53 AM | Link to this

Hey author of the above article and your editors…go here and read the definition of “terrorist”.

You are both the prima facia definition of a terrorist by trying to invoke fear and terror in theminds of the American public with your bogus articles. Your right to freedom of speech and press only exists because of people with guns who have protected it from those who would have long since taken it away. Your rantings and propaganda are akin to Al Jizeera in the middle east.

None

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