Hunting Stories

For decades I worked with my fellow reporters producing stories. We would study the patterns in the events we were following, trying to connect the dots so we could beat other reporters to the story.

In the process, there may have been times that we were tempted to cut corners.

During the process of landing a big investigative story, we usually had identified a bad guy or a group of bad guys who were responsible for the situation we were trying to expose.

As part of that work, we would become interested in the bad guy’s psychology, and on occasion we would consult with psychologists to better understand that.

This was particularly important when we were tracking ongoing behavior, such as a series of crimes by a perpetrator not yet apprehended by the authorities.

So in those cases we were much like cops or intelligence agents, some of whom were often tracking the same targets as we were.

This is how journalists acquire some of their most valuable sources -- fellow investigators with similar objectives, which in all cases is catching the bad guy.

But this is also where problems can develop. One issue is when journalists get confused about whose agenda they are pursuing. As long as there is alignment, there is nothing wrong with a reporter and, say, a D.A. working to break the same case.

But their objectives are different -- the prosecutor is seeking to build a legal case, whereas the reporter is seeking to tell an accurate story.

While its may seem that those objectives are consistent with one another, the devil is in the details. There is a world of difference between what is legally provable in a court of law and what is publishable.

While all of this is happening in real time, any reasonably self-aware investigator starts turning inward to ask a few questions: “Why am I doing this work? Who am I to judge others? Which ends justify which means?”

There are many different possible answers to these questions. All I know for sure is that to continue with this kind of work over many decades, you need to have found the ones that work for you.

Otherwise you will stop.

(This is an edited version from an essay I wrote in 2021.)

HEADLINES:

• Newsom says he’ll sue to keep Trump from sending California National Guard to Portland (ABC)

• The new SCOTUS term will reshape America’s constitution (Economist)

• Supreme Court and Trump are headed for a reckoning in new term (WP)

• ‘The president is unhinged’: Trump’s online behavior grows increasingly odd (Guardian)

• Trump plan would limit Social Security disability benefits for older Americans (WP)

• The Anti-Social Century (Atlantic)

• Bill Nye leads charge to save NASA science from deep Trump cuts (Axios)

• Kash Patel fires FBI trainee who displayed pride flag (ABC)

• Former Army vice chief of staff ‘concerned’ about Hegseth’s ‘attack on women’ (The Hill)

• The Hague on Trial (New Yorker)

• Trump plans aid package for US soybean farmers while seeking trade deal with China (AP)

• Afghans awaited U.S. resettlement. Pakistan sent them back to the Taliban. (WP)

• Gaza flotilla activists allege mistreatment while being detained in Israel (AP)

• Forget Cowbells. Cows Wear High-Tech Collars Now. (NYT)

• Pete Hegseth Rails Against Fat Generals (Onion)

MUSIC VIDEO: Pistol Annies - Hell On Heels 2011 

The Michigan Mafia

This essay dates from 2007.

You have to go back to 1978 to understand the story of the Michigan Mafia. A group of us Midwestern migrants started to feel comfortable enough in our adopted Bay Area home to bring a bit of our culture into the local scene. Some journalist colleagues and I issued a challenge to the other media institutions in San Francisco to play us in softball.

Early responders included the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, Mother Jones magazine, Media Alliance, and a number of other local media outlets. In the very first game of what eventually became known as the Bay Area Media Softball League (BAMSL) our team, the Michigan Mafia, beat Media Alliance, 3-2.

Over the next 29 years, many teams came and went, partially due to the ever-changing media landscape here. Wired had a team. Some of the TV stations did also. KQED had a team. 

The great Joe Dimaggio threw out the first pitch in a championship game.

Given my own peripatetic career, I often found myself having to play against my employer’s team, because I never betrayed the Michigan Mafia. We were always a competitive team, but never a champion. The closest we came was in 1994, when we advanced to the league championship game, only to lose by a wide margin. My only consolation was that I went 3 for 3 in the game.

Also, over the decades, our cumulative won-loss record was just south of .500.

But, much more than our winning percentage, what held the Mafia together was a shared sense of community. Relatively few of the long-term members were media people, ultimately, given the changes in our industry. We ended up as a collection of lawyers, legal investigators, and random others, with just a few aging journalists sprinkled into the mix. Most of us were indeed from Michigan, at least loosely.

