Reach out ...

We had a good time last night with our reporter friends at the Beveridge. A couple of people there I'd seen recently but it had been a while for most of them so it was fun to catch up.

One reporter told a long and very funny story dissing another reporter who is famous in the newsroom for promising to "reach out" to this or that secret source whom he's never at liberty to disclose, even to his editors, and who weirdly never seems to know anything worth putting in the paper. This all came to a head recently on a very big story -- the kind for which you'd be happy to call in your markers with all these long-protected sources -- that broke on a weekend. The reaching-out reporter wouldn't help, even though this big breaking news was on his beat; didn't even reach out to a source. The reporter telling the story last night was still hot, weeks later, and told the story in hilarious, profane, violence-threatening detail. It was worth the price of a pitcher of beer right there.

Thankfully, little of the talk concerned my stupid health. We talked about movies, gossiped and kvetched about journalism. I did my little riff about how annoyed I get when people pray for me and how I don't want a miracle like Gloria. Everyone laughed, but then I felt bad almost immediately when I remembered that one of the reporters and her husband (who was also there, and who is also the son of a minister), just lost a baby not that long ago. Who knows, maybe their faith got them through that ordeal and I offended them. I hope not.

Maybe I'll reach out to her, pray for forgiveness, something like that.