News to Me This page intentionally left blank News to Me Adventures of an Accidental Journalist Laurie Hertzel University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis • London Copyright 2010 by Laurie Hertzel All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Design and production by Mighty Media, Inc. Text design by Chris Long Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hertzel, Laurie. (cid:2)News to me : adventures of an accidental journalist / Laurie Hertzel. (cid:2)(cid:2)p.(cid:2)(cid:2)cm. (cid:2)ISBN 978-0-8166-6558-7 (hc : alk. paper) (cid:2)1. Hertzel, Laurie.(cid:2)2. Journalists—United States—Biography.(cid:2)I. Title. (cid:2)(cid:2)PN4874.H4745A3 2010 (cid:2)(cid:2)070.92—dc22 (cid:2)(cid:2)[B] 2010010388 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10(cid:2)(cid:2)10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In memoriam: Leo J. Hertzel Kristin Hertzel Young Eleanora McCorison This page intentionally left blank Contents A Storyteller Is Born 1 Not Making Coffee 9 Eyewitness to Change 25 Murder! 37 On the Night Desk 53 An Accidental Reporter 73 Up the Shore 87 Reporting from Russia 113 Enter Mayme 131 A Month in the South 149 Back to Russia 169 The Long Goodbye 189 Epilogue 201 Acknowledgments 205 vii This page intentionally left blank a storyteller is born A Storyteller Is Born I was eleven or twelve when I decided that jour- nalism was my future. I loved to write, I loved to snoop, I always wanted to know everything first. Those are pretty much the only qualifications, when you get right down to it. Being only eleven or twelve, I had no immediate job oppor- tunities, but I didn’t let that stop me. I launched my own paper and called it, with the imagination of a true journal- ist, “Newspaper.” The circulation of this fabulous rag was approximately ten—my immediate family on East Fourth Street in Duluth. I briefly thought I might make a little money (a common mistake of young journalists) and tried to charge them for reading it. Lacking a printing press or a Xerox machine, I produced one copy of each issue and trot- ted around the house handing it to various family members, trying to wheedle a nickel out of them. I may even have started at a dime and then lowered the price. I don’t remem- ber. What I do remember, though, is that whatever the price was, nobody paid. Eventually, I just tacked my newspaper onto the bulletin board in the kitchen and spied around the corner to see if anybody took it down to read. My entrepreneurial little brothers knew a good idea when they saw one, and they quickly outflanked me. They 1