Tonight, our venerable coach, Joel Kirshenbaum, announced his retirement, which signals the end of the Michigan Mafia.

“Only the mediocre are always at their best.” That was our motto. Some years, however, we came tantalizingly close to being better than mediocre. We played some great games, and had some great parties as well.

Although I feel sad tonight, very sad, at the passing of one of my main social institutions over the years here in San Francisco, I feel like toasting my many colleagues, hundreds of them, who helped make the Mafia if not the best team, certainly the most intriguing team of our era.

As for me, I played in every year during our 29-year run. But last year, in limited at bats, I did not get a single hit. You have to know when it is time to step down, and even if the Mafia had gone forward, I was figuring I should retire. I never did make it to my goal of a career batting average of .600, but I came quite close.

On the other hand, my fielding was suspect, as was my base running, and my (ugh) relief pitching. No, I never was a pretty player, but like my teammates, I always gave it my all.

Good-bye, Michigan Mafia. R.I.P.

HEADLINES:

• Trump tells Israel to stop bombing Gaza after Hamas responds to peace plan (Axios)

• How Fury Over Israel’s Qatar Attack Pushed Netanyahu on Gaza (NYT)

• Trump to federalize Illinois National Guard, Pritzker says (Politico)

• 37 people arrested and American kids separated from parents after ICE raid at Chicago apartments (CNN)

• 24 hours outside Portland’s ICE facility: Is this what ‘lawless mayhem’ looks like? (Oregon Live)

• Judge Blocks Trump’s Deployment of National Guard in Portland, Ore. (NYT)

• Trump starves Democratic strongholds of funding (Reuters)

• Pete Hegseth fires US navy chief of staff (Guardian)

• Kennedy Fires N.I.H. Scientist Who Filed Whistle-Blower Complaint (NYT)

• What Happens to School Lunches in the MAHA Era? (New Yorker)

• The Federal Election Commission is down to 2 members. So its work is at a standstill (NPR)

• Sanae Takaichi is set to become Japan’s first female prime minister (WP)

• Breaking up (Google) is hard to do (Verge)

• Chatbots Play With Your Emotions to Avoid Saying Goodbye (Wired)

• Here’s how the fashion industry is using AI to predict the next big trend (NPR)

• Generative AI can outperform nature at designing proteins to edit the genome (Phys.org)

• Lucky Fan Wins Open-Heart Surgery From Stars Of ‘The Pitt’ (Onion)

What Journalists Mean By Truth

Forty-some years ago, when we were writing our textbook, Raising Hell: How the Center for Investigative Reporting Gets the Story, my colleague Dan Noyes and I described what we called the hypothesis-driven method of journalism.

It’s a tricky business, this hypothesis methodology. You’ve got to have some basic evidence that indicates a pattern plus a suspicion, an instinct, a guess about what you’ll find as you keep searching.

But a hypothesis is not the same as a conspiracy theory, and you don’t publish your hypothesis. You use it, just like a scientist would, to investigate where the truth lies. We understand that this may frustrate true believers who wish reporters would just substantiate their theories.

An example historically is the JFK assassination on November 22, 1963. Perhaps no other event inspired more complex yet largely unfounded theories.

How could something like this have happened without a conspiracy? As years passed, even though no credible evidence emerged to substantiate any of the wilder theories, certain individuals continued to stoke the conspiracy fires and keep them burning.

Oliver Stone exploited this more skillfully than most, imagining how the conspiracy might have unfolded in his movie, “JFK”, which has shaped subsequent generations’ views about the event. That he patched in real footage, including the Zapruder footage that is the only known visual evidence of the shooting, made his docudrama feel more realistic than it actually was.

As a result, if you ask people, say, in their 50s or younger today about the assassination, they probably believe we all witnessed it on television as it happened. But that is incorrect: Nobody saw it on TV, because there was no live coverage of Kennedy riding in his motorcade at all. In fact we never saw any video evidence until a full decade later, when the Zapruder film of Kennedy’s head exploding was finally declassified and released to the public.

All of this only complicated the effort of journalists like me who actually tried to investigate the assassination. Maintaining our commitment to stick to the facts is not as sexy as publishing fantasies based on conjecture. But all we can do is stay alert and adjust our hypothesis in light of any new evidence as it emerges. We can’t afford to get wedded to any one hypothesis until and unless the preponderance of evidence becomes obvious.

Otherwise all you end up with are conspiracy theories.

To this day, whether someone else in addition to Lee Harvey Oswald was behind the Kennedy murder remains unproven. And that is the truth.

(This is an edited version of an essay I’ve published previously.)

HEADLINES:

• The man behind Trump’s push for an all-powerful presidency (NYT)

• Colleges weigh whether to sign onto Trump plan or forgo federal benefits (WP)

• Donald Trump’s Shutdown Power Play (New Yorker)

• Hundreds of Generals Try to Keep a Straight Face (Atlantic)

• Trump pauses $2.1B for Chicago infrastructure projects, leveraging the shutdown to pressure Democrats (AP)

• Democrats in Congress have rallied around healthcare as their top policy issue, hoping a focus on Americans’ concerns over access and affordability could help them in next year’s midterm elections. (Reuters)

• U.S. Military Attacked Boat Off Venezuela, Killing Four Men, Hegseth Says (NYT)

• Hamas accepts Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza but with conditions (WP)

• Portland’s ‘War Zone’ Is Like Burning Man for the Terminally Online (Atlantic)

• Can the Democrats Take Free Speech Back from the Right? (New Yorker)

• U.S. deports journalist Mario Guevara to El Salvador, family says (WP)

• Tourism is helping Uganda’s endangered mountain gorillas make a comeback (AP)

• How AI is making it easier to design new toxins without being detected (WP)

• The AI Money Vortex — A Spending Frenzy (Atlantic)

• How can we be more human? I asked ChatGPT — and you. (WP)

• Heartbroken Man Realizes He Only Loved Idea Of Fried Egg On Burger (Onion)

An "Unwell" President Seeks Total Control

Rep. Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania has been one of the few so far in Washington to say what many are thinking: Donald Trump is losing it.

His rambling speech before the assembled military brass this week was unhinged. As he ages out before our eyes, those around him are moving quickly to consolidate as much power as possible.

The government shutdown is providing an excuse for firing many more federal employees and closing agencies Republicans don’t like, including those meant to achieve critical oversight of the President.

Meanwhile, the military has been instructed by this unwell leader to prepare for “war” against the “radical left.” In terms of the rhetoric alone, this harkens back to the days of J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO.

The Watergate scandal sank the man then in the Oval Office, Richard Nixon. But bad as he was, Nixon never approached the point where he possessed the amount of centralized power Trump has accumulated.

For the second administration in the row, Americans are witnessing the cognitive decline of an elderly President. The difference is that Biden’s aides kept his decline secret until the debate where it became painfully obvious to everyone.

Meanwhile, the people around Trump cannot hide his decline due to Trump’s narcissistic need for constant media attention.

It’s enough to make you shake your head and mumble to yourself, “This really is No Country for Old Men.

HEADLINES:

• Trump charts path to total control amid government shutdown (Axios)

• A straightforward explanation from Rep. Madeleine Dean of why Trump is “unwell” (CNN)

• Trump hits independent agencies, spares the big stuff – for now (Politico)

• ‘Dangerous Cities,’ the Military, Trump and the Founding Fathers (NYT)

• Senior government officials privately warn against firings during shutdown (WP)

• F.D.A. Approves a New Generic Abortion Pill (NYT)

• The Justice Department Won’t Break Easily (Atlantic)

• Drones, Helicopters, Hundreds of Arrests: Trump’s Immigration Crackdown in Chicago So Far (NYT)

• Pope Leo XIV says those against abortion but in favor of death penalty are “not really pro-life” (CBS)

• Marjorie Taylor Greene reflects an emerging MAGA split (NYT)

• US-born citizen sues after twice being arrested by immigration agents (ABC)

• Israeli forces have intercepted 39 boats carrying aid and foreign activists, including Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg, to Gaza, leaving only one vessel still sailing towards the Palestinian enclave, the flotilla organizers said. (Reuters)

• How the world is responding to Israel’s interception of the Gaza flotilla (Al Jazeera)

• An attack on a synagogue in Manchester has left Britain on edge (NPR)

• Disney’s image tanks among Republicans, Democrats after Jimmy Kimmel controversy (CNBC)

• ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ vocalists draw musical inspiration from Black American hip-hop artists. (Reuters)

• New project makes Wikipedia data more accessible to AI (TechCrunch)

• Trump Asks JD Vance To Research Whether President Allowed To Kill Vice President (Onion)

Saving Telehealth

(To contact your Congressional representatives about saving telehealth for Medicare patients, or to forward them this essay, click on these links for your personal contacts in the House or the Senate.)

For me, the government shutdown became personal with an early Wednesday phone call informing me that my telehealth appointment with my nurse practitioner scheduled for today would no longer be supported for Medicare patients.

What is a major inconvenience and scary development for me must be a complete disaster for many other elderly and disabled patients.

Telehealth has without a doubt improved medical care for millions of people. It became popular during the pandemic but has persisted since for the most vulnerable among us — those too ill and/or too weak to get themselves to their doctor’s office in person.

Video appointments can allow health care providers to manage larger patient loads because remote appointments can be faster and more efficient than in-person appointments. In-person checkups are preferable for other reasons, of course.

I’m not going to get into the politics of the government shutdown other than to say there appears to be plenty of blame all around. Republican cuts to Medicare are embedded in Trump’s “big (ugly) bill” and the continuing care for millions of people like me is at serious risk going forward.

My reaction to this news was seething hatred for everything associated with the Trump regime. This awful man is systematically wrecking our society piece by piece. Every decent, kind, humane policy is at risk now.

Jane Fonda is right once again. All of us need to find ways to resist this authoritarian in our midst. Trump is a cancer. Democracy is the patient. The treatment is for us to somehow contain and limit the spread of this tumor.

HEADLINES:

• YouTube Bends the Knee (Atlantic)

• Hegseth escalates war on leakers with lie detector tests and nondisclosure agreements (WP)

• Vote to end government shutdown fails as Democrats hold firm on health care demands (AP)

• Supreme Court Allows Lisa Cook to Remain at Fed, for Now (NYT)

• White House fires much of the National Council on the Humanities (WP)

• Pope Leo appeared to offer his strongest criticism yet of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, questioning whether they were in line with the Catholic Church’s pro-life teachings. (Reuters)

• Israel orders Palestinians to leave Gaza City, saying those who stay will be considered militants (AP)

• Blue Angels cancel S.F. Fleet Week over government shutdown (SFC)

• Jane Goodall, conservationist renowned for chimpanzee research and environmental advocacy, has died (AP)

• Robots are learning to make human babies. Twenty have already been born. (WP)

Friendly Fire

An incompetent fool obsessed with facial hair is in charge at the Pentagon. A would-be authoritarian relentlessly seeking total control is in the White House.

Together on Tuesday, they ranted before the assembled leaders of the military, hastily assembled at their bidding in a manner that suggested urgency.

While Hegseth focused on his battle against DEI, Trump told the generals and admirals he wants them to use cities like San Francisco, Chicago and New York as “training grounds” for the “war within.”

If you were a screenwriter, tasked with creating a scenario for a disaster movie, you couldn’t make this stuff up.

It’s too serious.

And when it comes to the war within, it’s becoming real as a one-sided assault by the President of the United States against democracy.

In this war, our most treasured freedoms are set to become collateral damage.

Killed by “friendly fire.”

HEADLINES:

• The Commander in Chief Is Not Okay (Atlantic)

• US government shuts down as midnight deadline passes (Guardian)

• Judge Rules Trump Unlawfully Targeted Noncitizens Over Pro-Palestinian Speech (NYT)

• Trump’s ominous move to recruit generals and admirals to his political cause (CNN)

• Trump directs generals to defend US from ‘war from within’ (ABC)

• Trump defends troops in US cities after Hegseth decries military DEI efforts (Guardian)

• Trump says he’ll fire generals “on the spot” if he dislikes them (Axios)

• Military leaders absorb highly partisan presentation from Trump, Hegseth (WP)

• Deadlock Grows Uglier as Congress Heads Toward Shutdown (NYT)

• Trump Floats ‘Irreversible’ Cuts To Benefit Programs If Government Shuts Down (Time)

• Trump to Americans: “Go F*ck Yourself”; shuts down Republican-controlled government, increasing monthly health care costs by hundreds of dollars (Gavin Newsom)

• How Tom Homan wound up ensnared in an FBI contracts-for-cash sting (MSNBC)

• Trump threatened to withhold billions in federal funds from New York City should democratic socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani win the election. Mamdani, whom Trump has repeatedly described as a “communist,” isn’t backing down. [HuffPost] 

• Trump administration moves to defund inspector general watchdog group (WP)

• Judge issues blistering opinion against Trump policy to deport pro-Palestinian students (Guardian)

• Trump peace plan ‘ignores interests of Palestinian people’, Hamas official tells BBC (BBC)

• Afghanistan’s internet goes down amid fears of a Taliban crackdown (WP)

• Google’s AI Mode image search is getting more conversational (Verge)

• Stress-Free Eric Adams Spends Day Bribing Pigeons In Central Park (Onion)

Paranoia

(From 2009.)

So, it was nothing, right? Even though I didn’t stop shaking for an hour afterward. Who knows why, maybe because I have been reading Dave Cullen‘s spellbinding book, Columbine, but today I felt I had a brush with terrorist-instigated mortality.

It was a day like any other. Except that today I had to fulfill my civic duty by showing up for jury service. Now, I have never served on a jury, during my 38 years since I relocated here in San Francisco, though I have often answered the summons from Superior Court to do so.

I have no particular aversion to such service, but the only times I’ve made it past the screening process to actually sit down in a judge’s room, I have been rejected during voir dire, due to my background as an investigative reporter.

Anyway, today I joined the line of citizens waiting to enter one of our local court buildings, when a nervous-acting man ahead of me caught my attention. He was a white man, balding, dressed in formal clothes, with a pot belly, large, dark-rimmed glasses, and an extremely nervous manner about him.

To enter the building, one has to clear security. Two places in front of me was a younger woman. One place in front of me was this suspicious-acting man.

As she started to go through the security device, he pushed into her rear end. She turned around, and confronted him. “Excuse me?”

She cleared.

He didn’t. All sorts of alarms went off.

“Maybe it’s your belt, sir, try taking that off,” said the security guard. He did that but he also pushed through again, still triggering an alarm.

At this point, the guard waved me through. As I turned to pick up my cellphone and keys, the suspicious man was exploding with anger.

“What is your name?” he was screaming at the security guard. Clearly, he was trying to intimidate her, as if he were above being challenged for the right to enter the court building.

I proceeded into the central jury pool room with another hundred of my fellow citizens. Then began a long, boring, two-hour process of being excused from service. Halfway through, something extremely disconcerting occurred.

That same man, now looking paler than ever, entered the jury room from the back of the room. He sat for a moment, then walked toward the front and exited. Along the way, he deposited a book on a table in the precise center of the facility.

From that moment on, I was sure we were all dead. This was certainly a terrorist, angry at who knows what (there are so many injustices in our courts, almost anyone could turn into a mass killer, right?).

The next hour was one of the longest of my life. At first, I tried to find someone to alert about that book. Why would such a strange acting man do what he had done? Is there a “bomb squad” around to secure the item?

But no, here in the bureaucratic belly of the beast, I was stuck. No cops. Nobody but a nice young woman who said I couldn’t leave the room until my name was called.

Fine, I thought. I’ll die this way if it comes to that. After all, who ever heard of an exploding book? Probably the guy is just the kind of madman who drops crazed literature in public places.

That’s pretty much it. Nothing further happened. I was excused. And I scooted out of that place, gratefully. As I glanced back over my shoulder, however, I saw that the book was still there.

Headlines:

• Trump, Democrats leave meeting without deal to avoid government shutdown (Axios)

• Plan to send troops to Portland remains riddled with uncertainties (WP)

• Portland councilor, Army veteran, calls on service members to reject Portland military deployment (OPB)

• Feds Request 100 Military Personnel Be Sent To Illinois: Pritzker (Patch)

• America’s Illiberalism Doom Loop (Atlantic)

• Trump’s promise of auto industry boom is not panning out as planned. (Reuters)

• Energy Dept. adds ‘climate change’ and ‘emissions’ to banned words list (Politico)

• Trump secures Netanyahu’s agreement to Gaza peace proposal, but doubts remain (Reuters)

• Mormon church shooting suspect had Trump sign outside home, records show (Guardian)

• ‘You’ll never need to work again’: Criminals offer reporter money to hack BBC (BBC)

• Trump announces 100% tariff on foreign-made movies (CNN)

• Cannabis stocks soar after Trump shares video promoting drug’s use for seniors (Guardian)

• California Governor Signs Sweeping A.I. Law (NYT)

• DeepSeek: Everything you need to know about the AI chatbot app (TechCrunch)

• ICE Confirms Agents Do Not Have Faces Beneath Masks (Onion)